Puzzled about what to buy for family members and friends who know their resting and target heart rates, never miss their 6 A.M. yoga class, or run in the rain? Here are some ideas to please the most finicky fitness enthusiast.

My favorite fitness find of the year is the Mio watch/heart rate monitor ($90-$150, 877-566-4636, www.miowatch.com), recommended for athletes and recreational exercisers who want to know when they're working out at their target heart rate. Instead of a binding chest strap, they wear just a watch. When they want to know their heart rate, they press two fingers on the sensors built into the watch, and voila--the heart rate appears. Easy and unobtrusive. This watch/stopwatch/timer can track percent of maximum heart rate, calories burned, and calories consumed. Available in several versions, including petite for small wrists, with easily interchangeable straps for color variety, from The Sharper Image (Corte Madera), The Walking Company (Corte Madera), and Busybody Home Fitness (San Rafael) as well as online.

SPRI products (www.spriproducts.com, 1-800-222-7774) offers all sorts of portable exercise paraphernalia: rubber resistance, mats, videos, stability products, yoga, and more. This season, SPRI offers sport-specific V.I.C.T.O.R. training packs for golf, soccer, softball/baseball, or general toning ($69.95, click "packaged solutions"). Each kit contains a CD-ROM with a 12-week, progressive, customized strength-training program and rubber resistance products such as tubing, cuffs, a large stability ball, pump, and other props. You can also get a kit for a variety of 10-minute express workouts ($45.00), including a training DVD, tubing, 2-pound dumbbells, stability ball and pump.

Yoga for the Rest of Us (VHS, DVD, $17.95 from www.amazon.com) is a video yoga workout for people who might be inflexible, out of shape, or feeling aches and pains. "You don't need to be thin, young, and a contortionist to do this program," says public television yoga instructor Peggy Cappy, who presents three 20-minute routines that work separately or together, and use a chair for stability if needed.

Mothers-to-be whose exercise routines are limited by pregnancy will appreciate Jennifer Gianni's Fusion Pilates for Pregnancy (DVD $21.95, VHS $19.95, www.fusionpilates.com), a Pilates- and yoga-inspired video workout showing modifications for each trimester. The video includes safety precautions for pregnancy, pelvic floor strengthening, and the hour-long pregnancy workout. Because exercising while lying on the back is not recommended for pregnant women, these exercises have been adapted to sitting or standing positions. For example, Rolling Like a Ball is replaced by a super-safe "Rolling Down the Wall."

Speaking of Pilates, which is hugely popular, you can delight a Pilates enthusiast with a gift from Balanced Body (www.pilates.com, 1-800-PILATES). From big-ticket, state-of-the-art professional equipment ($3,000+) to home-use items like the Personal Reformer ($1,095 plus freight) and a variety of accessories, books, and videos, this Sacramento-based company has it all. Several videos feature popular Bay Club Marin instructor Elizabeth Larkam, a world-class innovator in the field.

No exerciser ever has enough activewear. Delight either gender with performance attire from InSport (www.insport.com, 1-800-652-5200). A personal favorite for men is the Cirrus Quest Jacket ($75) with zip-off sleeves, a bright yellow, microfiber windbreaker, breathable and packable, with a back vent, Teflon coating to repel water and stains, and a long tail that won't ride up while cycling. InSport's women's wear is comfortable, attractive, and stretches and breathes with activity. You'll find InSport activewear at Archrival (Greenbrae and Mill Valley) and Body Options (Greenbrae).

You can find the perfect fitness outfit for the woman in your life, whatever her activity or sport, from the catalogue of Petaluma-based Athleta (www.athleta.com, 1-888-322-5515). Athleta carries smart, attractive, and sublimely comfortable attire for yoga, gym workouts, running, and skiing. My favorite is Athleta's own line of clothing, which fits my oddly-sized body perfectly, and they also carry 25 other brands and give personalized advice about fit by phone. I'm crazy about my gymwear in sueded tactel, a moisture-wicking fabric that's soft as a kitten's belly, now in warm, earthy colors like "toast" and "ocean."

If your giftee is a dancer, JustForKix (www.justforkix.com, 800-762-3347) specializes in women's and girls' dancewear--tops, bottoms, and shoes for all styles of dance, from ballet to hip hop--plus cheerleading attire. I especially like the variety of dance tops (80 of them!), many with dance graphics and perfect for social dancing as well as dance classes, practice, and performances. I teach contemporary line dancing, and my whole upper-body dance wardrobe comes from JustForKix.

A book with new workout or diet ideas is always a welcome gift for people trying to get or stay in shape. Here are some recommendations:

The Automatic Diet: The Proven 10-step Process For Breaking Your Pattern And Staying Fit Forever ($24.95). Weight-loss and behavioral-change expert Charles Stuart Platkin identifies the 10 steps to understanding and changing your personal pattern of eating and weight gain. You'll examine your habits, master diet traps, craft strategies, and make change happen.

Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover: An Accelerated Program of Exercise and Nutrition for Maximum Results in Minimum Time ($25). Fitness is a lifetime commitment, but you can accelerate results and transform your body in 12 weeks, says Bob Greene, Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer. This program is intense and challenging, including vigorous aerobic exercise 6 days a week, strength training, and functional training. The eating plan is not a diet, but eating rules to help you eat fewer and burn more calories.

The Fat Flush Fitness Plan ($19.95) by local fitness celebrity Joanie Greggains and high-profile nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman offers a detailed exercise and diet program. This isn't a quick-fix program, but a long-term, lifestyle change including yoga, walking or rebounding, strength training with a weighted ball, stretching, lymphatic massage, and aromatherapy baths, plus a nutrition program designed to cleanse the liver and the lymphatic system.

Maybe the best gift you can give an exercise- and appearance-fixated friend is a humorous yet barbed nudge of body acceptance. "Stop fixing your body--it was never broken" is the theme of The Good Body by Eve Ensler, author/performer of the groundbreaking Vagina Monologues. Ensler's new play is about to open in New York, but you don't have to wait for it to arrive here: A marvelous 1.5 hour recording of the play, performed by the author, is available on CD or cassette ($19.95) as well as in hardcover book. Ab fixations, piercings, botox, plastic surgery, labia reconstruction, and life-risking ice-cream eating (seriously!) are scrutinized in this feisty, irreverent collection of stories based on Ensler's interviews with women in 40 countries. Available at bookstores.

Still haven't found the perfect gift? Don't just think workouts--think after workouts. Your fitness enthusiast sweats, showers, and then probably dabs, splashes, or smoothes a skincare product on that fit body and glowing face. Perfect for post-workout skin pampering are Zia Natural Skincare products (www.zianatural.com), celebrating their twentieth birthday with the new Ultimates anti-aging collection. The ingredients sound like a delicious fruit salad--papaya, raspberry, grapefruit, orange, currant, for example--and the scent is fruity and appealing. I especially appreciated the Ultimate Cleansing Mousse ($18.95) and Papaya Peel ($22.95) which left my face feeling soft, smooth, refreshed and youthful. My dancing feet sure loved the Ultimate Foot Scrub ($9.95) after a two-day line-dance conference--a blend of softening beeswax and natural oils plus grains of silica that massage and exfoliate rough spots. Zia offers a gift box of five anti-aging products for $79.95.

GINGI (www.gingiskincare.com, 800-823-9928) unisex, botanical skin care products are refreshing and nourishing. Any tired exerciser would feel revitalized after a shower by spritzing on Green Tea Mist with seaweed extract ($24.00), followed by either Light Cellular Hydrating Moisturizer ($39) or Deep Cellular Hydrating Moisturizer ($69). GINGI offers a six-product gift box set for $210, including six collagen mask sheets. And if your water isn't the best, GINGI also makes facial, shower and counter top micro-hydromolecule filters which eliminate chlorine and other elements. GINGI products were included in the 2004 Academy Awards presenter baskets.

Special fitness gift kit offer for yourself or a loved one!
Get all of these items for just $50, and I'll include free priority shipping!

• The Anytime, Anywhere Exercise Book: 300+ quick and easy exercises you can do whenever you want! by Joan Price
• Pedometer (step counter) measuring steps, distance, and calories burned
• 2-pair, 4-band set of Dyna-Bands for strength training without weights

Order here!

© 2004 Joan Price, may not be reprinted without permission
This article first appeared in The Pacific Sun in Marin County, California, November 2004.

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