Hey, I decided that I want to lose some weight, or rather - turn some fat into mass/muscle, be able to see my abs clearly, and generally get stronger. I'm 189 cm, ~71-72 kg. Problem is, I don't know how to start. I'm contemplating getting a gym membership for a month and going several times a week, but I wouldn't know what to do there.
So could you guys help out a bit? Thanks.

I've never gotten a gym-ship, as if I won't exercise at home why would a gym be better? I'm more of an outside PT guy...other than being too slack in general. I like walking until I'm warmed up & then doing pushups etc.

I'm trying to do some of Charlie James 'cises off of Ytube. Look at his tremendous chest development & sculpted body!

http://www.youtube.com/user/charliejames1975

Google it and find a decent weight program that has you evenly distributing exercise over all your body parts, broken up into 4 times a week. Do it for a month and check your progress. From there you can tweak a little. Just start lifting, running and being consistent.

You won't see abs within a month. Just so you don't get disillusioned. Having abs requires you to have a very small body fat percentage. Go for bulk to begin with. Increase the amount you eat by a couple of thousand calories.

Because the scientist in me screams in agony...

That will never fucking happen, unless you physically excise it from yourself and do some really fucking annoying chemistry. Which will involve reconstructing your DNA sequence to build muscle cells from scratch. Which is beyond a mere bitch.

The best you can do is lose fat while training muscle.

Your fat already has mass.

It also takes up space.

Well, you're in luck. By dragging your fat ass around all this time, you've already been lifting much heavier weights than the average skinny person who doesn't work out.

See? It's a lot cooler than the kids who teased you in middle school make it out to be, ain't it?

If you're psychotically devoted, burning 1,000 calories/hr is doable. Across a 16 hour day, that's just a little under 2kg of fat a day. I think. 9cal/g, right?

Of course, doing so might kill you if you don't do a few simple things like "be in excellent shape to begin with," or "monitor your blood glucose," or "drink fuckloads of pedialyte"... but in theory, obscene-intensity martial arts drills can drop about 60kg a month. In theory.

Point being, high intensity cardio (probably for a half hour to an hour, rather than 16 hour days) can do amazing things for your goals. You could even modify your caloric intake to lose weight, but... fuck that, just burn more calories. You'll be in better shape that way. Unless you actually do kill yourself in a 36 hour purge session.

No offense to the industry, but they're close to useless. Acres of machines for soccer moms who want to pretend they did exercise without actually exercising anything. Sometimes with a small dumbell set which you should have at home anyway.

Okay.

The crap I was rambling about above is "high-intensity cardiovascular exercise." The specific cite in cal/hr was for a few martial arts, forgot which.

There's lots of technical articles, but let's start simple : the basic concept of high-intensity cardio is that you should be on the ground and out of breath in under a minute. This can be done with sprinting. This can be done by working over a heavy bag. This can be done by doing pushups really, really fast.

Once you're laid out on the floor panting, you rest a bit, and then you do it again. One really, really neat trend which I support is finding as many different things that can floor you in a minute, and do a different one after each recovery.

Half-hour of this, and you'll lose a few pounds of water weight alone. Be sure to have an electrolyte mix handy. Just in case you sweat yourself into something like seizures/cramps/cardiac arrest. Luckily for you, cramps usually come first.

Does it work? Fuck yes. Will you lose weight swiftly? So long as you don't add 2,000 calorie milkshakes to every meal, fuck yes. Will you be in a crapload better shape? Fuck yes. Hell, you'll probably have better total fitness than some of our weightlifters, because size doesn't always mean that you can make a ten mile run.

Will this give you strength? Well... no. You'd actually have to lift weights to do that. 'n while Parallax will probably tell you to go buy "starting strength" - which isn't a bad book for beginners, even if its local marketing campaign makes it overhyped - I'm just going to lay down the much simpler concept : you gain strength by lifting really heavy crap. You keep gaining strength by using your new stringth to lift even heavier crap.

Yeah. That's really all there is to it. We could go on for hours about maximizing your insulin spike, or what balance of fats is optimal for anabolic growth, or a thousand other things... but it's probably a good idea to save crap like that until you've actually gotten on the ground and started actually doing strength work. Find heavy stuff. Lift heavy stuff. That's all there is to it. Muscle growth, that is.

So... high-intensity cardio intervals, lifting heavy stuff. There ya go, everything ya need to fulfill your request in the best possible fashion.

well I think joe pretty well summed it up, but I would also like to add the part about doing some flexibility training so your strength is practical, and getting enough protein.

no protein, no muscle, no strength.

so

cardio
lift heavy shit
stretch
protein
lots of liquids

you should be good

Well, maybe I overstated my predicament a bit - I'm not fat, not much of abs and pecs, bet certainly not fat. I'd just like to... well, look better and be stronger.
Anyway, though - thanks, especially to you, Joe. As you might have guessed, I'm totally new to this, so I am quite the fool when it comes to stating my goals..
Basically - weights, protein(Meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, and nuts), and high-intensity cardio, right?
And another question - how fast can I expect to see results, if I lift weight and do those same thirty minutes of high-intensity cardio say, three times a week?
Thanks again.

Nothing wrong with some light cardio really, but the amount of food you'd have to shovel down to pump iron AND do HIIT is borderline impossible, for a n00b (excuse the term ) as it were.

Jusst follow the 3 Bigs:

Eat Big.
Lift Big.
Sleep Big.

Get some squatting and deadlifting in there. I'd stick with basics for now,. If you're getting a gym membership, ask some staff members for additional help and ask some members there for tips. Most gyms should have friendly lifters willing to help you out. Just don't ask when they are in the middle of a set .

I'd start of with light to moderate cardio 3 times a week, then kick up the intensity every week. Not only will this get rid of some fat, the benefit of being in better shape will transfer to lifting and other activities.

Diet is the key. It doesn't matter if you run your ass off every day if you keep eating crap all day long. Watch your food intake, I'd even suggest keeping a journal so you know how much (and what) you eat every day.

After you conditioned yourself a bit, and have a steady healty diet, start lifting weights.

Then don't do high-intensity cardio more than once a week.

The stuff sucks a lot of calories, 'n the human body usually only grows to extreme proportions when it has a surplus. 'n naturally, while hardcore cardio is great for athletic stamina, like TJ said... the amount of food you'd have to eat to do HIIT three times a week and gain (muscle) weight would be... huge.

's great to do it the day before you want to look pretty, though. A single dose can do serious wonders for vanity for about 2-3 days...

Well, if you were fat and pulling 30 minutes of "death intervals" three times weekly, you'd have probably seen something... by the end of the week. The shit's the domain of the clinically insane, I tell you. Great for combat sports, great for weightloss, definate sense of "why did I do this" for the next 20 minutes after you've done it...

...with your new, revised body fat composition... well... depends a bit where you are. If you're scrawny, it takes only maybe a month or two to make it to "kinda strong." If you're a medium-sized guy to begin with, maybe six months to "a little bit stronger"... that charming point where you're not exactly huge, but you're just barely on the 'big' end of the manual laborer's physique.

Average manual laborer, that is. Some of those guys get all flippin' psycho with the weights, too.

Looking like the mutants in a bodybuilding magazine, the ones that make you swallow a little bit of your own vomit again every time you see 'em? Lifetimes, son. Lifetimes...

...but, you should notice a little something over the next couple months.