This is NPR's LifeKid. When I was a kid, I used to play a lot of video games, like hours and hours

of them. And one thing that games did for me was provide me this feeling of progress and completion.

I was drawn to those games that tracked your high scores where every time you played them,

you got just a little bit better. It felt good to gradually get better at something.

That sense of making progress, of progress you could quantify and that you could see,

it scratched some kind of itch for me. It was so much more immediate than a lot of other things

were in my life. And I realized years later that exercise had a similar effect on me. It was

that same tangible feeling of progress and a similar good feeling that would rush to my brain.

This relationship got even stronger for me when I was in isolation during the pandemic.

The regular gym routines that I had taken for granted were suddenly completely out of the question.

And a regular exercise routine was important to me for maintaining both my mental and physical health.

But how was I going to do that when I had so little room in my apartment and no gym to go to?

I tried running outside. That was not my thing. Ten minutes of that would feel like an hour,

and I wasn't exactly excited to do it again. So I started buying weights to work out at home.

But everybody else had the same idea and there was an equipment shortage, so that became way too

expensive. But what did work for me was video games. In bulk on an adventure that'll keep you moving.

Ring Fit Adventure Nintendo's Ring Fit Adventure was the one that got me really hooked.

You move your character by running in place, and like in Final Fantasy, you level up and explore

different worlds. You also get to fight enemies by squeezing and pulling a ring shaped controller,

which gives you a really satisfying and thorough full body strength workout. I loved this feeling,

of two things that I enjoyed so much coming together in a way that was so harmonious.

And I think if you've been feeling unmotivated by the same old gym routine,

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