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Wii Fit Could Be Navy's New Boot Camp
The armed services using video games as training tools is nothing new, but Navy Surgeon General Vice Admiral Adam M Robinson is considering a different direction. He sees Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution as tools to safely get recruits into good enough shape to handle the rigors of basic training.
An uptick in bone injuries among recruits, particularly the kind of stress fractures that come along with diving into heavy physical activity while out of shape, has Vice Admiral Robinson looking in unusual places for help. "I think that there has been a definite difference in the amount of time that people have devoted to physical activity," he lamented to the Navy Times. "There have been more fractures and femur fractures and long-bone fractures in some of our young female recruits, and that’s related to the amount of activity and a sedentary lifestyle that they’ve had before they’ve entered the service and then the uptick in physical activity after they’re in the service.”
Vice Admiral Robinson sees active video games like DDR as a safe way to get recruits ready for boot camp, but don't think that joining the Navy is going to be any easier because of it. "This isn’t about [starting] with computers and stopping [everything else] — because we’re not going to do that. This is about incorporating those types of activities into something that people can use to become more physically active,” he said.
Not being horrifically out of shape to begin with is an option as well, but who wants to hear that?
[via Joystiq]
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