Well, it's about time to put all my theory to practice.  I let myself get ridiculously out of shape, so ridiculous it's not even funny anymore.  I figure I'd make for the perfect guinea pig to show you guys how the content in this blog can be applied, so I'm going to be documenting the next 8 weeks here.  Hopefully it'll serve to give you an idea on the effectiveness of my methods.  Let's get started.

STARTING POINT

180 lbs. 20% body fat.

END GOAL

150 lbs. 15% body fat.

I always start with the numbers.  How much do you weigh?  How much do you want to weigh?  Where's your body fat percentage at?  Where do you want it to be?  Of course, not everything is about the numbers.  Figure out what you want to improve on.  Do you want to get stronger?  Do you want to have better cardio endurance?

DESIRED IMPROVEMENTS

• better cardio endurance
• pain-free knees

If you experience knee pain, it's always a good idea to hold off the cardio when you're overweight.  I'm currently 20 lbs overweight.  That's an extra 20 lbs of pounding my knees have to take if I jog or run, or whatever.  If you have access to a pool, then by all means, cardio away, but if you're jogging?  I strongly advise against it.  So let's focus on the knees first.

Pain in the knees are usually caused by weak surrounding muscles.  That is why there's going to be a lot of work done in strengthening the muscles around my knees.  I don't want to go into too much detail about which specific muscles to target, but let's just say that there are going to be a lot of lunges involved. 

Aside from strengthening the muscles around the knees, we also want to reduce the stress and impact they bear.  That can be done by SIMPLY losing weight.  Less weight to carry = less stress.  I also believe that training your calves can help significantly in lessening the impact your knees receive from running, walking, etc. 

After some weight loss and a few weeks of securing the knees, then it's time to do some cardio.  I'm a firm believer in high intensity interval training (HIIT).  I'll discuss that further in another post, but that's what I plan to do. 

ACTUAL TRAINING + NUTRITION 

Training-wise, I'm sticking to the big 3 lifts: Squats, deadlifts, and bench presses.  The reason I'm doing this is because frankly, you get the most "bang for your buck" with these exercises.  These are the kings of compound movements, and I really want my entire body working and being worked as one.  It takes less time, it's intense, and it works.

Of course, I'm already going to put in some work with regards to the knees issue, and I might throw in some shoulder work, just for aesthetics.

As for nutrition, I'm just going to be following my macros.  That's all there is to it. 

I'm going to be working out 4x a week, with each workout not lasting more than 30 minutes, warm-up included. 

Today is the first day.  Let's get after it!