I'm going to be writing a series of articles, from the ground up on how to get into shape. The first of the series has already been written and can be found here.

Instead of commenting on each article individually, you can comment on the entire series together in this thread.

Also, while there's a certain blueprint to what the articles are going to be, I definitely want to hear your input on what essential things related to fitness and working out should be put into the guide.

When the articles are done, I'll probably aim newcomers towards them as a starting point and refer everyone to this thread as well. So let's make a good impression and I'm looking forward to your comments.

I look forward to reading your articles about getting started with cardio, weights, and nutrition.

As a former cardio-queen, age caught up with me and I realized I needed a different way to get rid of the back bacon and hired a personal trainer. I learned how to use the weight room and saw the single biggest change in my body. Including when I trained for 5 months for a marathon.

Then about 3 years later I hit another plateau and went to a nutritionist who made some slight changes in my diet.

I'm sure in the next year or so I'll hit another plateau... so, I'd love to see an article on how you continue improving your fitness over your lifetime. How do you continually avoid those plateaus?

Ah, avoiding plateaus is a really good point that I hadn't added. That's a really good suggestion and I'll be putting it in one of the articles.

I liked your post on functional fitness. In my opinion bodyweight exercises are the most effective ways of improving your functionall fitness. Weights just don't seem to have the same effect,e.g the lat pull down will not make you as good at doing pullups as actuallly doing pullups even though you work similar areas. The same is true for the bicep curl and chinups,you get harder biceps from doing chinups.
An example of someone who has great functionall fitness is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko He is generally considered to be the best mixed martial artist and although I generallly don't like mma he is someone who is interesting to watch because he is both extremly powerfull and conditioned.When he started his career he had the defined weightlifter/bodybuilders body. He said his muscle mass was actually detrimental to his performance and changed to bodyweight weight exercises pullups,pushups,crunches and a daily run of between 7 and 9 miles.

leon wrote:

An example of someone who has great functionall fitness is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Emelianenko
I considered putting a picture of Fedor up in the article of an example of what functional fitness looks like. I decided not to because most people, even athletes, care about how they look and don't want to be a little pudgy like Fedor even if he is in amazing shape.

I actually used to be really interested in the technical aspects of MMA fighting so I'm pretty familiar with it, but now I'm against fight sports in general.

Every time you knock someone out, you're causing the brain to jam against the inside of the skull (a concussion) and risking brain damage over time.

Every time you "choke someone out" which is legal in MMA, you're blocking the blood flow to the carotid arteries and shutting off their brain due to lack of oxygen. That is why they call it "putting them to sleep".

This is all aside from the acute dangers of death or serious injury that can happen in any fight...

Well, you got me to go on a tangent Leon. Maybe I'll write an article soon about why I'm against fight sports.

Its certanly true that combat sports carry long term health risks although I would say that boxing poses greater risks than mma. The thick padded gloves they use reduce surface injuries(cuts,briuses) but increses the shock felt beneath the surface resulting in more brain damge. That and the fact that boxing is basically about punching your oppenent in the head till they go down result in more brain damage thsan MMA which has a greater emphasis on grappling .

Moving on from the dangers of fighting sports I watched a video of fedor exercising,he was doing pulllups,crunches extremly fast. I thought you gained more benefit from doing exercises slowly because there is less momentum which makes the exercise more difficult. What are the advantages of doing exercises fast?

Could I suggest an exercise for you do post on. I can't go to the gym anymore so I am switching to soley bodyweight exercises. One of the new exercises I have taken up is jump rope. It is pretty difficult at the moment,I keep gettting tangled up in the wire. There are many techical aspects to it,how high you should jump,when you should jump etc which would be enough fill a short article