This situation has taught us that nothing - not even time spent in exercise - is as important to insuring a prime level of fitness than a comprehensive definition of the goal. You'll want your road map for fitness to promote a physical state that allows for the highest quality of life possible, and that will lead you there in shortest amount of exercise time. If such a road map exists, why would you settle for anything less.

I've been working for years on just such a road map. It has evolved over time, and may yet evolve further. After all, why would I fail to practice and report any improvements that would serve the goal better than what I've got. I'm happy to share the definition in its current state, along with the invitation to submit any recommendations for making it better. Your fitness will always be authentic if it conforms to the following:

"The ability of a human, in a natural state and environment, to produce power across the broadest possible range of bio-mechanically-sound and randomly encountered physical challenges."

While I've attempted to make it as simple as possible, a book could be written on its interpretation. In fact, I have written a book on its interpretation. The book is called, Don't Call It Fitness, and it will be available soon through Amazon.com and GravityJanes.com. Until then, this simple sentence will serve you well if you approach it with an open mind.

Please comment on this series below. Your words may yet make it into the book before I submit it to the publisher.

"We need to wipe the slate clean of contemporary exercise models, and even our very concept of fitness. The failure in current modes of fitness is in the lack of a clear and cohesive goal. When we return to a goal of original performance-based fitness, the exercise most are engaged in now becomes entirely inadequate to the purpose."

The fitness industry is huge. Monstrous amounts of money change hands everyday over the word "fitness". Most of them on the basis of lies.

That is the premise of this series on protecting yourself from the hype and contrivance that now dominates the industry.

The lies - most of them centered around the notion that fitness can be easy and instant - are propagated because of one simple failing on the part of the public: we make decisions about our fitness without benefit of any clear-cut definition for the goal. Armed with a comprehensive definition, any claims of fitness can be ultimately proved true or false, by anyone at any time and place. Let's make you one of those people.

Most claims of fitness will fail on one simple principle: fitness is not whatever you want it to be or think it should be. It is a very real and specific thing. Therefore it should have a very real and specific definition, and the path to achieving it should be equally as real and specific. That makes a joke out of common health club practices of offering classes in whatever people will pay for or, worse still, letting them go about their own unguided and uneducated business. You simply cannot engage in either of these practices and legitimately call the outcome fitness. It renders the very word meaningless. And so it seems to be.

When you define the goal, that definition becomes a clear road map to achieving it. For example, if the definition calls for broad-based capacity (as it should), then you'll instantly know that the path to achieving it cannot be limited to any one or even a few activities. Yet how many of us consider only running, or only walking, or only the bench press, or only 45 minutes on an elliptical trainer, as the way to fitness.

If the lack of a clear definition can make a person vulnerable to thinking like that, what else are we susceptible to? The answer is, just about anything. That's where the fitness industry knows it can extract more money from your wallet. It will allow - even encourage - you to spend your valuable exercise time and money on an activity that will not produce anything close to fitness knowing that, when you finally realize you're going nowhere, you will spend even more money on the next new fad they're offering. It's a beautiful money-making scheme that, unfortunately for you, has absolutely nothing to do with fitness.

The definition of fitness that will lie-proof you forever in the next installment.