Discussion: DDR

Oh, I see, another attempt to start a discussion with nothing more than a title. Well, I don't think it'll work.

DDR is great! i really wish i had the game. I play it at my friends house but have never gotten around to get it myself. How good do you think it is for training? or is it no good at all just fun?

Well, since my training goal these days is just to stay healthy, it's great for me. It's WAY easier to motivate myself to do a DDR session than to go for a run. Eric Bone thinks it's good orienteering cross training due to the lateral motion (though of course terrain running would be more specific).

i love dance dance revolution. if that is what your talking about! my friends play it at the cinemas all the time. pulls a good crowd!
my friend also has the game :)
i think its just fun. good for a laugh too!

I feel old.
DDR was the initials of the old German communist state.

I think it beats sitting on an indoor bike or using an elliptical as far as cross-training goes (both for relevency to running/O and in terms of fun). And it's more fun than plyometrics... I don't have any spiffy scientific studies to back me up on this, but I'd bet that intense DDR is comparable to plyometrics as far as results.

Alison, for free play-at-home goodness, try StepMania.

I'm waiting for Nick Duca to write something about Orienteering near Dresden in the mid-80s.

We are going to have two-player DDR at our club's next O meet/potluck.

Really??? You mean at our BAOC potluck dinner on February 24? Has this been officially announced?

I will perhaps still be too injured to want to run one of the orienteering courses, but I'm in for DDR, whoohoo!

Steve, this was Nancy's idea. Consider it now officially announced. I will bring my laptop and my two metal dance pads. We just have one little detail to work out: I have to leave at 4:00, so if the dance pads are to stay through the potluck I need some help getting them back. They're big (3ft. square) and heavy (40+ lb. each).

Cristina, I got into endless mode today, but it seemed to assign random difficulties to songs. I mean, some dances were really easy and others were hard. Can I tell it I want endless mode "light"? I have to say, though, doing the difficult dances that came to me in endless mode boosted my skill level.

Once you've selected Endless mode and are in the song selection screen, try hitting "up up" and you should see the level change. The color of the "foot + ?" on the left hand side of the screen should change from red to yellow. If you hit "down down", they should change to a harder color (red to green). At least, I think I have the colors right.

Also, holding down the tab key while you scroll through menus makes them move at 4x normal speed, which helps minimize non-dancing time.

StepMania at the January 2007 NEOC Winter Party at the house of Samantha & Ross (photo by Joanne Sankus):




Alex Sender & Ceire Fleming are DDRing; onlookers are Rachael Harkavy and David Bryant. And a dancing skeleton.

Orienteering near Dresden in the mid-80s.

Well, I ran orienteering outside Dresden in the mid-70s --- in the then 'behind the Iron Curtain DDR'.

As for the modern day DDR - I´ve never tried it or even seen it done... Sounds like it would definitely be a good cross-training exercise.

DDR DRAMs are already obsolete! Go for QDRs!

I don't suppose we can get our hands on a PlayStation and Guitar Hero II for the potluck, can we, Terry? Not as much of a workout as DDR, but IMHO, a whole lot more fun :-)

In the interest of science, has anyone worn a HRM while doing DDR (must admit I had no idea what this meant until today, although I tried it out at the NEOC party) ?
Can it be used to teach dance steps? I could use that.
Perhaps the specific training levels (tempo, interval etc.c) could be selected in the program, and surely we can get this hooked up to Catching Features!

And they said outdoorsy people couldn't dance...

P.S. In the photo above, I laugh at that plyo-ball routine the young guy is doing. I'm a fan of that stretch myself:-).

In the interest of science, has anyone worn a HRM while doing DDR

Eric has worn a HRM during DDR and says that his average HR during DDR is around 100 or in the low 100's, occasionally getting up to 120. He logs it as intensity 1. He thinks that if he got better at it and could do the songs with a higher density of steps, his HR would go up to intensity 2 level.

I've worn mine and can get heart rates in the 170s on more difficult songs. See this graph for HR playing a bunch of tougher songs one after the other. Each song is about 1.5 minutes.

Craziness!

