Harmonixers are joining the Dance Central fitness campaign to work alongside you in using Dance Central and Kinect to reach personal goals. In this series of personal blog posts from Harmonix, we're sharing what our goals are and how we plan on using Dance Central to accomplish them!
I’m Christine and I work on the Community & Web teams here at Harmonix. I work on web content like the Rock Band Blog, Twitter, and Facebook, and help out with things like livestreams, podcasts, and newsletters. I’m a newbie runner, a baking mad scientist, and a decent Dance Central player. I’m training for a charity stair climb to benefit the National MS Society.
My fitness goal is to get through the stair climb without feeling like I might die on the way there. I did the stair climb two years ago with no training, and a mere five flights in I was already feeling horribly uncomfortable and wasn’t sure I’d make it through. I made it, but only because of my teammate, HMX dance tester Milo – he ran ahead to each landing and danced and yelled encouraging things until I made it to the next landing. The stair climb is a 61-flight challenge in early March. My goal as we do this program is to be able to climb more flights of stairs each week than I could the week before. Endurance is my focus.
The stair climb is the biggest motivator. It’s 61 flights in the tallest building in the city of Boston. It’s a daunting challenge, but I want to be ready for it this time instead of just barely making it through. I also think that the cross training will help me improve my endurance in my running.
Dance Central 3 is my fun workout. On days when it’s too cold to run outside or when I just don’t feel like working out, I still want to fire up the Xbox and play through my favorite routines (right now that’s “Gangnam Style,” “Bass Down Low,” “Calabria 2008,” and “Now That We Found Love”). I’m looking forward to working on playing longer and longer play sessions to help my cardio endurance in general. I’m also looking to the experts – our choreos, dance testers, and community managers – to get some tips on which songs to play to get a great leg and butt workout to prep for the stair climb. I have a feeling “Now That We Found Love” and “Da Butt” are on that list…
I’m going to continue my running training, working on increasing my endurance to run longer distances. I’m also going to be doing stair climb training to get used to the different type of workout stairs provide. I’m hoping to increase the number of flights every week so that by time the stair climb event arrives, I’ll be ready.
One difficulty I face is that on top of any training I do, my dog still needs her exercise. While she can’t play Dance Central with me (though she certainly tries…and by “tries” I mean she runs in front of the Kinect while I’m playing, breaking my streak), she’s completely capable of running with me, if I train her to do it. In the new year, I’d love to work on getting her used to running. Right now, that whole “running in a straight line and not chasing after squirrels” thing is a bit foreign to her.
Another challenge is that I’m going to be fundraising for the climb while training. Part of my fundraising is a by-request bake sale where I make baked goods to order for people that make donations. Time spent baking is time not spent training or playing DC3. Balancing that time appropriately is going to be a challenge.
I’m encouraged by my progress in the past year using Dance Central 2, and then Dance Central 3, to help get more fit. I dropped over 20 lbs. last year with a combination of walking, running, hiking, Dance Central, and yoga. I think focusing on doing just a little bit more – dancing a little longer this session, hiking a little faster, running a little farther – has been a great way to push myself without pushing so hard that I give up because I can’t do it. Doing this last year meant I ran my very first 5k, lost a bunch of weight, started hiking, and finally started playing Dance Central on Hard. If you break a challenge into little pieces, you can do just about anything!
Follow us here in the blog through January and February for all things fitness! Share your own fitness goals and tips with us in the official forums, on the Dance Central Facebook Page, or by tweeting @Dance_Central on Twitter using the #DC3Fit hashtag!