Monday Motivation: Finding Fitness and Fun in ‘Dance Central’

Later this week, Harmonix has some new tricks up its sleeve for Dance Centralon Oculus Quest and the Rift Platform, building on a series of updates since the game’s initial release including an in-game fitness app that launched in September. With it, players can easily track workouts while enjoying the game—all without missing a beat. In today’s guest post, Harmonix Community Manager Katey Farmanian shares her own story of incorporating Dance Central into her healthy lifestyle.

Hello! My name’s Katey Farmanian, and I’m a Community Manager at Harmonix working on Dance Central™. My favorite thing to do in the game is to just hop into the Club and dance along with Mo and Miss Aubrey. After we introduced a Fitness app, which lets you set your height and weight, track your calories, and more, I was curious to see how Dance Central could fit into my fitness routine—so I challenged myself to give it a go!

Long Commute, Big Sacrifices

My commute to and from work takes about an hour and a half to two hours door-to-door, depending on traffic. I’m lucky enough to be able to justify such a commute with a career that I love and am dedicated to, but it has required a few sacrifices. By the time I get through my front door at the end of my day, it’s usually close to or a little after 8:00 pm. After preparing dinner for myself, cleaning up, and taking care of other miscellaneous chores, it’s usually time for me to head to sleep. I sometimes sacrifice healthy habits (like working out) for convenience.

Before this challenge, I had been trying to make small changes to my daily routine in order to revive a healthy lifestyle. I set ambitious walking goals that I often hit due to working in downtown Boston and set aside Sunday evenings to meal prep for the week. While this improved my quality of life, I still found myself without a good physical workout regimen.

The one constant in my life is gaming. I’ll make time try out a new game or hop into multiplayer with friends, so adding Dance Central to my fitness routine was a no-brainer from a health perspective—and it gave me more valuable gaming time!

My Fitness Challenge

My goal was simple: Play Dance Central each day and, over time, start creating a routine that fits into my busy schedule. Each day, I’d slowly increase the amount of time I spent dancing in the game to have a stronger workout.

However, Dance Central wasn’t the only physical activity I signed myself up for when I started this challenge. On top of 30 to 60 minutes of dancing per day, I also set aside time for sit ups, squats, and lunges. Being in the comfort of my own home was helpful in getting my personal tasks done while also working out. I’m only three weeks into this challenge and I’ve already seen some major changes!

Week 1 Plan

For the first week of my challenge, I planned on starting Day 1 with 20-25 minutes of gameplay across five songs. Each day, I slowly increased the amount of time I was spending in the game while also increasing the number of songs I was dancing to. This helped ease me into a routine that wouldn’t exhaust my body, which was used to doing next to nothing strenuous.

After the headset came off, I would take a quick break to clean dishes, do laundry, or any other tasks that needed to get done. Then, I’d come back to my room, lay my yoga mat down, and do two sets of 25 sit ups, 25 squats, and 25 lunges.

Week 1 Results

The very first change I noticed was an improvement in my sleep cycle, overall mood, and motivation.

I use a third-party app on my real-world phone to track my sleep cycle, and I noticed that my sleep quality had improved. I was still getting the same amount of sleep (between 6.5 and 7.5 hours), but the time I spent asleep was more restful after my workout regimen was complete. Because of this, I found it was easier for me to stay focused during the work day, and once 5:00 pm rolled around, I no longer felt like I was dragging my feet.

As someone who doesn’t drink any caffeine at all, this was huge!

Week 2 Plan

For the second week of my challenge, my original plan was to increase my time played to approximately an hour or more a day, reaching a workout playlist of up to 20 songs.

Unfortunately, during the middle of Week 2, I took a pretty bad fall at a subway station and hurt my knee. I had to take a few days off of strenuous activity altogether, which bummed me out. I could feel that my body wanted to be up and moving around.

Week 2 Results

As the swelling from my fall at the subway station subsided, I was able to get back up and ease back into my routine. I readjusted my goal back down to 30 minutes of dancing and 50 sit ups, but my knee wasn’t quite ready for squats or lunges.

As the next few days rolled on, I could feel that the extra activity was improving my knee’s mobility! My motivation levels from Week 1 didn’t suffer due to the injury, so it was easy for me to push myself within reason. The sit ups helped my abdominal muscles and core stay strong as I had to put a lot of weight onto other parts of my body to compensate for my knee at times.

Week 3 Plan

As my knee healed and my range of mobility improved, I figured it was time to get back into the full swing of things. I planned on 45-60 minutes of gameplay per day, starting with moderate difficulty songs and progressing to the hardest ones on the soundtrack—exclusively on Pro mode.

Once it was time for the headset to come off, I gave myself a break to do chores the same way I did during Week 1, then went back to my yoga mat to do two sets of 50 sit ups, 50 squats, and 50 lunges.

Week 3 Results

I felt the burn at the beginning! My knee still wasn’t quite at 100%, but I could tell that my routine was continuing to help the healing process along.

My sleep quality continued to improve as well. I often take naps on the weekends when I’m feeling particularly lazy, and I noticed that my increased motivation and sleep quality helped me power through my days without taking a nap that would normally leave me feeling groggy.

Additionally, I could tell that my stamina was increasing. As the week progressed, an hour worth of gameplay felt like a piece of cake. Definitely still sweaty... but a piece of cake.

Overall Sentiments & Lessons Learned

Seeing my calories being tracked live as I played was a big part of what kept me going. It was a fun challenge for myself to reach my calorie goal, then push myself to top it. Seeing the green upwards arrow next to my daily calories burned is a nice motivator! Being able to easily compare my calorie counts day by day and week by week using Dance Central’s fitness app helped me really quantify my progress.

I enjoyed being able to bounce around the whole in-game soundtrack to keep things fresh, but the songs that I loved incorporating into my daily routine were:

• Bruno Mars ft. Cardi B – Finesse (Remix)
• Charlie Puth - Attention
• Dua Lipa – New Rules
• Meghan Trainor – Me Too
• Sofia Reyes ft. Jason Derulo & De La Ghetto – 1, 2, 3

Despite my injury during Week 2, adding Dance Central to my fitness routine felt like a success. It’s easy to stay motivated while working out when you combine it with something you enjoy: playing fun video games! This helped break up my otherwise rinse-and-repeat days and helped improve my lifestyle.

The changes in my sleep cycle and mood were unexpected but warmly welcomed. It’s easy to lose sight of just how much physical activity, or the lack thereof, affects different body systems. Once you start to feel better physically, it’s a bit easier to manage everything else.

I plan on using Dance Central as a part of my fitness journey from here on out. I hope that sharing the first three weeks of my fitness journey with the game will inspire people with similar lifestyles to try this out. Mixing in a bit of fun with your physical activity and being able to do so in the comfort of your own home is unmatched!

*Displays of calories burned in Dance Central are estimates only and will vary by song/level and other individual factors such as height and weight. Individual results may vary and the experience described above may not reflect the typical user’s experience. Please see and follow the Health and Safety Warnings for your device at oculus.com/warnings.