Everything I still do for myself — and the hour that keeps it. I am Ken Kondo and I counted in a gymnasium for forty years. This is not a fitness programme and there is no Japanese secret in it. It is 148 ordinary movements and habits, arranged by the thing you want to keep being able to do: get out of bed, get out of a chair, climb the stairs, carry the shopping in one trip, reach the top shelf, kneel in the garden and stand back up. Everything happens in bed, on a firm chair, at a kitchen counter or on a stair, with something solid within reach. Five minutes a day. SIX FILES, IN YOUR EMAIL IN ONE MINUTE Still Able — 12 chapters, 130 entries. Every entry says where, how many, and what it is for. The Large-Print Edition — the same book in big type. The Bed Routine — one card. Four minutes before your feet touch the floor. The Counter Routine — one card. Six minutes while the kettle boils. The Chair Routine — one card. One chair, six moves, ankles upward. Write It Down — the chair test log and your own week on one page. THE MEASURE Sit on a firm chair, cross your arms over your chest, stand up. That is the test the Japanese Orthopaedic Association gave the country in 2007 — no machine, no clinic, just a chair. Write down the seat height you needed. Six weeks later you look at evidence instead of trying to remember how February felt. WHY A CHAIR DECIDES EVERYTHING Count how many times you get out of a seat between waking and sleeping. For most people it is between thirty and sixty. When it becomes a small negotiation you start avoiding the chairs you cannot get out of, then the outings where those chairs are, and the world gets smaller by inches. That is what this book is for — the size of your week. BEFORE YOU START I am not a doctor and I am not a physiotherapist, and nothing in this book treats anything. If something hurts, stop and leave it out. Talk to your own doctor first if you have had surgery recently, if you have been told to take care with exercise, if you get dizzy when you stand, or if you have fallen in the past year. One payment. No subscription. Thirty days to change your mind, and you keep the files.