NEW YORK (UPI) -- A personal trainer at a New York gym said she has been using a Nintendo Wii on a 20-foot TV screen to help her clients shape up.

Dorothy Evans, a personal trainer at Gravity Fitness in the Le Parker Meridien hotel, said she first instructs clients in actual sports -- for example, boxing -- then has them play the Wii Sports counterpart to the activity, the New York Post reported.

"I use it in what we call 'active recovery time,' during which normally I would have them do a wall sit," she said. "But this is like a reward."

She told the newspaper the video games give many of her clients more of a workout than they were expecting.

"You'd be surprised. It may have little to do with the real sports, but we get people's heart rates up to 140 to 150 beats per minute -- although some of that may just be the excitement of the game," Evans said to the Post.

The trainer may be on to something -- a recent study by the American Council on Exercise found Wii Sports games to burn nearly as many calories as the real thing, the Post report said. Boxing, for example, burns an average 10.2 calories per minute, while Wii Boxing burns an average 7.2 calories per minute.