The K*I*S*S* Fitness Program: Chapter Introductions

Table of Contents | Preface | Chapter Introductions

Chapter 1: The Basics

Everyone wants to look good. Everyone wants to feel good. Looking good and feeling good; that’s my definition of being physically fit. Everyone wants to be fit. And, how do we get from here to there? How do we become fit? That’s the bummer. It takes work. Exercise! Yeah, that can be a lot of work.

There are plenty of programs out there that promise you fitness from 15 minutes of exercise a day --- or something like that. I don’t think it’s possible. It does take work to become physically fit. There are no two ways about it. However, just as you can grow to like your job or profession, you can also grow to like your fitness program. Possibly, you might even look forward to it as one of the highlights of your day.

The goal of this book is to present a fitness program that has fun built into it, a bunch of little incentives to help you enjoy the program and encourage you to stick with it in the long term. After all, that’s really the goal of any fitness program --- to make it a permanent part of your life-style so that you remain fit until a ripe old age.

Life-style is the name of the game. Perhaps the first thing you do when you get up in the morning is put a pot of coffee on the stove. You could just as easily step outside, stretch, and go for a half hour walk or run --- and then drink a few glasses of orange juice when you get home. Either activity could just as easily be part of your life-style. When good health habits begin to replace bad ones, you’re well on your way to real improvements in your fitness level.

You’re young and you don’t think you need to worry about fitness? Go to the beach and look around you at the middle-aged people you see there. This is the way you’ll look twenty years down the road unless you get serious about fitness now. Hmmm. If you’re middle-aged and don’t particularly like the way you look or feel, now’s the time to get to work to change things. It’s not too late. Even if you’ve reached your golden years, you can still improve your physical condition.

Everything you do and just about everything you interact with influences your health. The food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, the amount of exercise and rest you get, etc. Some of these factors are easy to handle. People have the most trouble with exercise and diet as getting them under control takes some know-how --- not to mention a good dose of willpower. Exercise, of course, is the cornerstone of any fitness program. However, your diet is important too, as what you eat has a profound effect on your health. So, in this chapter, we’ll provide an overview of these two factors. We’ll also make some specific recommendations concerning diet. The rest of the book will primarily deal with exercise as it relates to the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program.

Chapter 2: The Exercises

The K*I*S*S* Fitness Program is built around two endurance exercises and five strength exercises. The endurance exercises are walking and running. The strength exercises are well-known calisthenics with a few interesting changes added to them. They are designed so they also involve some stretching, bending, and twisting. So, all three kinds of exercise --- endurance, strength, and flexibility --- are included in the Program. This chapter will explain how the exercises are performed. The next chapter will put them together into a program.

Chapter 3: The Program

This chapter arranges the exercises you learned in Chapter 2 into a program, the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program. The chapter first goes through the technical details of how the endurance and strength portions of the Program are put together. This includes:

The chapter then explains how to use the Program. I think of this as the “how to” part of the Program. This includes:

After you’ve read this chapter, you will be ready to use the Program.

The K*I*S*S* Fitness Program is divided into two “Parts,” each of which has five “Levels,” a total of ten Levels. Level 1 is the easiest and Level 10 is the most difficult. A person who exercises regularly at Level 10 will be in very good shape. Every exercise session in the Program is divided into an endurance portion and a strength/flexibility portion.

Chapter 4: Training Tips

Although the “tips” in this chapter are aimed at the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program, they apply to just about any exercise program you might be involved with. If you make use of them, you will greatly increase the chances that your fitness program will be a long term success.

Chapter 5: Variations of the Program

There are a number of ways in which the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program can be altered that will tailor it more precisely to your fitness needs. The ones we will discuss are:

All of these variations in the Program add variety to your exercise routine. It’s easy to become “stale” or bored with a fitness program that might go on and on --- maybe for the rest of your life. It never hurts to add a little spice to something you do over and over again. Heck, that’s why we go out to eat once in a while or rearrange our living room furniture from time to time.

Chapter 6: What Next?

OK, let’s suppose you reach a point where you can comfortably complete Level 10 of the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program and you would like to do more; you would like to further improve your strength and/or endurance. There are many ways you can go. Perhaps because of your accomplishments with the endurance portion of the Program you’ve developed an interest in distance running. Maybe the strength portion of the Program has made you curious about training with weights. It’s also possible to continue on to more serious all-around fitness programs. This chapter describes an “Advanced” version of the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program, an example of such an all-around program. It also makes a few comments on the use of “very high reps” for the lower body exercises in the Program.

