I humbly ask for help..

Underground S&C Underground
1

I have let myself become a fatboy over the last year and a half and now it is about to bite me in the ass. I was notified Monday that I was in the selection process for advancement at work. The problem is there will be a PT test involved in the selection. The PT test is simple but I am still very concerned. The test is......

25 strict push-ups.....18 sit ups in 1 minute.....1rep benchpress of 65% of bodyweight starting from the down position.....1.5mi run in 16:25.....300meter sprint in 1min....500m swim untimed.

The things that really concerns me is the run and sprint and maybe the pushups. I have suspected this was coming for about 3 weeks and have been trying to get into the gym and on the tread mill as often as I could and cleaned up my diet with only lean proteins (salmon, chicken, etc.and plain salads, no sugars, lots of water). The test will be Mar 8 so Monday I took 4 weeks of vacation to totally immerse myself in training. I have been in the gym everyday this week but now think I should seek expert advice.

I have been doing about a 12 min mile on the treadmill for one mile 3x a week, and at least an hour on the Cross Country Skier everyday, the last 4 minutes of the hour I usually try to knock out a Tabata 2 or 3 times a week. I am hesitant to actually do alot of running off of the treadmill because of a long history of shin splints. I have also started taking a protein shake a glutamine

I have the following at my disposal.....Cross Country Skier, Tread Mill, Stepper, full weight room, sauna, steam room, Olympic pool, a massage therapist, physical therapist, whirl pool, yoga classes 4x week, Pilates 3x a week, the Bas workouts, a heavybag and of course Scrappers stuff.

Thanks,

John

2

Geez, where do you work at?

3

Microsoft :)

Actually I am a Conservation Officer/Game Warden.

4

Riddlin, you will likely find that HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) will do more to shed body fat than separate weight training and cardio sessions. Tossing in a couple of runs a week, as TheAdonis suggested, will also help, but you'll probably have better results if you focus predominantly on HIIT.

To get you started, check out CrossFit (crossfit.com) as well as both Taku and Scrapper's stuff at trainforstrength.com. There are others places, too, but these are great starting points (i would count myself as one who is a large consumer of the CrossFit brand of kool-aid).

That said, TheAdonis is absolutely correct when he said, "diet is EVERYTHING". You must get your food in check if you want results. Personally, i have found a combination of the Zone and Paleo diets to work really nicely. i've been tweaking my overall diet a bit lately, but you should start off by following them fairly strictly to begin with.

Hope this helps.

john

5

Do Takus Intervals using running as the modality anf you will feel better in two weeks.

TAKU

P.S. e-mail me for other running programs.

strengthonline@yahoo.com

6

Thanks everyone.

Taku, e-mail inbound from possum_cop1.

7

Have you done a trial run of the test? It would suck to focus on running and then find out on test day that the run was fine but the bottom-up bench crushes you.

-Gary