IntroDOUGtion



Starting with Super Silly...

 


Switching to Sporadically Slow...



Shifting to Sometimes Strong...



Segueing to Semi-Smart...





Doug's Bio & Story 


  • Master’s Degree in Kinesiology/Exercise Physiology, Full Academic Scholarship, University of Maryland

  • Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Physiology (Pre-Med), Summa Cum Laude, GPA: 3.989, SUNY Cortland

  • Founder and Producer: “Healthy IntroDougtions to Strength Training” Online Video Seminar Series

  • Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist by the National Strength & Conditioning Association

  • Author: Permanent Weight Control, Exercise Your Eccentric Genius, Shaping Up with the Joneses

  • Columnist: Laughing Fit, A Healthy Dose of Humor & Hope, Stand Firm, In Health & With Hope  

  • Former Director of Fitness, Wilton Family YMCA, Wilton, Connecticut

  • Former Director of Fitness, Washington Hilton/Hil-Fit, Wash D.C.

  • Producer of Several Instructional Exercise Testing Videos

  • Creator of The Best Way To Exercise & Super 7 System

  • Instructor of Exercise Physiology at Graduate Levels

  • Life Member, The National Registry of Who’s Who

  • MENSA Member, Certified “Eccentric” Genius

  • World’s Most Eccentric Personal Trainer :-)



Believe in Yourself 

Firstly... I want to help you begin a safe and productive journey toward a superior level of health and physical well-being. I truly believe that a fitness-oriented lifestyle is a vital tool which synergistically promotes success in many other areas of life. Developing self-control over such an important and often neglected component of our lives yields a feeling of accomplishment and confidence that is impossible to develop through other means. Your decision to become healthy is more than half the battle. 




I Believe in YOU 

Secondly… I want to help you achieve your desired and potential level of fitness with minimal time investment. As a father of four and owner of multiple businesses, I realize that there are many priorities in our lives which are more important than working out. Therefore, I will continually strive to teach you how to allocate the least possible amount of time toward exercise while simultaneously achieving the best results. My goal is to encourage you to develop optimal levels of health and fitness while maintaining your focus on the many other important aspects of your life.




Douglas Jones  

…is the Founder and President of The Best Way to Exercise, LLC, based in Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Years ago, in Connecticut, Doug founded Stand Firm Fitness, LLC to provide in-home personal fitness training. His business gradually grew into a 20,000+ sq ft facility, one of the largest personal training centers in the Northeast.

Doug has used his professional expertise, coupled with the experience he has gained through his own health and fitness challenges, to design a facility and range of programs providing the most effective exercise in the most time-efficient manner. After decades in the industry, Doug has now also afforded anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere around the world, the opportunity to access his proven teaching and personal training techniques, albeit eccentric, via his online enterprises.

If you ever have any questions or comments for Doug, please feel free to contact him personally at:

[email protected]



Doug’s Personal Story
of Struggle and Success 


For Two Years... I learned the most about my health through disease. 


For Two Years... I could barely even walk and I definitely could not run. 


For Two Years... I couldn’t shake a friend’s hand, let alone hold a dumbbell. 


In Only Two Months...  I was determined to completely reverse the previous two years. 


I hope my own story of struggle and success can help you with your decision to develop a proactive plan of action.  I’m in this battle with you.

Decades ago, health and fitness was my passion. As a 4.0 GPA exercise physiology student, full graduate academic scholarship recipient, fitness author, competitive triathlete, fitness director, etc., I lived the healthy lifestyle − at least to the best of my ability.

Six months into my first real job after graduate school, I cracked my L5 vertebrae in my lower back and separated the cartilage from a bone in my chest. I was completely out of commission for an entire year − not a fun experience.

So what do you do when you have twin newborn daughters and zero income?  You move from Maryland to Connecticut, live in your mother’s attic for a year, heal, pray, and try to start afresh. At least that was my game plan.