Chapter 7: Group Activities

Everyone wants to have fun; and, ninety-nine percent of us wish we were in better physical condition. It makes perfect sense to try to kill both these birds with one rock. Get involved with a group fitness program and you will. YMCAs and community groups that have an interest in health are typically involved with programs of this type. However, you can be involved too. Even though you may not be a physical educator, why not try and interest some people in exercising together? They could be from your job, church, or just a bunch of neighbors. These groups have a habit of growing --- especially if the people involved with them are enthusiastic and talk about what they are doing. In Chapter 4 we pointed out that exercising with a group or training partner is an excellent way to increase the probability that you will stick with a fitness program. Exercising with a group is also a great way to get started on one. The K*I*S*S*Fitness Program is ideally suited to group fitness activities. This chapter is your cookbook for using the Program for this purpose.

Chapter 8: For Older Folks

This chapter is directed at folks who have reached middle age or older.  I’m not sure just where this begins, maybe around forty years old or so.  For a person in this age group, muscle tone and shapeliness are disappearing and the aging process may be in full swing.  Previous chapters were directed at a person who is relatively young and may still be active --- at least on an occasional basis.  If a person had become inactive, it wasn’t too long ago.

In Chapter 1 we talked a little about diet, but dropped the subject, putting it on the “back burner,” as a younger person can almost “get away with murder” insofar as what he eats is concerned.  Then we got into a discussion of exercise and the fitness programs that are the subject of this book.  The older you get, the more important diet becomes and the less advisable it is to put it on the back burner.  If you’re a senior citizen like I am now, there is no back burner.  And, if you’re fortunate enough not to be sick, you should straighten out your diet (as well as other factors that influence your health) now.  This is the guiding principle behind the fitness recovery program for older folks that’s presented in this chapter.

OK, we’ve gotten older; we may not be sick, but we sure don’t look too hot --- and we may not feel too hot either.  We’re very unfit.  Is this a hopeless situation?  Is it possible to regain any of this lost youth?

My answer to this question is a definite, “Yes!”  However, you should not expect miracles.  You may have spent years and years getting out of shape.  It’s going to take time to recover even some of the fitness that has slipped away as the years have gone by.  And, the older you are, the longer it will take to get it back and the harder it will be to do so.  But, you can improve.  You can probably look and feel a lot better than you do right now.  Improvement is what you’re aiming at.  Slow steady improvement.  Previously, I compared improving your fitness to building a house.  On a daily basis, it’s hard to see progress.  However, as the months go by, you can’t miss it if you’ve been faithful to the project.  The same is true of the fitness recovery program we will talk about in this chapter.  Daily improvements in your fitness level will be imperceptible.  However, when you add these tiny changes together, you will have something that’s very visible and that you can most definitely feel.  We’re in this for the long term.  For the rest of our lives and let’s hope that’s a long time!  So, be patient and take your time.

Chapter 9: Conclusion

It’s a wonderful feeling to be physically fit.  We probably all have felt this as kids.  Running, jumping, climbing trees: all these were routine parts of our lives then.  Parents often wonder where their kids “get all that energy from” and usually wish they didn’t have so much of it --- or secretly wish they had more of it themselves.  Unfortunately, after childhood is behind us, many of us will never experience this feeling of boundless energy again.  Others will experience it for brief fleeting periods in their adult lifetime.  Only a few very fortunate ones will experience it for the greater part of their lives. 

The sad part of this is that I believe we all wish we were in better shape.  The hang-up is that it takes a lot more than wishing to make this dream a reality.  Why not accept the challenge this implies?   Make the pursuit of health a central part of your life.  If you do, a wonderful possibility awaits you, the possibility of dynamic physical fitness and of becoming the “owner” of a body that is brimming with vitality even into advanced age. 

In order to make all this happen, you need some smarts and you have to be prepared to work a little.  This book is an attempt at giving you these smarts.  Only you can do the work.  I’ve tried hard to make the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program doable by almost anyone.  It doesn’t matter what your age or condition is, whether you go it alone, have a training partner, or use it with a group, and, finally, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman or a man.  I’ve also presented a few variations of the Program that will help you maintain interest in it if you start to get bored --- or just plain lazy.  Finally, I’ve presented a number of “tips” on how to make any exercise program work.  By and large, these tips are the result of my own experience with various exercise programs.  I hope you will place some value on the “fatherly” advice that’s implicit in them. 

Again, my best wishes to you in your quest for health and physical fitness.