The Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association, the fitness industry's primary source for tracking participation and industry earnings, has released a breakthrough study that tracks the top exercise trends across the country right now. "The exercise industry is not immune to the side effects of this tough economy," Tom Cove, the president of SGMA, said in the study. "But more people are aware of the importance of regular physical fitness for de-stressing and overall health."

If you think everyone is ditching fitness during the recession, think again. This study found some potentially surprising trends in the exercise world, including a classic gym class that's making a comeback.

Here are some of SGMA's year-end highlights:

When a Hollywood celeb has to get slim and sculpted in a jiffy, she hires a slew of professionals to whip her into shape. The rest of us, unfortunately, don't have that luxury -- until now. We asked celebrity trainer Gregory Joujon-Roche, and his Los Angeles-based Holistic Fitness team of nutritionists and chefs to come up with a fast program that's guaranteed to help you drop 5 pounds, blast fat and firm up everywhere. The team's methods have worked for such clients as Demi Moore, Rachel Weisz, and singer Avril Lavigne, who have all called on Holistic Fitness to help them reach their better-body goals.

Joujon-Roche and his experts walk you through their exclusive, results-guaranteed program:

• High-intensity cardio training five days a week for a minimum of 30 minutes. They advise full-body cardio activities where you use both upper- and lower-body sculpting, such as kickboxing, flowing power yoga and rowing.
• High-intensity weight lifting with free weights or machines three days a week. Lift on non-consecutive days, so your muscles (chest, back, arms, legs, abs) can recover in between. This also means at least 15 minutes of targeted ab training three days per week.
• A lower-fat diet of 1,500 calories per day [for women], and health-promoting habits from the start. "From day one, we encourage you to maintain an exercise-diet journal, take a multi-vitamin, and drink 10 glasses of water and green tea daily," says Joujon-Roche. "Plus, start eating a high-fiber, protein-packed diet that fuels your body, sustains willpower and revs up your metabolism."

I like to call flexibility training -- or stretching -- the ugly stepsister of the exercise world because everyone seems to overlook it until it's too late. Eventually you strain or sprain something or you're so stiff from step class that you want to cry. I teach yoga and Pilates, and my favorite party trick is stretching my left heel over my head and feeding myself a little snack between my toes. I know, I know, it grosses out my husband, too. For many people, however, stretching does not come easily. But being limber is not just about impressing (or horrifying) people at cocktail parties, is an essential part of being truly fit.

Three general things make up your flexibility potential:

• Age (younger folks are more flexible)
• Gender (women are typically more supple)
• Climate (Muscles are far more pliant in warmer temperatures)

Below are the five stretches everybody can practice a few times a week. Stretching after any other workout will soothe all of your major muscle groups in less than 10 minutes. I'd also like to give a shout-out to the practice of yoga. Since 15 million or so people began practicing yoga in the last decade, flexibility training has finally become as important to fitness as cardiovascular training and strength training. Yoga is the ultimate, full-body stretch, for sure, and some studies show that stretching makes your body much stronger, too.

The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association jointly updated physical activity recommendations based on the most relevant science that links exercise to improved health and wellness. Both organizations' suggestions now focus on 30 minutes of moderate-intensity daily physical activity, five days a week. How do you know if you're pushing along at a moderate, versus a slightly, intensity? The easiest way is to monitor your personal Rate of Perceived Exertion, or RPE. Your RPE during any sort of exercise – from walking and biking to skating and even karate class -- can mean the difference between blasting hundreds of calories or cheating yourself out of results.