Thankfully, I recovered physically and my fitness business succeeded fiscally. However, shortly after my financial recovery, I was suddenly, and almost completely, crippled with the sudden onset of a very severe form of arthritis (psoriatic, so I was told). Basically, this overnight autoimmune attack totally disabled my hands and my feet − and I mean totally.

Even with what I consider to be a high threshold for personal pain, I couldn’t walk or shake hands without screaming, literally. I couldn’t even squeeze a tube of toothpaste. I couldn’t imagine lifting weights or exercising, and couldn’t train any of my personal training clients personally. I was a physical mess.


If a struggle doesn’t destroy you…

…it makes you stronger.  


After spending over $20,000 on treatment (including going out of the country for “high-tech and alternative” techniques), I started to see a glimmer of hope. Though I was feeling a little better, I still couldn’t perform even one push-up, one calf-raise, or one chin-up − and to participate in formal "regular" exercise definitely wasn't a viable option.

However, things changed one year, during the January rush of resolutions, when a couple of my friends and clients started getting really serious about their own personal personal training programs. Ironically, I was actually designing most of these programs for them. I was still talkin’ the talk even though I wasn’t able to personally survive walkin’ the walk. But based on their excitement alone, I decided that it was time for me to also focus, once again, on my own fitness program − hoping my friends’ enthusiasm was strong enough to carry me through.

My first goal was to complete my first workout without hurting myself. By the end of the first week, I outlined the ten or so exercises that I could perform safely. Success is always relative, but that first consistent week of exercise rekindled the awesome feeling of being fit. By the end of the second week, my body began to respond quite favorably. No longer was I just a passive spectator. I can honestly say that, after only two weeks, I was already feeling better than I had in at least the previous five years.

My routine was scientific and my diet was strict. Because the consumption of any type of animal product wrecked havoc on my joints, I consumed a primarily RAW vegetarian diet − lots of fruit, salads, and fresh-squeezed vegetable juices. I was never really hungry (since I was eating 7 times per day), but I was never really full either. Focusing primarily on fat loss for the first month, I was hoping to just maintain my lean muscle weight by performing light and strict eccentric strength training.

To my surprise, in the FIRST FOUR WEEKS alone, I had actually gained over 8 pounds of muscle while simultaneously reducing my waist by 5 ¾ inches and reducing my hips by 3 ½ inches. In only 4 WEEKS! By the end of twelve weeks, I had lost 20 pounds of fat, gained 15 pounds of muscle, and reduced my waistline from 39.5” to 32.5” − a decrease of 7 inches off of my waist in only 12 weeks!!!



“Nothing is more motivating than 

results ... especially dramatic results.”


The key to staying committed during the challenges of my physique transformation was me actively exercising the most powerful muscle in the human body, the tongue − not by eating, but by speaking. The Book of Proverbs states that people are snared by the words of their mouth. The tongue is a small muscle, but it directs your entire being. Whether you like it or not, what you say is what you get. It is so important to speak about what you want that you don’t have; don’t speak about what you have that you don’t want.

Once you begin a fitness program, you have to truly visualize yourself already AT the fitness level that you would ultimately like to achieve. Eat like that person and train like that person (within reason, of course) and you will become that person. Success breeds success. Your body will eventually believe your brain.

So − let’s make my long story a little longer. I whipped myself back into shape just in time to lose it all again. On my drive home from work one evening, just after finishing a great workout, I was involved in a severe head-on car accident. Thankfully, everybody was “all right.” 

I was hit head-on by somebody turning into my lane while I was going 40mph, which launched my SUV into a “Dukes of Hazzard” rollover sequence. Unfortunately, the only part of my car’s roof that was crushed was the section right above my head. 

I ended up having a major brain injury. Yes, I was very thankful it wasn’t worse, but my neurologist said that it was as if I had just awakened from a three-month coma. And, the effects lasted for at least a year − or was it two years? I had a very bad short-term memory for at least a year − or was it two years?  haha ;-) I never lost my sense of humor though.

I can even joke about it now. I did try to fake my way through it as best I could, but I did embarrass myself on a fairly regular basis. Have you seen my bloopers video yet? Many of those were filmed a year or two after my accident.