My daughter did her grade school science fair project on DDR and heartrates a year or two ago. She found that her 9 friends had a mean resting pulse of 92bpm, and after several minutes of DDR, were up to 123. For comparison, average pulse after playing a passive videogame was 99. They weren't very experienced with DDR then, so it seemed to me that they weren't able to exercise as vigorously or as long as they can now, after lots of practice. She often plays for half an hour or more now, and her feet really fly. It now looks like a proper workout, probably with much higher pulse. My wife uses it for workouts when the weather is bad, and works up a real sweat.

Want to get good at DDR? Try DDR.

yeap Nev ..nice and hilly ( probably beat any heart beat is listed here, especially when you've seen the militia/polizei back then ). actually I was there in late 80's for a "friendship cup"/"kupa drujba" (the last one from the iron curtain times )

I have a friend that is a middle school fitness teacher and their school has arcade style DDRs in their fitness center. I guess it's very popular with the students. Crazy how technology changes how people get their excercise.

I love DDR... but can only play when my college roomie brings it over or I go to her place. Or when I go to my parents', since I got it for my sister for Christmas. I don't have a Playstation and I would feel bad anyway for the poor guy living below me...

Unfortunately, being an uncoordinated klutz, I don't think I will ever get 'good' at it, but it is fun, and I do think it is good exercise. Sometimes we switch off playing it for several hours at a time! We want to get the second pad so we can play head to head.

I've worn mine and can get heart rates in the 170s on more difficult songs. See this graph...

Wow--that looks like a heart rate graph from an interval workout! Go, Crazy-legs Cristina!

Crazy-legs... do I get a say in whether or not that sticks? I'd prefer Kiki, though I suppose the whole point of embarrassing nicknames is that you don't get a say.

Looks like an interval workout graph only quite a bit lower for HRs. That's on "standard", so I imagine if I can get up to "heavy" difficulty I can start getting some real interval-type HRs.

The named person never gets a say on whether a name sticks, although the more you protest the greater the chance it will stick.

Yea, Crazy-legs.

That would be C.L. for short.

So, I didn't figure out how in Endless mode to get the level to change. I tried "up" "up" (tapping the up arrow on the dance pad twice) but nothing seemed to happen. Am I missing something?

Did you do that after you'd selected "endless" and were on the final selection screen (the one where you would usually pick your song)? I generally use the keyboard to go through menus, not just so I can hold tab and move faster, but because sometimes I find it annoying to make it do what I want with my feet. It might take lots of ups to make an "up up". ;-)

I'll try the keyboard.

Tentative plans are in the works for some StepMania at DVOA's A event March 30-April 1 at Fair Hill (the Interscholastics).

Bring it on.

Tentative plans are in the works for some StepMania at DVOA's A event March 30-April 1 at Fair Hill (the Interscholastics).

How will you score it? ;-)

Quick, Eric, take it back! Shhhhh!

Ooh, yeah, probably a bigger girls' field than boys' field in this case, so...

Rant: the left arrow on my RedOctane AfterBurner pad just stopped working. It worked fine on Wednesday and today it doesn't work at all. I did all the software troubleshooting I could so I'm convinced it's the wiring. I removed the surface of the left arrow and saw the innards: two coppery plates that presumably complete a circuit when they make contact. The lower plate sends a couple of wires into a hole drilled in the plywood base. It doesn't look like the rest of the wiring can be accessed without taking the whole thing completely apart (about 42 screws plus lots of glue and I'm not sure I wouldn't wreck the thing more by ripping apart the glued pieces).

I've had it for about 2 months. RedOctane gives a 60 day warrantee but I bought this one (new) on Craigslist.

I did buy two pads but I just sent the other one to Seattle with Eric. NEVER occurred to me that either one would stop working so quickly. RedOctane states clearly on their website that they do not offer repair or parts.

:-(

Well, I'd offer to open it up and attempt repairs, Terry, but I think you're kind of far away for that to be practical. Must be somebody in your club who could do it, though. Try Vladimir. :-)

I just got a pad today and it did the same thing worked for a bit and then stopped. I have a differnet pad then you though. and I acutally figuered out that i had acidently set the left arrow key to the enter hey on my computar (ops!) Figured out how to fix that and it worked fine. But it sounds as if you checked that already so i'm no help anymore. Sorry hope you get it fixed soon!

Alison, have fun with your dance pad!