Nuki News #82 - Day 250 of Ring Fit!

As of writing I’ve actually hit day 254; and marking a full year of when I started playing Ring Fit! It’s not going to be a surprise that I wholeheartedly recommend you play Ring Fit, too, knowing I’ve played it 2 out of 3 days of a year on average! I have an interest in exercise games, or games that make exercise not a boring chore and game-ify it. The last time I’d been regularly putting any effort on exercising my body was back in 2016 with Wii Fit Plus, haha.

I wanted to take some time to talk about how I managed it, because even with the benefit of Ring Fit being a game(closest to a turn based RPG) a lot of folks I know who have also played Ring Fit eventually stopped before a month, sometimes stopping after a week! I can’t say I know the secret to sticking with it, but I’ll give a breakdown of what I did in particular!

First, I wanna start with my motives and goals. I didn’t have any weight-loss goals, nor was I thinking the game would transform me into a greek god or anything. I thought “hey, maybe some regular exercise would be good.” I wasn’t doing any real dieting or changes to my food intake, either. I just wanted to see how the game would end, since I kinda enjoyed the humorous interactions of the player character’s partner, Ring, and the villain of the game, Dragaux. Like most RPGs I start, I wanted to see where it went and how it ends! The exercise along the way was just a bonus.

Second, I set my expectations- LOW. Very low, haha. I started out on difficulty level 3 out of 30, which is super duper low. I also would only require that I do 1 main level(non-minigames) a day, and never flee from a battle in that level. The game also will suggest taking a break for the day after it records 10 minutes or more of exercise time, and I rarely ever went beyond that. To me, the most important thing was to keep my body moving. One level a day, on a VERY low difficulty, it kinda made it a no-brainer and real easy to decide to play it on consecutive days. Sometimes, the game would ask if I’d like to increase the difficulty level, and admittedly I rarely ever did. And when I did, it would be just by 1 measly point. I’m at difficulty level 18 right now, by the way! That means every 2 weeks I increased my difficulty by a single point. And, I’d only do it if I felt like I was consecutively able to handle all the exercises daily without much problem.

In my opinion, if you end up making yourself too sore, your brain is just going to associate exercise with pain, and the first thing your mind wants to do is avoid pain. So making the exercise a game, and being possibly hyper-careful to not risk overdoing it, I’ve gotten to handle averaging 2-3 levels 21 days out of the month. Take it slow, even at my snail pace I beat Ring Fit’s story in about 6 months, maybe a little less! But that doesn’t mean it’s over. Thankfully they have a post-game story, side quests, and a new game+ feature that has been keeping things interesting for the foreseeable future!

I didn’t start noticing physical changes to myself until about 10-14 days into it! Sitting on the floor for example didnt make my legs fall asleep or make my butt hurt after a while, and moving was easier. It’s been more of a reward of discovery for the changes to my body over time, rather than wanting a specific outcome.

If you have questions for me about my experience with Ring Fit I didn’t cover here, feel free to shoot it to me, haha. I’ve already typed up a lotta paragraphs so I’m not gunna drag on further for ya otherwise. :)  Tanks for your support and reading!