Perhaps not remembering too much helped me to get through the pain, but it was bad for my family, bad for my business, and also bad for my health − since I didn’t have the mental fortitude necessary to aggressively and proactively pursue proper medical treatment. Though I had numerous X-rays, CAT scans, and MRI procedures, nothing showed too much of anything. I hurt a lot, but nobody knew why − and I started to sense that most people probably didn’t even believe me. But after months of complaining, my team of physicians finally sent me for bone scans.

Good news... bad news. Good because the bone scans finally proved that I was, indeed, hurt... bad because I had small fractures all over my body. Basically, everywhere that the seat belt touched me during the impact had been broken. But, at least my seat belt prevented me from having large fractures all over the rest of my body, right?. Remember, it was a head-on rollover at 40+ mph. 

Nonetheless, because of the delay in diagnosis, things healed kind of funny − and kind of crunchy. I still sometimes have limited range-of-motion in some of my joints, including my shoulder and neck. Granted, it could have been a lot worse, but it was still pretty bad. And, although I can count on some degree of pain every day, I can also count my blessings on a daily basis as well. I always choose to focus on the latter.

A couple of years went by, once again, before I could begin a formal exercise program. My body was a mess − much, much worse than my initial before photos on the previous page. Doctors also thought that the stress of my car accident sent my body into another auto-immune arthritic attack. All of my joints became severely inflamed and all of my symptoms of joint pain were back in full swing. Although I had “only” injured my head, neck, back, shoulder, chest, and leg in the car accident, my auto-immune response was systemic. In other words, everything in my body went bad. My body was in such horrible shape that I won’t even show you the pictures. Me, myself, and I were a terrible trio. 

My symptoms of a systemic problem continued to worsen − so more tests, right? I had one of the most expensive tests performed for a very specific disease. And... it came back positively positive. My body and brain were stricken and tickin’ with Lyme Disease, no doubt the most popular affliction in the state of Connecticut (often referred to as Connecti-tick). After all, Lyme disease IS named after the town of Lyme, Connecticut. 

Anyway, at the time, there were about 60 known major symptoms of Lyme disease and I had at least half of them. Worse yet, some of my physicians believed that I may have had Lyme Disease for OVER 8 YEARS, undiagnosed and misdiagnosed, even well before my accident. Nobody had ever caught it. Ouch!!

So... my entire fight against the auto-immune arthritis a decade earlier was probably in vain. Though I was tested for Lyme back then too, all of those tests were probably false-negative, meaning that, even though I may have had Lyme disease, the tests didn’t show it. (similar to when the x-rays didn't show all of my broken bones, huh?) Regardless, I knew that I now had it and that it was time, once again, to get on with my life. A little more aggressive and alternative treatment... and I was good to go. Here we go again!!!

I always tell people that, just because I own a fitness center, it has been no easier for me to get (or keep) myself in peak condition. It is easy for all of us to become “distracted” by the ebbs and flows of life.

However, I think that all of these physical struggles that I have been through now allows me to see things from a different, and perhaps more relatable, perspective. If you aren’t in the best of shapes right now, I can definitely put myself in your shoes. I can relate. Despite what you have been through, or are going through right now, I am confident that YOU CAN CHANGE your situation and transform your health for the better.

Having been there and having been here, I can honestly tell you that it’s worth it. And you are worth it.

I am so thankful that I have been given the opportunity to help thousands in person, and now millions online, to begin their own journeys down the road to good health. And, I appreciate the potential to help you, too. The first step is usually the toughest and sometimes the longest, but putting the blinders on for a few weeks is usually all that it takes.

Today, let's at least make the decision to proactively pursue your mission towards renewed health and well-being. Step by step, exercise by exercise, and workout by workout, I look forward to helping you to learn everything you need to know to achieve your own personal physique transformation − from the inside out.

I’ll be with you for the entire journey and I look forward to celebrating your success!


Your Eccentric Trainer,

 :-)  Doug