A Revolution of Dance

Whenever I first started this whole weight loss thing, about two years ago now, my primary exercise was the Mario version of Dance, Dance Revolution. I wasn't really into running back then and I was slightly obsessed with DDR in high school, so it seemed like a good fit. Eventually, I started doing "legitimate" exercises and left DDR by the wayside. Little did I realize just how incredible a workout it turned out to be.

Recently my brother bought a used DDR game (DDR Max 2 for curious minds out there) and I took it for a spin. I played the Standard difficulty setting, went into Work Out Mode and was immediately impressed at the options for those looking for some good cardio. In work out mode, it displays how many calories your burned, your total calories burned, then it gets awesome. It shows you a conversion rate of how many times you would have jumped rope, how may miles you would have jogged and how may miles you would have swam.

With these new resources at my fingertips, or shoelaces as it were, I danced enough songs to equal roughly 4 miles, a pretty typical run for me. It turned out to be about 16 songs, which was lots of fun, but really exhausting. I couldn't believe how fast my heart was beating, how sore my legs were and just how winded I was. DDR was as much, if not way more, of a work out as running. I started playing it expecting to be better at it with my new found endurance, but I pretty much picked up where I left off.

For anyone who ever made fun of people that have claimed to be exercising by playing DDR, shame on you. Its no wonder so many people lost weight playing it, it is really intense cardio, not to mention,so much fun. Runners out there looking for a creative way to cross-train, pick up a copy of DDR, its amazing!