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Progress and motivation

Before you begin this program you may scarcely believe you have any hope of reaching the levels of fitness the middle rungs on the Lifetime Ladder represent. ``Sheesh...,'' you say, ``I can't even see my toes, no less touch them, and you're tellin' me in a year or so I'm gonna be doing 20 Marine pushups every day? Gimme a break!''

Gimme a couple of weeks. Very few people will start this program in worse shape than I was when I began to develop it. In only 90 days, I had reached rung 28, my initial goal, while managing to lose 20 pounds in the same period. Since then, I've slowly drifted upward, settling, after two and a half years, at rung 36. I'm happy there, although I may continue to creep upward over time.

Almost anybody can have the same success with this exercise program or with any other sane program. There's nothing magical about any particular set of exercises or plan for doing them. Developing physical fitness through exercise is just like losing weight: extremely simple, but based on an unpleasant fact most people would rather ignore.

For an exercise program to work, you have to follow it. All the exercise books in the world won't make you healthy as long as they're sitting on your shelf and you're sitting on your backside. This program is designed to motivate you to start it, progress through it, and keep it up for the rest of your life. Here's how.



By John Walker