Any time you want you can take a yoga class in a calm meditation garden, do a core workout in a Maui-like setting, or hop through step-aerobics in the dojo of an empress. This is the beauty of the virtual workout Yourself!Fitness, as played in your Sony Playstation 2, XBox, or your PC, and lead by the lovely but not-too-chiseled virtual trainer Maya (aptly, it’s the Sanskrit word for illusion). A New York Times article last week documented the growing phenomenon of real workouts lead by virtual trainers. Like a human trainer, they instruct, encourage, and remember what you did last time. Unlike a human, you have unlimited access and there’s just the one-time fee––about half of a session with a trainer who sweats. Prices start at $30 for the PC version.

When designing the game—and its competitor, EyeToy:Kinetic for Sony Playstation 2––programmers carefully crafted the trainers’ bodies, faces, and personalities: “Certain looks were eliminated because they looked too gung ho,” Tom Holmes, a producer for Kinetic told the Times. Of the trainers’ canned encouragement, an editor at Game Spot magazine said the overall effect is “kind of cheesy. But people feel special.”

One man has dedicated his entire blog to virtual fitness. At Video Game Workout.com, Glen Raphael (also mentioned in the Times story) covers things like arcade gyms and the Entertainer, a device that monitors your heart while communicating with your TV (“If you’re not working hard enough the volume goes down. Exercising too hard, the volume goes up,” according the Entertrainer website and his own video training practice progress. When he returned from a conference recently, his Kinetic trainer Anna was not pleased that he missed two workouts. “The first words out of her mouth: “Where WERE you last week!?” Fortunately, she never stays angry for long.”

Image: Maya from Yourself!Fitness, via The New York Times