Though we may not have met you personally and almost certainly have never watched you bench-press anything, we still feel safe in saying: You’re no Doug Hoisington.

Maybe you stand 6 feet 7 inches tall, like he does. Maybe. And perhaps, like him, you’re 270 pounds of what looks to be solid muscle, although we’re kind of doubting that you are.

But do you also have several thousand dollars’ worth of high-grade exercise machines in your house, and … here comes the deal-breaker … do you use them on a regular basis for two-hour workouts that start at 3:30 a.m.?

We didn’t think so.

The key to working out is discipline, and Dr. Hoisington seems to have plenty of that. On gold-colored forms from 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment in Clive, a store where they surely know him by name, he has meticulously noted the statistics from each exercise session for the past seven years.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it’s the 3:30 a.m. weightlifting routine, and again on Saturday, but not until the lazy hour of 6 a.m. or so. He does a cardiovascular workout on the other days during the winter, but in the summer he figures working outdoors on his 2-acre West Des Moines lawn is a reasonable substitute. (The lawn, by the way, looks to be in perfect order.)

“When I miss a day,” Hoisington says, “I don’t feel as good.”

Hoisington grew up in Seattle, playing basketball with his brother and pumping up with his dad’s barbells. He attended Seattle Pacific University on a four-year basketball scholarship, then decided to go to medical school instead of taking a flyer at the training program of the NBA’s SuperSonics. “I knew in sixth grade that I wanted to be a physician,” he says.

Hoisington graduated from Des Moines University, did his residency at the University of Iowa, went on to study otolaryngology at the University of Chicago and came back to Des Moines in 1993. He opened the ENT Clinic of Iowa P.C. at 1455 29th St. in West Des Moines in 1996.

Medical school and residency made it tough to keep to a regular workout schedule, but in 2000 he bought his first weight machine – he’s on his third one now – and has kept working out and adding equipment ever since.

The multi-gym Hoist 4400 is the kind of machine you might find at a health club, with four separate weight stacks; he has owned that and a True treadmill for about three years; the Octane elliptical trainer for two years; the rotary torso machine and the abdominal crunch station for a year; and he just added a LeMond recumbent stationary bicycle. Altogether, they cost somewhere around $20,000.

For now, the machines share space with the furnace and water heater, but Hoisington hopes to add a room large enough to house all of his workout equipment – oh, and a swimming pool.

Check out his very cool cars and 24-foot powerboat, and you strongly suspect that the swimming pool will come to pass.

Hoisington used to belong to a health club, but says, “the hours don’t coincide with my hospital rounds. It’s more flexible here at home; I can work out when I want to.”

It seems to be paying off. The big guy says he uses 180 pounds for bench presses, 132 pounds for curls, and does his abdominal crunches in sets of 100.

Others might draw motivation from having others around, but Hoisington says that’s not a problem for him. “I don’t want to socialize when I’m working out, and I don’t want to have to wait for someone to be done with a machine.”

So how does he occupy his mind? The household stash of DVDs is right there by the machines, but Hoisington is more likely to watch CNN or listen to music. “If you put in a movie,” he says, “you spend too much time watching instead of exercising.”

All in all, a very dedicated approach. And he doesn’t even have a particular goal in mind, nothing that he’s training to do. He’s in great shape and just trying to stay that way. “There are all kinds of health benefits to working out,” Hoisington says, and notes that working out is a great way to relieve the stress that a physician and surgeon faces.

Although his specialty is nasal and sinus surgery, his routine sounds like a prescription for heavy eyelids: Three sets of 16 exercises from 3:30 to 5:30 a.m.;, followed by hospital rounds and a full day at the office, in surgery or on the road to ENT’s offices in Pella and other towns.

He confirmed what you might suspect: “I don’t have any trouble falling asleep at night.”

SIDEBAR: SO WHAT ABOUT YOU?

In the opinion of one Web site, www.thefitnessnews.com, here are some basic considerations for anyone who’s thinking about buying a piece of fitness equipment – or, like Doug Hoisington, a whole roomful – to use at home.

A cable crossover machine exercises virtually every muscle group in your body. Another nice thing about it is that you don’t fill the whole room with equipment.

In combination with a cable crossover machine or other training equipment, you only need an incline bench with some free weights (dumbbells and barbells), and you can develop a great body at home.

On a stationary bike you can train and do several things at a time, like talk on the phone or read a book. It’s a good idea to warm up on the bike for any kind of training, or use it to get into shape by cycling for at least 30 minutes per session.

Stairclimbers are great if you want to tone your buttocks and your legs. You can also make phone calls or read.

Treadmills allow you to burn a lot of calories, and it’s good for your bones, because it’s weight-bearing.

An elliptical machine is great for novices, older people, or people with any kind of leg problems, as it’s very easy on the joints. It’s certainly one of the most effective home exercise equipment machines available today.