RPE corresponds directly to your heart rate during exercise, so ask yourself several times per workout which number from 1 to 10 below corresponds with how you're feeling. After you monitor your own RPE for two weeks or so, RPE comes naturally, no matter where or how you're exercising. For example:

RPE Scale: How to Start Tuning In

1. Sit still, quiet reading
2. Light effort, strolling
3. Moderate walking, warm-up and cool-down levels
4. Moderate plus, like walking 4 mph on a flat track or hiking a gentle hill
5. Moderately intense; walking fast enough to almost jog 5 mph
6. Intense, hiking up a steeply vertical hill and feeling breathless
7. More intense, running about 7 mph or taking an indoor cycling class
8. Fast work, like running in deep sand or power jumps over cones, or hurdling at top speeds
9. Nearly too high, definitely uncomfortable and gasping for breath
10. Exertion is way too high, heart is thumping and muscles are on fire; decrease intensity

The 27-year-old reality star's exercise DVDs have been on sale for months now, but we just landed an exclusive, behind-the-scenes interview with the fitness pro who actually choreographed the DVDs and hung out with Kim Kardashian on-set during filming of the best-selling series. Jennifer Galardi, a dancer, trainer and creator of nearly two dozen exercise videos had lots to dish about:

That's Fit: We all want to know Kim's absolute favorite lower-body moves, the ones she does at home and the ones she mastered on the set.

Jennifer Galardi: Kim loves backward lunges and the balancing "T" where she would lift one leg, balance on the other and lower her body until it was in a "T" formation. Some of her favorite body-sculpting moves are also the most popular in many other videos and in fitness classes across the country, the lunge and the traditional squat.

When it comes to rising levels of obesity in the United States, there's finally a glimmer of good news. In addition to three drugs now commonly used to treat the overweight and obese, three more weight-loss prescription drugs are in the works. Many researchers say safe and effective weight-loss medications can save lives and a ton of money by curbing the incidence of weight-related diseases such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

The three prescription drugs presently used to treat obesity include sibutramine (Meridia), which increases satiety; phentermine, which suppresses appetite; and orlistat (Xenical), which prevents some dietary fat from being absorbed by the intestine. Orlistat is sold in a lower dose over-the-counter, like Alli. The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing safety information regarding reports of liver-related adverse events in patients taking orlistat.

Like the three well-known drugs above, the new drugs are intended either for people who are obese, which is considered to be 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight, or for overweight patients who have risk factors like high blood pressure. A quick review of the three new drugs:

The Oxygen Network and Crunch Gyms just released a slick and well-made weight-loss DVD, Dance Your Ass Off: The Workout (46 minutes total) starring the show's choreographer, Linda Ligon, with three other professional dancers, two pretty models, plus Ruben, the winner of last year's competition. Ruben, after losing 90 pounds, is only a mediocre dancer (which inspired me to follow along with him), but he won $1000,000 on the show last season. Here, the 43-year-old Las Vegas designer holds his own against the band of hard bodies on three different routines – each about 15 to 20 minutes long, including warm-ups.

Full disclosure on the dance party DVD front: I barely consider a dance-based routine any kind of cardio or fat-blasting workout, so I'm a pretty harsh critic of any kind of highly choreographed workout. A grapevine here, maybe a hips swivel there and I'm good to go – bring on the squats and push-ups, if you know what I mean. But it's hard not to like and be inspired by all of these perky dancers burning up the floor and partying off the pounds with three different styles of dance: Upbeat disco, hip-hop combinations, and sexy Latin sizzle. Great tunes, too.

Availiable on Amazon.com, the Dance Your Ass Off workout is best for both novice exercisers and devout lovers of these reality shows, and even the set resembles the one on television, so you can pretend you're one of those lucky contestants as you shake and shimmy across the twinkly purple stage. Choreographer Lisa throws out lots of plucky motivation, but I still found some combinations moving too fast. As for me, well, I liked the Latin dance segment the best, but I had to rewind one too many times, and I had to try and stop cursing Lisa's blonde bounciness halfway through. Fans of the show "Dance Your Ass Off" and heavy-duty hoofers will totally shake their groove things with these routines.

If you like to mambo or samba, try our other dance-oriented routines. Plus, check out That's Fit's full Dance Your Ass Off coverage, news and interviews.

