Exercising has come a long way from outrunning a lion until it reaches the point of exhaustion so its sleeping carcass could be bench- pressed and shot putted. Build muscle using nonliving weights with today's Groupon: for $49, you get a two-month membership and a personal training and nutrition session at Gold's Gym on East Commercial Boulevard (a $174 value).

Gold's Gym opened more than 45 years ago and today features an impressive array of next-generation fitness gadgets, a results-oriented focus, and clean facilities. With today's deal, one of Gold's Gym's certified personal trainers will test each client's strength, flexibility, typing speed, and body-fat percentage, among other metrics, to determine their biological age before designing a personalized fitness regimen. The personal trainer will also offer a brief nutritional assessment, breaking down your current diet and offering advice about resisting the twinkie's siren song to help you achieve your goals and make the most of your two-month gym experience.

Then neophyte iron workers can follow up with regular attendance at the gym, where they can hop on a cardio machine, pump up in a controlled manner on strength-training machines, tighten up in the abdominal and functional stretching area, or stick with lifting huge, heavy pieces of metal and commercial chest freezers.