FOUR COLORADO FITNESS GURUS AND JUST IN TIME!

• Author: LEWIS, PETE

THE HOLIDAYS ARE LONG OVER, AND NOW WE'RE ALL OUT OF EXCUSES... SO -- COLORADOBIZ SENT REPORTER PETE LEWIS TO

It just makes sense that Colorado would spawn more than its share of fitness businesses.

Our state is forever linked to skiing, the outdoors and a healthy lifestyle. Any list of the fittest places in America has Colorado leading the pack.

We may not have made The Wall Street Journal's list of high-tech havens, but we're not sitting around crying about it with a pack of smokes or a vat of Haagen-Dazs.

The following are sketches of two Colorado-invented fitness programs, and two Colorado-designed fitness devices:

Oxycise

Would you like to lose weight by changing the way you breathe? It sounds too good to be true, but is it?

Highlands Ranch's Jill Johnson was looking for a better way to lose weight when she stumbled across a much-ignored physiological equation -- fat plus oxygen equals carbon dioxide, water and energy. Johnson deduced that you could burn more fat by increasing the amount of oxygen you absorb. She combined a simple deep-breathing method with a series of positions borrowed from yoga, basic stretching and isometric exercises, and came up with Oxycise.

Johnson, a mother of four, dropped 50 pounds practicing her home-grown, 15-minute program. It wasn't long before she was sharing her discovery with friends and neighbors. Then she wrote a book -- "Oxycise!" -- and produced a video explaining the technique, and launched her business in 1997.

In 1998, QVC selected Oxycise for its home-shopping network. Johnson's products sold out in the first 10 minutes. She still appears on QVC about once a month and sells 1,500 to 4,000 units each time.

Oxycise's appeal is that it's painless and takes only 15 minutes. Some of the positions are a bit awkward at first, but you get used to them pretty quickly. A 1998 study at the University of Southern California found that 15 minutes of Oxycise burned 140% more calories than the same time on a stationary bicycle.

"The most important component to any exercise program is to stick with it," Johnson said. "This is no-impact, so anyone can do it, no matter your age, all your life. Women love it, because they can do it at lunch and because they don't sweat, they don't have to take showers."

I Oxycised religiously every morning for several weeks and, while I didn't lose any weight, I ate what I wanted over the holidays and didn't gain any either. It's a great way to stretch out the kinks, get the lungs working and start the day. I didn't break a sweat or get out of...