Wii game used in research

Cleveland State students are studying how technology can increase physical activity.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Sweat drips down Renee Mershon-Wollerman’s face as she eyes a boxer across the ring.

She ducks left, punches. Her opponent, a Japanese amateur, throws an uppercut. Mershon-Wollerman counters. Jab. Right hook. Her opponent hits the canvas and doesn’t get up.

Mershon-Wollerman goes to a neutral corner, but there are no high-fives, no celebration. Just a simple request from her trainer, Kristen Perusek: Pause the video game for a second and rate yourself on an exercise exertion scale.

Perusek and five other Cleveland State University students received a $6,000 grant from the school to conduct research this summer on how technology can help increase physical activity, especially among children. The students recently focused on how a Nintendo Wii boxing video game compares with a boxing bag workout.

Mershon-Wollerman, a recent CSU physical-education graduate, channeled her inner Muhammad — or Laila — Ali against a virtual boxing opponent. No contact. No black eyes. But a title bout nonetheless.

Wii boxing isn’t one of the thumb-exercising video games that health experts have come to despise. Motion-sensitive controllers allow users to punch and dodge the way they would in real life.

That gives CSU associate professor Ken Sparks hope that exercise and video games can work together.

“If we can get kids more interactive with video games, it will help with some of the problems we are seeing with obesity and diabetes,” Sparks said.

The CSU students rounded up 30 test subjects to do 30-minute boxing workouts on both the Wii and the bag. They hook up participants to an oxygen analyzer, heart monitor and pedometer and then tell them to swing away.

The early returns? The Wii is holding its own.

The students haven’t analyzed the data, but, in general, women have gotten only slightly better workouts from the bag. Men are using more energy on the bag but burning only about three calories more per minute.

“You get out what you put in,” senior Brad Blevins said. “You can get a really good exercise from the Wii if you put in the effort.”

The difference between sexes comes from men not being able to resist the macho instinct of laying into the bag, Blevins said.

But he said Mershon-Wollerman was the hardest Wii puncher he had seen during the study. Her heart rate reached more than 140 beats per minute, and she burned 190 calories.

She rated the Wii session as “moderately difficult, “ which is the optimum workout level on the Borg Perceived Exertion Scale.

Common sense dictates that the boxing bag would cause participants to spend more energy, have a higher heart rate and get a better workout. The bag offers resistance, whereas the Wii is akin to shadow boxing.

Raynell Williams, an Olympic featherweight boxer from Cleveland, owns a Wii boxing game and said there is no comparison to the real deal.

“If they try to go hard, they are going to get real tired on that bag,” Williams said in a phone interview.

The Wii’s equalizing factor lies in the game’s low skill but competitive nature.

Researchers have found that participants genuinely want to beat their Wii opponents. And it takes minutes to become an above-average Wii boxer, instead of the years of training it takes real pugilists.

Another movement-oriented video game, Dance Dance Revolution, is used in West Virginia public schools. Researchers there published a 2007 study on the game’s health benefits.

Nearly half of West Virginia’s 786 public schools use the game as an alternative exercise tool, said Emily Murphy, one of the West Virginia University researchers.

The CSU students are convinced Wii boxing and other interactive video games could have a similar impact.

“Today’s society is a generation of video games,” said Perusek, who is a junior. “Having a video game like this, which the kids seem to love, gets their heart rate up and is better than sitting around for 30 minutes.”