Like millions of other Americans, I made a New Year's resolution to get into better physical shape. Like most of them, I am also lazy. I need exercise to be a small time commitment, and I need mental distraction while I'm doing it.

Two years ago, I bought an elliptical trainer and put it in my basement. I could read a magazine or listen to music while getting an aerobic workout, and I could do it whenever I had a free hour. Great, but I didn't exercise frequently enough. This year, I did myself one better by hooking up TiVo to my house cable wiring and putting an old TV in the basement. Now, I can watch the shows that my wife doesn't care about and get fit at the same time. Works great, and I've lost about 7 pounds in under five weeks by exercising for 40 minutes about four times a week, and by trimming my diet slightly.

I understand, however, that aerobic exercise and diet isn't a complete answer — I will lose weight, but I'll be losing lean muscle as well as fat, and that's not a long-term solution. So I bought a scale that measures body fat (so I could servo to that number instead of my weight), and I shopped around for a strength-training program that I could stick with. It had to be doable at home with dumbbells and a weight bench (for convenience) and require only a relatively small time commitment (I can't deal mentally with long workouts).

With a little searching, I found Jorge Cruise's book. It purports to provide a 28 day series of 8 minute morning workouts with minimal equipment requirements. I read through the book, quickly dismissing most of the dietary stuff (I believe in the old adage "everything in moderation"), and I focused on the morning workouts. The exercises rotate though the various body parts, working on two per day, and they seem to be laid out sensibly. So far, I've been doing the workout for a week, and I feel good; I'm mildly sore in a few places, but in a good way. The exercises take more like 15 minutes than the advertised 8 if you actually warm up a little before and then stretch afterward, but this is something I can make part of my morning routine, especially when I can do the exercises right in my bedroom.

I'll stick with the routine for the 28 days, and then re-evaluate, but I'm feeling pretty confident in the program. The book has a lot of stuff in it that I'm not interested in, but the workout plan is worth the $11 I paid for it.

[Update: After reading Weight Training for Dummies, I like this book a lot less. I've finished the 28 day program, but I'll be designing my own program based on Neporent and Schosberg's book from now on. Cruise's book is good for motivating you to work out, but that's not enough.]