Here we go:

Hi there, everyone.  I started this blog because there is SO much out there on fitness right now.  With HIIT, Turbulence Training, P90X, Insanity, and so much more going on, who knows where to start and how?

So, let me start out by saying I am NOT an expert.   But I have read, watched, studied, and tried a LOT of these techniques.

The purpose of this blog is for me to document what my (hopeful) rise to being in shape.

So, the first thing is for me to document where I am right now. Gulp.  I am 47 years old and just weighed myself today (06/16/2015): 237.5

I plan on taking a photo of myself once a week, as painful as that is going to be for me. Here is today’s:

So, let me illustrate how I am going to do this.  In my reading and videos I have watched, I have seen a kind of unifying theme for fat loss, whether it is HIIT, TT,  Ross Enamait, Shaun T, or whoever else.

Basically, it is this: Exercise hard for some period of time in intervals, broken up by a (short) rest or less strenuous interval.   Now, there is some disagreement (look up Tabata intervals for instance) on the timeframes. And there are outliers of course (Matt Furey, for instance, who advocates 500 squats).

Now, the next thing is how we break up the exercises and bodyparts.  Unless we are going for hypertrophy (trying to make big muscles), most of the time, there are two main factors: 1 — total body exercises and 2 — unlike bodybuilding and weightlifting regimens, the same bodyparts can be done multiple days in a row (for instance, legs).

The last question is how long a session to work out.  I have seen anything from around 30 minutes (Ross’ Magic 100 workout or Bas Rutten’s boxing workout, which is around 28 minutes, but leaves me totally drained) to over an hour in some of the P90X and Tapout XT routines.   I have come to the conclusion that it is probably contingent on the difficulty of the exercises.  For instance, 1000 pushups, while daunting is probably doable in an hour (something like 16-17 a minute, which takes less than 15 seconds of the minute) but doing a thousand half-moon or 1-handed pushups is an unreasonable goal for anyone.  I am settling on a workout session of an hour four or five times a week for now.

So, here is where I am starting.  Using an interval of a minute on, and then ONLY the time it takes to record my reps as rest, I am going to  see what I can accomplish in one hour:

Wish me luck: