I Finally Want to Work Out: Ring Fit Adventure

I was a sedentary child and teen. The only exercise I got was what I was made to do at P.E. School was hard enough without becoming a panting, sweaty mess in front of the class. I would always come home and console myself with a video game.

It was like that in my twenties, too. Your retail job sucked again today? How about some Zelda to make yourself feel better? It was only once I started working at an office that I even started to consider getting into shape.

After finding helpful resources from a site called Nerd Fitness, I was diligent about following their bodyweight workouts for almost a year. Squats, planks, lunges, all that jazz. I performed the routine three times a week and I cleaned up my eating. I have to say, I experienced excellent results.

And then suddenly…

I struggled to stay dedicated to my routine. Working out had gotten boring. But that was okay! Maybe I needed to try something new.

A relative of mine left behind a rickety old weight bench and some rusty weight plates at my house. Why not delve into the world of weight lifting? But after a few months, my knees constantly hurt. I had to take a break and reevaluate my form.

When I went back to the Church of Iron, I found I was bored with it all. It was harder and harder to prioritize working out. Time for another change.

Yoga! I could do yoga! It’s just a lot of steady breathing, slow stretching, and bodyweight exercises. I can be gentle on my joints and still give myself a good workout. All I had to do was follow along with the video. Yoga with Adrienne was my favorite channel. But very quickly, my yoga practice became yet another chore.

All exercise had become unfulfilling, about as fun as cleaning the litter box or vacuuming. I read about the importance of working out even when you don’t really feel like it, but I had plenty of other chores and errands and work I was expected to do.

I wanted fitness to be a fun thing I did for myself.

I resigned myself to a world where exercising at all was dull, monotonous, and boring and the only thing left for me to do was to pick the least odious one.

And then I found Ring Fit Adventure

The Switch game comes with two peripherals, making it a bit more expensive, but you have to have both to play. The Ring-Con is a plastic ring that you attach one of the Joy-Cons to. You can squeeze or pull it for different exercises, and it offers a fair amount of resistance. It can even function as a Thigh Master, too. The game also comes with a Joy-Con strap that wraps around your left leg. Between the Ring-Con and the leg strap, the game can track your movements effortlessly.

All peripherals aside, the game itself is a blast. In Adventure Mode, you journey across the land to defeat Dragaux, an evil fitness instructor with dark power. You jog, dash, and leap across the world, which looks bright, colorful, and eerily reminiscent of Breath of the Wild’s style.

But it’s not all running in place. Sometimes you have to squeeze the Ring-Con to blast obstacles out of your way or pull it to suck up coins. And you encounter monsters! Instead of hitting them with a sword, you perform exercises at them. Yeah, I know it sounds silly, but there is something oddly satisfying about squatting a monster to death.

Levels are fairly short, but the boss levels are a bit longer and more intense. The game itself cautions you against playing too much, which is a welcome message in a fitness culture that constantly screams ‘one more rep!’ at anyone looking to get in shape. And what’s even better, the game guides you in warm-ups and cooldowns.

There is no hurry with Ring Fit Adventure. It asks you about your previous day’s workout and if it was too hard or too easy for you and then adjusts accordingly. It’s largely up to you how hard you want the game to be. I appreciate being left to do things at my own pace.

Ring Fit Adventure speaks to my chunky gamer childhood and pushes all the buttons I’ve come to expect from a game. Getting experience points. Leveling up. Tracking your stats. Progressing through levels and fighting bosses. It even has fun mini-games.

Exercising has finally stopped being a chore. It’s no longer something I have to do. It’s something I get to do and I look forward to it every day. And I don’t think I’ll grow bored with this one any time soon.