Lisle’s Bulls-Sox Academy uses video games to fight obesity

Convincing kids to put down the video game controllers and get off the couch is hard.

So what if you just remove the couch from that equation?

A new offering at Lisle’s Bulls-Sox Training Academy is showing what happens when the fitness and video game worlds collide.

And for one Chicago White Sox pitcher, the result is an “awesome” way to work up a sweat.

“It makes you more into the game,” Chris Sale said after getting his first experience with some of the “exergaming” devices at the training academy. “You’re not just sitting down and clicking buttons. You’re getting exercise.”

The “Vault” room gives kids the chance to keep active while enjoying a video game. One of the devices Sale tried allowed him to play a game of basketball while taking simulated walking steps.

“This is great way to stay active when it’s cold outside,” Sale said. “You are not going to be able to play hoops when it’s 10 degrees.”

Sale joined about 50 kids from throughout the suburbs who attended a walk-through of the academy’s fitness experience field trips. Academy representatives said the Vault is one part of the facility’s anti-obesity initiative.

“We have an obesity crisis facing these children,” said Xan Pearson, the academy’s vice president of marketing. “One of the main reasons is that kids aren’t playing as much. They are a very sedentary generation.”

At the same time, the technology keeping some kids from playing outside isn’t going away, Pearson said.

“We need to adapt,” she said. “So we developed a comprehensive fitness program that takes the technology they love and get them moving.”

Ed Kasanders, president of Motion Fitness in Rolling Meadows, said the devices include racing games linked to exercise bikes and a disco-like floor where users try to avoid moving balls of light.

“We see a lot of kids that don’t really want to do traditional exercise,” Kasanders said. “So we’re encouraging kids to move through the power of play.”