Comparison of Dance Workout programs for the Wii

NancyN795

Gold’s Gym Dance Workout vs. Zumba Fitness 2 vs. Just Dance 4 (all on the Wii)

I thought I’d write up my comparison of the three dance workout programs I’ve used. As background - I’m an old (56), very fat woman who has never been much of an exerciser and has never done much dancing.

Last winter I decided that I really had to do something about my health, got a used Wii and balance board and Wii Fit software and set a goal to do 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day. To my surprise, I was able to stick with it and after a couple of months needed more. I signed up for My Fitness Pal and I got a couple of other programs, one of which was the Gold’s Gym Dance Workout. I’ve now been using it daily since late April. It’s really working - my resting heart rate is way down, my blood pressure is down, aches & pains from age and excess weight are reduced and I’m gradually losing weight without being miserably hungry.

Several months ago, I wanted to try out some of the other software out there and signed up for GameFly so I could rent some of the other fitness games out there. I kept the Zumba Fitness 2 disc for several weeks and the Just Dance 4 disc for about a week.

I would say that the Gold’s Gym Dance Workout is, by far, the best one of the three for the novice dancer & exerciser.

Zumba Fitness 2 is good - I plan to get my own copy, or maybe Zumba Core - and I think once I get better at it I’ll probably be able to burn more calories per hour doing it than the Gold’s Gym. However, I would have been lost, and possibly would have given up on it, if I had started with it.

The Just Dance 4 isn’t very good as a fitness program, as far as I’m concerned. If you have it as a party game and want to use it to get fit, you can use it that way, but don’t get it just because you want to work out with it.

Details on each program (bear in mind, the Gold’s Gym is the only one I am thoroughly familiar with):

Gold’s Gym: It can use 2 Wii remotes - one in each hand - if you’re playing solo, so it gives a lot of real time, tactile feedback. It also has tutorial, beginner, intermediate and advanced routines for the Latin Dance and Cardio Boxing that make up the bulk of the program. After a song, it immediately lets you know how well you did and lets you review (and practice, if desired) each of the separate steps. (This is also one of the drawbacks of the program - you can’t turn this off once you’ve mastered the song, so you have to point and click twice to go on to the next song.) You can use the “Personal Trainer” to let it put together a set of exercises for you to do each day, which will gradually work you up to harder, longer routines as you improve. Unfortunately, the personal trainer also includes some of the “Mini-Games” in the workout. The Mini-Games are mostly either dreadful or useless (or both). The only one I think has any value is the “Canoe” game which actually gives me a good, twisting, abdominal workout. Once you’re familiar with the various dances and games, you can put together your own, custom workouts. You can start out with the program giving you lots of help - the instructor calling out the steps, the instructions for the steps scrolling along the bottom, indications of when you did and didn’t succeed in moving the remote correctly, calories burned (you can either enter your weight or use the balance board to weigh yourself), and amount of the dance you’ve done. Then as you get better you can turn features off once you don’t need them any more. At this point, all I have on is the remote vibration, giving me a nice, clean screen. It has a calendar so you can go back and see your time/calories for any particular day. The “setting” is one of 5 “gyms”, and you have your personal trainer and two additional dancers to follow. It’s a clean, easy to see, interface. The warm-up & cool-down routines are minimal, but that doesn’t bother me particularly.

Zumba Fitness 2: You can choose length and intensity, but I really couldn’t tell a lot of difference between the intensities, possibly because I was new to it. You can put together your own routines if you want (which is what I’ll do once I own the program and get familiar with all the songs). It has a calendar and tracks calories (you enter your weight), time, and % accuracy. It graphs those things by the day, week or month. The settings are “parties” in places like clubs and yachts. I don’t particularly care for that aspect of the program. It’s dark and the “effects” they use can make it extra hard to follow the lead of the dancer on the screen. I found it hard to know what I was doing right because the in-routine feedback is minimal. (Since you don’t hold the remote, but wear it on your hip, they don’t use the vibrate feature to give real time feedback.) It gives almost no instructions (just a little visual when something new is coming up) while in a dance and the “learn the steps” area of the program doesn’t really teach you what you’ll be doing in the dances. The steps change frequently and unexpectedly, but I’m sure I’ll be able to do them eventually. I found it hard to keep up with the Gold’s Gym Dance steps at first, too. One advantage is not having to hold the remote in your hand - but you have to have the belt (which I didn’t, since I was renting the game) or find another way to fasten the remote to your hip (I sewed a pocket of stretchy material to the hip of my exercise shorts).

Just Dance 4: This is obviously a party game and they just tagged on an exercise section. I don’t see a way to set up your own routines and it doesn't have nearly as many preset routines as Zumba. It tells you calories burned, but it doesn’t know your weight, so I doubt its accuracy. (Let’s face it, even with an accurate weight, the calories burned shown by these programs is dicey at best). It doesn’t have a calendar, so you can only see what it thinks is your total calories burned and how many you burned in the last routine you did. The display usually isn’t as distracting as the Zumba program’s, but not as clean and easy to follow as the Gold’s Gym. It does give some indication of what you’re supposed to be doing, but it’s still hard to follow. I’m sure I’d get the hang of it eventually, but it’s just not worth it for such a poor program.

lucystacy71

I have the Just Dance (3 I think) which I play on the 'just sweat' option and Zumba, but I'm definitely going to have to try the Gold's Gym Dance Workout. Thanks for the review!

NancyN795

My husband is very glad I sent the Just Dance back today. The remote not only vibrates, but makes an obnoxious noise every once in a while when you hit the right "energy" level. It really bugged him because to someone not using the game, it's like a random electronic noise echoing through the house every once in a while. I like the way the Gold's Gym program uses the remote vibration much more. It vibrates a lot - essentially every swing of your arm - but doesn't squawk.

Stage14

I have done all three of these and whole heartedly agree that Gold's Gym Dance Workout is the best. It's what I used when I started exercising, and I still pop it in every once in awhile just to change things up a bit. Even after graduating to running and weight lifting, it's a fun and challenging workout.