InTheGroove
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Overtime Fitness gym for teens includes video games
One day in the future, we're sure that everyone will be strong, good-looking and above-average. But today, given that 16 percent of American children aged 12-19 are overweight according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have to be ways to get kids into more healthful habits. As we all know, everyone's supposed to be exercising regularly in order to stay well and fit -- thankfully, kids have a new type of fitness center in Mountain View, California (home of Google!) which aims to appeal to the children of Silicon Valley reared on a steady diet of gadgets. Overtime Fitness, which opens tomorrow (and restricts membership to kids 13-18) includes a regular workout equipment area, a "study center" with PCs, Macs and free WiFi (for the Linux laptop-toting set?), a DDR-clone called "In The Groove 2" and the Cybex Trazer, a virtual reality-type game that maps physical movements to the on-screen action. If all that gear wasn't enough, there's always the Xbox hooked up to something called a Kilowatt Sport, which includes a "resistance rod" to merge the real world with the virtual, or as Ars Technica puts it: "if you're playing Madden '06 and want to run a fullback dive, you're going to have to lean hard against the resistance rod to break through the defensive line." Our only question is this: exactly how are parents going to react when they find out that the $60 monthly fee is being spent so that their kids can play even more video games?[Via Ars Technica]
