FITNESS : The Perfect Body--in Four Minutes

ONCE UPON a time, if you had the time, you could sculpt yourself a million-dollar body. These days, if you have the cold, hard cash, you don’t need much time. In fact, Alf Temme, national distributor for Pitre Fitness, which has designed a new, high-tech “miracle” piece of fitness equipment called ROM (for the key term, range of motion ), says that less than five minutes each day will do it--along with $10,400, that is. According to Temme, ROM relies on the principle of guiding the body through compound isokinetic movements that, over a two-day period, involve every major muscle group. He claims that one can develop and tone muscle, as well as increase overall flexibility, in daily four-minute workouts. No weights, no levers. No problem. “It’s a newfangled idea, that in one motion you involve 55% of your skeletal muscle,” Temme says. “It’s all about resistance as you pull and push. You get a full upper-body workout one day, and spend four minutes on your lower body the next.”

ROM comes fully assembled, weighs 400 pounds and is 76 inches long, 30 inches wide and 50 inches high. Even if you can’t spare the four minutes, you could place ROM in your living room--the bold, curvilinear design was created by print artist John Pitre--and just stare at it.

ROM is available at Nordic Fitness, 15000 Calvert St., Van Nuys; (818) 787-6460.