Right programming for my situation?

[tr7111]

I've had years of stops and starts and sidetracks and have only had mediocre results because of it.

I'm 32 years old, 6'5" 245 and badly deconditioned. I'm a former basketball player but was pretty sedentary during my 20s.

My goal is to be in good overall health and condition, with strength and physical attractiveness tied for a close second.

What would a good lifting routine be for me as I focus on shedding body fat and improving my conditioning?

My resting heart rate is very high and I have a fairly high body fat percentage. I should probably weigh 210 at this level of strength.

Also, what should i set my caloric target at, macronutrients etc? How much cardio?

I would love to be able to get in basketball shape before I get too much older. I couldn't believe I could still easily dunk a basketball when I tried yesterday.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Do the novice program outlined in SS and clean up your diet. Basically follow a paleo approach to your diet, but put some simple or starchy carbs before and after training - Gatorade, Rice, etc.

If you train on Monday/Wed/Fri then do a hard conditioning workout on Saturday morning. My preference for you would be to go to the track and run 5 laps of sprinting the straights and walking the curves (10 x 100m sprints). Obviously on day 1 these wouldn't be all out sprints...something that is between a jog and a sprint.

[Rob Israel]

Do the novice program outlined in SS and clean up your diet. Basically follow a paleo approach to your diet, but put some simple or starchy carbs before and after training - Gatorade, Rice, etc.

If you train on Monday/Wed/Fri then do a hard conditioning workout on Saturday morning. My preference for you would be to go to the track and run 5 laps of sprinting the straights and walking the curves (10 x 100m sprints). Obviously on day 1 these wouldn't be all out sprints...something that is between a jog and a sprint.

Man, the simplicity of this sprinting instruction is genius. Walk the curves? I love it.

Not to hi-jack, but do you have a preferred C2 rowing workout that's short and intense? I'm basically getting my cardio back with the prowler and other short (<8 minutes) intense workouts.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

I use the C2 rower at my gym basically for warming people up and that is about it. Just about everybody comes in and does 500-1000meters prior to lifting. We don't do much "training' on it. I have used it with my swimmers a little bit and we do "density training" type shit on it.

For instance, one of my older swimmers said that an average 100m butterfly event might take him about 50 seconds or so to complete. So we would get on the rower and do all out sprints for about 50 seconds and record the number of meters they got in that time frame. The next workout we will repeat the 50 second intervals but try and get more meters. I do that because all my swimmers have told me that all out sprints on the concept 2 is the closest thing they do that "feels" like they just did a sprint in the pool.

I don't know if it works or not, but it is a way to crosstrain their conditioning work that seems to make some sense.