I work with a personal trainer. I don't work out with her, since I work out at 4:30 in the morning, and very few people want to get up that early. But I hired her to put together a fitness and nutrition program for me to follow. It's a very straightforward program. The fitness part of it consists of four work-outs a week that include a combination of weight training, metabolic conditioning, and both dynamic (before workout) and static (after workout) stretching exercises. The nutrition part consists of basic meal planning, which gives me the ingredients I must use for each meal but allow me to decide how to prepare them. Once every two weeks I do a weigh-in, and provide body measurements and photos to measure my progress. Based on the results of the bi-weekly report the workouts and meals may be modified. So far ... since I started on December 30 ... I've dropped about 20 lbs and am showing noticeable conditioning progress ... particularly in terms of flexibility. I'm convinced those stretching exercises are at least as beneficial as the workouts themselves, as I have a range of motion I haven't seen in years and (at age 63) had thought gone for good. The hardest part for me is not overdoing it ... progress tends to be rather motivating ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)