Ring Fit Adventure

Earlier this year on my birthday, I received the Ring Fit Adventure game for the Nintendo Switch as a gift. For those unfamiliar, this is basically a pilates ring that comes with the game into which you can slot one of the Switch joy-cons. The other joy-con goes into a leg strap that you wear on your left thigh. I remember seeing the trailer for this a couple of years ago and marveling at what a strange concept it was for a fitness game. Nintendo saw huge success with the Wii Fit, and it was odd that the Switch didn’t launch with some type of family fitness game — especially given that it has two motion sensors in the detachable controllers. I never bought the game at launch thinking it was some gimmicky version of Wii Fit, but I’d learn two years later that I shouldn’t doubt Nintendo.

I haven’t had the best relationship with fitness and working out. I get bored too quickly of doing the same routine exercises and give up a few weeks or months in. Any kind of fitness regimen that’s goal-focused puts me off right away, because it would start by asking me what my goal is, and I’d just go “Well..I don’t really have one, I’d just like to maintain some general level of fitness.” And the trainer (or app) would just double down on educating me about the value of setting goals for workouts. Apparently a lot of people find it motivating to work towards a goal, but accomplishing a goal isn’t my goal with working out. I just want to stay in a general level of good health by working out my joints and muscles so that my bones don’t deteriorate. And it’s been really difficult to find a good workout regimen to stick with when I had this mindset.

I’ve tried kickboxing, running, strength training, rock climbing, biking, swimming, and aerobics. I did all of them for several weeks and then just got bored of them all. Once the novelty of it wears off, I just completely lose interest in doing it, even if I’m greatly feeling all the positive benefits of exercise. My right foot and certain joints have some issues that require me to exercise, so it’s tough knowing that I need to work out but not having the interest to keep at something for a long period of time doing it over and over again. Enter Ring Fit Adventure.

This game has several exercises that you can freely do by selecting the appropriate workout and just following the instructions by using the ring. This includes squats, presses, lifts, stretches, poses, and almost any exercise you can conjure up. There are adjustable difficulty settings that let you squeeze the ring harder to get even more of a workout. And there’s plenty of minigames that make it feel like you’re just playing a game, but the motions required of you are tricking your mind into getting a workout. It’s all really well designed, with the ring sensors working spot-on all the time and allowing you to re-adjust or re-calibrate as needed.

The best part about the game though, and one that I admittedly put off for the longest time, is the adventure mode. This is the story mode (yes, there is a campaign in this game). And boy is it a strange one. There’s a dragon obsessed with fitness to an extreme degree, and you as the player go try to defeat it over and over again with the help of “Ring”, a magical…ring that you hold in your hands. It’s silly and goofy, but it works for what it needs to do. There’s a decent amount of game mechanics too, with you battling monsters using exercises as attacks, collecting items along your runs, and crafting smoothies to beef up attacks or regain health. It feels like a light turn-based combat game. The game takes place over several worlds consisting of many individual levels, each of which can be a workout in itself, combining running along with many exercises.

I’m at level twenty-something now, and I’ve been working out in this adventure mode pretty consistently for about ten to fifteen minutes every other day, for about a month now. And yes, it’s a proper workout. Most of it is cardio, but there’s some light strength training involved as well. When I measure my pulse at the end of each workout, I’m consistently hitting eighty-five to ninety percent over my resting heart rate every time. The best part about the adventure mode though, is how effectively it varies the gameplay. Every day, you’re doing something different. You’re learning new “moves” in the form of new exercises and are actually making turn-based combat gameplay decisions as you keep progressing through the levels. It’s well fleshed out enough that it tricks you into thinking you’re playing a game while it makes you workout.

Moreover, the game never forces you to overdo it. It always respects your time and wants to you to “enjoy” working out, which is a concept that no other fitness regimen or Peloton instructor seems to fully get. Those programs motivate people by either encouraging weight loss or crushing your personal best or competitive leaderboards. None of that works for me. Like I said before, I’m just looking to maintain a general level of fitness, I don’t really care where I fall in the ranks of others doing workouts or how many calories I’ve burned. Ring Fit Adventure is ensuring that I have fun working out, which naturally makes me want to come back for more the next time. Every other fitness regimen has lost its novelty over time to me, but I have a feeling Ring Fit can keep the magic alive for much, much longer than anything else I’ve tried.

On top of all this, the game has a philosophical message at heart. It doesn’t want you to have an obsessive relationship with working out and turn into some kind of fitness junkie (as embodied and personified by Drageaux the dragon). It just wants you to take it at your own pace, switch it up a little bit every time, try out a range of different motions and activities, and enjoy the act of getting your body to move around. It strives to build the habit of getting players to like working out to a point that it focuses on it the entire time, from the tips to the actual gameplay to the before-and-after stretches. Because if it succeeds in getting players to like the act of working out, it’s done the job.

I haven’t really seen many other fitness programs prioritize long-term fitness habits as a core tenet of its value offering. They seem to want you to sign up and regularly workout, even if it’s grueling and painstaking. Many even accept that the participants won’t like it and pride themselves on yelling at the participants to go harder, faster, and stronger all in the name of their muscles being that much better or their abs being that much thinner. My kickboxing routine, in hindsight, was pretty rough because of this. Our coach would constantly tell us to push ourselves to the limit and give it everything we’ve got, even if I was on the verge of exhaustion every time. I repeatedly went to the class over and over again, but I don’t think I ever “enjoyed” it. I never looked forward to going into the arena and sweating for an hour. I think a lot of people magically find the sport or activity that they enjoy this way, but it never worked for me with everything I tried. With Ring Fit, I’m actually looking forward to the next time I get to work out.

This pandemic in particular has been an interesting time to get into a fitness game. I had just started going to the gym at the beginning of 2020 and consistently woke up at 06:00 AM three days a week to go lift weights at my local gym before work. It feels like a decade ago, but I was actually doing it. Then March happened and gyms shut down entirely. I sort of stopped working out after that because I had to move to a different city in May. After moving, I went on regular walks and did some lower body stretches, lunges, and squats that my podiatrist had prescribed for my foot issues. Then after moving again a year later, I fell off of working out completely until I got a puppy and started taking it on walks where I’d do mini-workouts. I then got Ring Fit and have been just doing that since. Apparently the game is doing tremendously well during the pandemic and sales have surged.

I’m overall just impressed by the whole concept of this thing. It’s so intriguing and novel in a way that no one expected. A fitness game from Nintendo that has a pilates ring and uses the Switch controllers as motion sensors. Say what you want about Nintendo, but they sure can innovate and rarely miss the mark, if ever. It also ends up being really family friendly and a good party game on top of all that. I’ve played it a couple of times at a friends’ place, and had a good time with it. I’m now on a personal adventure to build a habit out of enjoying the act of working out, and I’m looking forward to see if this is the fitness habit that will stick with me in the long run.