God I hate posts like this, there is so much bullshit to wade through. If I wrote a tenth of what I actually had to say about any of this, it would be straight to TL; DR territory. But someone is WRONG on the INTERNET so....
Perhaps the fact that you have repeatedly asked for this kind of advice, yet no-one has stepped forward to offer it, might suggest that no-one here has any faith whatsoever in that kind of program?
I don't think you're taking this on board so I'm going to put this on the record. Before I started on the Starting Strength stuff last Nov. and was doing straight Crossfit, I was 160lbs at 5'8'' and ripped to the tits, glowing with health, bursting with energy, sub-10% body fat, super-low cholesterol, blood work off the charts. I was strong, fast and conditioned like crazy. Ask DCharlie or Groo or anyone here who knows me IRL.
I did everything from pull-ups, deadlifts, ring work, skipping, handstands, sprints, 5k runs, Olympic lifts, every kind of worthwhile exercise there is. Yet you seem to have got it into your head that I'm some huge fat white guy that grunts through sets of bench. No, I looked like you want to look, because I trained like an athlete, which is what you want to do.
Bottom line is, based on what you've posted so far, you don't really want to train like an athlete, you want to sit on a bench and fumble about with some light dumbbells, do a few sets of crunches and maybe do a bit of jogging at the end of it. Maybe you have the awesome genetics to get away with that and still look amazing, I don't know. The fact that you're still looking for more stupid shit to try indicates that you don't, however.
More likely, maybe you'll wake up in 6 months and think 'what the fuck, i'm wasting my time with these machines, maybe i should go back and read that stupid thread from that obnoxious asshole on EB and figure out what the hell i should be doing'. Why do I think this? Because I did the same shit you're proposing and it did nothing much for me. I hated it, it bored me silly, I never felt like i made any progress, and worst of all, it just boosted my appetite so I ate more shit and stayed overweight.
Also for the record: I have no interest in getting big for the sake of it; I've posted several times about that ITT. I do however have a profound interest in being strong, but not at the expense of everything else, which is why I'm back on the Crossfit bandwagon. I have discovered that you can be the strongest guy in the gym without being REMOTELY the biggest guy in the gym.
Personal trainers - ok, these guys get paid a whole $5 an hr, gotta listen to what they say. Anything these guys will tell you to do is geared around the equipment that the gym wants you to use: nice safe Nautilus machines and treadmills that require no training and don't create lawsuits. Hey, they don't actually do much good unless you spend hours and hours and hours on them but they're 'safe' and they enable us to hire 19yrs as 'trainers' rather than experienced professional coaches.
FWIW, I'm a qualified Crossfit trainer, though I don't do it for money. I don't expect that to carry any weight with anyone whatsoever though, which is why I've never brought it up here before. People can observe the results of the stuff I recommend them to try for themselves. If it doesn't work, come back here and tell me. So far, not a single person has done so.
