Stepmania for fitness?

[selmo]

OK, at the risk of exposing myself as the uncoordinated oaf I may actually be, I thought I'd ask the group for some thoughts on using Stepmania for fitness. I've started DDR a few weeks ago as a regular exercise routine instead of a boring treadmill or bike. So my goal is more about playing at a low to medium level of sustained exertion for an hour or so with some variety in steps and music, rather than to get really good at certain songs or extreme tricky moves. The Konami DDR games are OK, but I wanted to play with Stepmania for more variety in songs and custom DWIs.

With that in mind, I had a couple questions about Stepmania vs Konami's DDR games:

1. Workout mode. I know Stepmania has an endless mode, but from what I understand, it's only at heavy difficulty. Sadly, that's just too hard for this n00b. Having to restart the game session from the top every couple songs is a pain, so I'm wondering if there's something I missing about getting an endless mode at a lighter difficulty? The calorie counter is kinda bogus in DDR, of course, but it does give some indication of the relative intensity and duration of the workout. The total-dancing-time-elased indicator is also kinda useful in DDR's workout mode.

2. Relative Difficulty level. I've been doing Konami DDR games at tricky in the 5-7 feets range comfortably, but going to stepmania, even at 3 feets "light" setting, I find there are bursts of very fast steps that my feet can't really keep up with. The rest of the steps seem relatively easy, but these real quick bursts strike me as very hard compared to the rest of the song and what I've been used to. Is this really just a DWI meant for finger dancing or something? With a 3 feets rating, it shouldn't be an expert move or anything, right? Is Stepmania's difficulty rating just much higher than Konami's? Am I using the wrong DWIs?

Obviously I will continue to improve my technique as I play more, but right now I find these rapid fire bursts frustrating, unbalanced and quite unfun compared to what I've been used to in other DDR games. Like I said, I'm not playing DDR to be a dancing god, but just for sustained exertion to burn some calories in a fun way. I guess I could edit the DWI files and remove some steps in those sequences, but that sounds like a lot of work. I was wondering what the group thought about the relative difficulty issue or make recommendations for DWIs that don't have those impossible-for-adult-legs-bursts.

3. Lastly, is there a way to disable the hold-freeze steps? I'm not real crazy about them personally...

[Phrekwenci]

[selmo]