Pros and cons of virtual personal trainers

LOS ANGELES: The personal trainer, once the must-have accessory of rich, image-obsessed Californians, is now within the reach of more people thanks to new technology.

Medical experts and personal trainers see benefits but urge caution in using the new products, which range from audio programs available on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Web site to Sony Corp.'s interactive, humanoid trainers Matt and Anna.

Dr. Aurelia Nattiv, UCLA Sports Medicine physician and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine warned that a virtual trainer cannot entirely replace a supervised exercise regimen.

"Caution should be taken with these programs, especially with the elderly or anyone who has chronic medical conditions or is a novice exerciser," Nattiv said.

Nattiv said the danger of injuries arose from users not having supervision or feedback about whether they were doing the exercises correctly.

But Barbara Bushman, an exercise physiology professor at Southwest Missouri State University, said anything that gets overweight Americans to exercise "is a huge step forward."

"I'd say, yeah, great," Bushman said. "It's getting up and moving that takes care of two-thirds of the population that's doing nothing at all."

National Center for Health Statistics data show that 30 percent of American adults are obese and 16 percent of children and teens are overweight.

Reducing the prevalence of obesity among adults to less than 15 percent by the year 2010 is a national health objective, but the situation is worsening rather than improving, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

REAL-LIFE FITNESS IN A VIRTUAL WORLD

Among the online personal training options is the Nike + iPod Sport Kit, which measures a user's activity through sensors in the shoes and wirelessly transmits the data to a receiver in the iPod nano portable music player.

The program uses music already loaded onto a user's iPod to craft workouts that offer coaching as well as motivational and training advice over the music. The program connects with a Web-based workout calendar that keeps track of the user's progress.

Konami Corp.'s "Dance Dance Revolution," known as "DDR" among devotees, requires less workout space but more coordination and a game console.

It began as a Japanese arcade game in 1998 and spread across the world to become one of the most popular music video games. U.S. educators have taken note and some have incorporated it into school physical education classes.

The game is played with a dance pad that has panels featuring up, down and sideways arrows that are pressed with the feet in response to arrows that appear on the TV screen and are synchronized to music.

The game allows players to use their hands and feet to dance at high levels of difficulty and exertion, and to go online to challenge other players.

Sony and Nike Motionworks aimed its virtual video game workout "Kinetic" at women aged 18 to 34, figuring that they could get a new demographic hooked on its PlayStation 2 consoles already being used by their children or friends.

"It's been extremely successful for us ... Kinetic is not a game for gamers. Anyone can pick this up," said Sony spokeswoman Alyssa Casella.

"Kinetic" workouts are led by virtual trainers Matt and Anna, who keep an "eye" on trainees through a camera called an EyeToy that mounts on the top of a player's television and measures the force and direction of the user's movement.

The program offers 12-week training programs or individual routines targeting specific areas of the body. The trainers, who owe their realism to motion-capture technology, lead routines inspired by aerobics, the Brazilian martial art capoeira, kick boxing, yoga and tai chi in four different environments -- the Dojo, Dance Studio, Zen Garden and Loft.

Michael Seril, a California-based trainer named top in his field for 2006 by the National Strength and Conditioning Association, said his virtual rivals are not as effective because they cannot tailor workouts to a user's specific goals but "are not that bad if you have gone to your doctor and been cleared to exercise."

"If you can't afford personal trainer four or five days a week you can incorporate this into it with a couple of days with a personal trainer," Seril said. "But I would not recommend it if you haven't exercised in three or four years."