Wii Fit Leg Extenders

I discovered that the Wii Fit has leg extensions that attach to the bottom of the balance board. The Wii Fit works on nearly any kind of surface, including carpet, but when using it on carpet, you may want to use the extenders for better accuracy. With long carpet, the game might otherwise report too low a weight.

A few quick searches on Google didn’t bring up any photos of the extenders, so I decided to take some.


Here’s the bottom of the Wii Balance Board.


A leg without the extender.


Leg with the extender. You can easily tell it’s on due to the three rectangles around the side.


Other side of the leg extender.

So how does the Wii Balance Board work? My guess is that the legs actually measure the pressure. That means there are four sensors, one at each corner. My initial guess was that the four sections of the board were sensors, but that part of the board actually seems rigid. This is probably a good thing, because it should be very durable and last a long time.

I read that in Europe, the leg extenders were attached by default, but in the U.S., they weren’t. That’s kind of interesting because it makes you seem lighter than you really are, if you use it on long carpet without the extenders.

Thanks to my friend Simon for allowing me to borrow his Wii Fit. Fortunately, he had the leg extenders attached.

We played Wii Fit on carpet today, and had no problems at all with our carpet. It reported an accurate weight for all but one, but we’re not sure if the measurement he got from the doctor was really accurate :)

5 Responses to “Wii Fit Leg Extenders”

  1. […] Elliot Lee wrote an interesting post today on Wii Fit Leg Extenders. Here’s a quick excerpt: […]

  2. Very interesting. I also havent noticed the base of the board, will have to check it out later. I live in the UK and the wait I had to even get a wii fit board was ridiculous. I think nintendo have limited the sale of these especially in the UK to help increase sales in the long run. These boards are great and everyone should have one.

  3. Sandi says:

    I bought a Wii from the US which had the extenders included in the packaging but the Swiss packaging didn’t have them included. They are available separately. Wonder why they did it that way? (We had a Swiss Wii and the US Wii fit didn’t work on it even with the aftermarket workaround cd so had to buy a new wii fit.)

  4. Tom says:

    I havnt got a wii fit yet but was wondering weather to get that or the E A Sports active. someone told me that you had to buy the leg extensions seperate. does anyone know if this was the case when they first come out or was my friend mistaken?

  5. April says:

    yes, mine is showing way low. my scale says I weighed 208 this morning. my wii fit says I weigh 172.. LOL so I definitely need the extenders