Dal Students Test 'Wii' Workout

(andPOP) - University students will do anything to avoid work; a smarter tactic is to make those procrastinating activities worthwhile enough to tackle in the classroom. At least that's what 28 students at Dalhousie University in Halifax did, Reuters reports, testing Nintendo's Wii against more traditional forms of exercise to determine if all those restless nights of gaming could actually be considered a workout.

Justin White, a fourth-year kinesiology major and 27 students in the Applications in Exercise Physiology class tested the impact of playing Wii boxing for 30 minutes against a 30-minute walk in a local park and an equal amount of time doing a "boxercise" video.

While the Wii got people off the couch, as a cardiovascular workout it didn't pass the test. However, White explained, it's a good starting point to lose weight or even "get people interested in the actual sports themselves."

The students graded the boxercise video as most intense, while walking was the least demanding. Nintendo plans to release Wii Fit later this year, an exercise game that allows the user to perform a variety of exercises--and tracks changes in their body-mass index. It has already sold more than one million copies in Japan.