Switch It Up: Our Secret to Exercising Consistently

I didn’t really understand why we needed a walking pad, but my wife was right that it would be nice to have. 

I was second-guessing my decision to buy a Nintendo Switch last year after getting so busy I didn’t touch it for six months. 

And, our butts don’t really like it when we use the exercise bike for too long (well, more so my wife’s lately). 

But, sometimes the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. And, yes, I understand this is a weird list of ingredients, but there is a method to our madness.

Over the years, we’ve done a lot of different routines to stay healthy, exercise, and get in shape. 

Recently, we found a new one that may be our best one yet. 

It’s pretty simple, but fun and effective: Working out while playing Super Mario on the Switch together. 

Image created by ChatGPT

I know, it sounds a little crazy. How do you work out while playing a video game? Obviously, you can’t do just any workout and play video games at the same time, but what you can do is have one person walk on the walking pad and another ride the stationary bike, and the Nintendo Switch’s controllers are perfectly adaptable for either situation.

If you’ve never used the Switch before – I know, it’s been around for many years, but I only got one about 18 months ago myself – you can play it handheld or connected to a TV or monitor with an HDMI cord through its dock. The controllers can attach to the side of the device or be pulled off to play on the monitor. With a game like Mario, you can either hold one controller sideways, which is beneficial when riding on a bike, or hold two controllers vertically, one in each hand, which is beneficial to go with the natural swing of your arms when walking.

Now, the trick is to just not fall off the walking pad, which actually isn’t as hard as it sounds since you won’t be going too fast (I go about 3 mph), although I’ve had a few close calls while trying to beat some intense levels, but we won’t talk about that. For my wife, who usually rides the bike, it’s just making sure she maintains pedaling, especially in parts of the game that require more concentration. 

For us, Mario is the perfect game. It’s the ultimate side-scrolling game, challenging enough to require some coordination and timing but not too challenging or intense to be cumbersome to play while working out. Well, mostly. There was that one level that took us probably a week or two to beat while trying to collect all the star coins to fully complete the game.

In addition to the mental workout of playing the game, it also comes with lots of laughs too. Moments like accidentally jumping on each other’s heads, getting our wires crossed (“You jump!” “No, you jump!” “Wait, I thought you were jumping!”), and the infamous bubbling – when you’re about to die and you press the L+R buttons to go in a bubble, essentially taking yourself out of the game, which is perfectly sound strategy when all hope is lost, but leads to some funny moments when you accidentally do it at the wrong moment after panicking.

Before you know it, you’ve knocked out a few miles and exercised for an hour without even realizing how much time has passed by. 

As we’ve beaten the Mario version of the game, we’ve moved on to the Luigi version, but unfortunately, this version seems a lot quicker and easier, or maybe we’ve just built up our Nintendo muscles right along with our regular ones too much, so in a few days we’ll need to find another game to tackle. That could be finishing Captain Toad, which we haven’t played in a while, doing some rounds of one of the Mario Party games, returning to Super Mario Wonder, or finding something new.

While the games are certainly fun, because when my wife goes to work out with her friends or our schedules are different I will walk and play a different game on my own (tackling the Ace Attorney series right now, a perfect one for game-treadmilling), it’s the time my wife and I spend together that’s really the best part. Not to mention, we’re getting in shape and healthy again together at the same time too.

Of course, I didn’t say the secret to losing weight and having it fall off without doing anything. This isn’t one of those blogs. You still have to show up consistently to see results, but you don’t have to commit to doing something insane 24/7 — you just have to find ways of being consistent. The small actions add up over time. As someone who has experienced my share of times losing weight, gaining weight, losing it, and gaining it again, I can attest to the power of finding ways to make exercising accessible and something to look forward to that helps you build this happen. 

So whether it’s gamifying it (literally, in this case), finding a workout buddy (someone you can wake up with and laugh over silly video games together with is even better), or something else that’s your secret sauce, keep using those cheat codes to help yourself break through that mental barrier and exercise consistently this year. 

What’s your favorite workout cheat code?