Sting's serene missus and her personal trainer James D'Silva, who trained as a ballet dancer in his native Goa, India, lead two beautifully-produced yoga/ballet-type combo workouts in her new DVD series produced by Gaiam and filmed in Tuscany. If you're a Sting fanatic who wants to increase strength, flexibility and balance, you can't go wrong with these mostly yoga-like routines backed up by treasured tunes (at least on my iPod) from Sting's CD "Songs from the Labyrinth." What's not to like about Sting and yoga -- in Italy, of all places. Sign me up.

The intermediate mind-body routines were filmed at the Grammy winner's Il Palagio estate in Tuscany, an unbelievably-gorgeous backdrop. During filming, trainer D'Silva has impeccable alignment during Sun Salutations and basic flow postures while offering more advanced modifications of most poses. It's motivating to see that Trudy looks like a regular person (who just happens to be hitched to a rock star) doing regular-person yoga -- which is helpful and inspiring to novice exercisers.

DVD bonus material is a veritable feast for the senses. Segments include a grand tour of Il Palagio's kitchen and gardens, where more than 70 percent of the food comes from the estate itself, including products sold to the public such as honey and olive oil. There's an informative behind-the-scenes look at how Il Palagio uses the surrounding land to create a self-sustaining and eco-friendly house that runs on bio-fuels, as well as a discussion with the happy couple about their conversion of estate lands into biodynamic vineyards and their organic wine label. A percentage of DVD profits will go towards the Unicef Ecuador Water Project, which provides rainwater collection and filtration tanks to polluted communities in the Ecuadoran rainforest.

When you get a few minutes, try these gentle yoga routines, too.

I like to Spin, but the bike saddle hurts my tender bits after 15 minutes -- even with padded bike shorts. I love to run, but my knees start complaining after 20 minutes. And I need to work my abs more often, but even a fitness pro like me finds a million excuses to skip my boring crunch routine. Finally, someone put all of these moves together to create the most high-energy, fat-busting workout I've performed in months. And don't even think about blowing off the crunches since former Marine Raphael Verela, founder of Circuit Works, may get in your face for slacking off.

Verela, owner of the über-popular Circuit Works Studio in Venice Beach, Calif., launched this personal training nook especially for folks like me who get bored easily and want to mix it up but need a little extra oomph. "I wanted to create a way to make Spinning more exciting and relevant for people looking to lose weight and tone up their midsection," Verela says. He says he also wanted to construct "the ultimate cardio workout where you firm up your abs, and focus on the areas most susceptible to fat deposits, the butt, hips, and thighs." Mission: Accomplished!

As a fitness editor and health reporter, this year alone I've already tried kickboxing, dozens of yoga and Pilates sessions, hiking, biking, boxing and Body Pumping until my thighs literally throbbed. But I haven't experienced a heart-thumping, cardio-sculpting workout like Indo-Row in a long time. I went to my first class at Revolution Studio on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, Calif., a smallish Westside Spinning studio with a great, organic vibe. Ironman and ultra-endurance athlete Josh Crosby waited in class (with a wide range of other folks) to introduce us to our rowers, and then we competed in groups of four to eight. As you go, the Indo-Row machine emits water-sounding rowing noises and is designed to emulate the exact dynamics of a boat moving across the water, so its unique geometry makes it easy to row with good technique, even for a beginner like me.

You start slowly to gradually prep your muscles, grow accustomed to the synchronicity and learn how to lengthen your stroke and decrease intensity smoothly. While competing in small groups, you still move to the rhythm of your own rower, much like a Spinning bike class experience. The highly-efficient rate of caloric expenditure is, in fact, similar to Spinning – anywhere from 400 to 600 calories per class, depending on fitness level and your rowing intensity. In the 50-minute class, time totally flies because of the vigorous team spirit and sense of camaraderie. Another bonus: Indo-Row is a cardiovascular workout but also a great low-impact, total-body toner (minimal stress on the joints), and there's far less pounding than during running or weightlifting. And I discovered that you can't effectively row without the deepest continuous core contraction -– so my hips and abs were surprisingly sore the next day.