Games are good, Exhibit A: ‘Exergames’ beat a treadmill
A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that some interactive video games are a good way for kids to burn calories. The study took 39 kids, average age 11, and put them in front of interactive video games to see how much energy they burned. But first, to establish an exercise baseline, they had the kids walk on a treadmill at 3 miles per hour to establish their metabolic equivalent (MET), an approximation of how much oxygen the body uses during an activity. The kids measured an average MET of 4.9 on that activity.
Here’s how the games compared (the higher the number, the better; for the sake of you adults, “light” gardening has an MET of 2, running an 8 mile-per-minute pace — that would be a roughly 24-minute 5K — pulls a 13.5):

Sportwall — 7.1
Jackie Chan Alley Run by Xavix — 7
Lightspace Bug Invasion — 6.4
Cybex Trazer Goalie Wars — 5.9
Dance Dance Revolution — 5.4
Nintendo Wii Boxing — 4.2

The Sportwall game, incidentally, was the most popular with the kids; the Jackie Chan Alley Run the least popular. Overweight kids enjoyed the games over all more than kids with lower body mass indexes.

In a separate study, published recently in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, a study of 100 adults ages 18-35 found the amount of energy required for different types of interactive video games varied widely. “Shooter” games only increased energy expenditures by 23 percent over doing nothing. Games in which people pretend to play instruments saw energy output jump 73 percent, dance stimulation games saw a 298 percent hike and fitness games required 322 more energy than sitting on the couch.

More on the study here.

Games are good, Exhibit B: Shag a fly ball, dodge a Jeep

Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign finds that college kids who play sports are less likely to get hit by a car while waking across the street while talking on a cell phone and listening to music. Researchers took 18 NCAA Division I athletes and pitted them against 18 non-athletes in a video street-crossing program. Both groups were given cell phones and MP3 plays and told to get across the a virtual two-way street as cars whizzed by at 40 to 55 miles per hour. Collision rate for the athletes was 25 percent; 37.5 percent of the non-athletes got splattered.

Playing right field: It could save your life.

More here.

Games are Good, Exhibit C: Sprints beat endurance when it comes to heart health

Remember when you were in 4th grade PE and the gym teacher said, “OK, line up! We’re going to do the 50-yard dash!” and you thought, “Cool, ‘cause I can run like a madman for 10 seconds.” But when “Coach” Payne yelled, “Time to run the mile, people!” your people looked for the nearest bleacher to hide under.

If Coach Payne’s objective was to build your cardio, he should have stuck with the sprints. A study published earlier this month in the American Journal of Human Biology finds that sprints beat endurance when it comes to fighting cardiovascular disease.

In the study, 47 boys and 10 girls were divided into moderate and high-intensity exercise teams. Each group exercised three times a week for seven weeks. The MODs ran steady for 20 minutes each session, racking up 420 minutes of overall running. The high-intensity kids (or HITs, for study purposes) did a series of 20 meter sprints, exercising for 63 minutes overall. And yet, while both groups exhibited improved cardiovascular risk factors, the HITs were able to achieve similar results in 15 percent of the time.

More on the study here.

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