Hey guys -

I'm 18, and haven't worked out since about the age of 14. I've had a long depressed phase that I'm finally coming out of (ironically, after breaking up with my girlfriend) - so my body is fairly pathetic when it comes to muscles. However, during this phase, I also severely restricted my diet so I'm also very small.

I'm 5'9+3/4 and I weight right about 135 pounds. My athletic passion is climbing - trees, buildings, mountains. I'm getting involved with parkour at university and I want to have the best shape I can to have the most fun I can. The ONLY benefit that I have athletically is that I've got an absolutely indomitable will. I can run myself into the ground until I can't even crawl home.


So, with that in mind, my workouts focus around endurance & muscular control (I'm more worried about perfect form and staggering things than having an ungodly number of repetitions). The following is my daily workout - I've only been working out for about 10 days now so it isn't the best.

I jog right about four miles a day, this will eventually go 6mi-9mi-12mi up and down when I'm in shape.
Immediately after that, I stop into my garage and do pullups. I start at a total hang, then come up 1/3 and wait 3 seconds, 2/3 and wait, 3/3 and weight, then go back down 2/3, 1/3, fully hanging. I do 3 sets of 3 of these for my hands shoulder width apart facing me, then again for facing away from me. Next, I stand on a chair and spread my arms all the way out and try to do a pullup - my biceps aren't strong enough to do this yet, though, so I just go up as high as I can and hold it until I can't anymore.

While I'm waiting on my arms to recover, I do leg lifts. Right now I do 3 sets of 2-3 minutes at a time, with my legs a few inches off the ground. After this, I place a rod between two chairs and do my best to balance myself with only my core muscles. I just do this once and stay balanced as long as I can.

After this, I do pushups. I do between 200-300 each day, in several sets. I do as many pushups as I can do with perfect form, then do 5 more, and wait 15 minutes to continue. I'm working on my neck strength & balance to do handstands, then I'll incorporate handstand pushups.

That's it until bed time; I put on a random television show and hold a broom horizontally straight out in front of me for 15 minutes. I don't know if this really works anything, it's just good for my endurance and to focus on my breathing. I sweat a lot in this and it makes my arms sore, but I can't believe it is working very much.



As for my diet: I am a vegetarian\pescatarian. Occasionally I will eat fish, it's just not in the normal repertoire. I'm still having struggles eating enough because my stomach is so small, so I just try to make what I do eat count. I eat 3-5 eggs each day, I take supplements for iron, magnesium, zync, b12, + d3. I eat various nuts, fruits, and as many green veggies as I can handle (usually I just make a large salad with some low fat dressing). I don't have a protein supplement, I'm not sure if one is beneficial to me.

I drink lots of home brewed tea. I don't drink soda or take in any sweets. Occasionally I have a handful of chips with dinner, but that's the extent of my binging.




Does anyone have suggestions as to what I can do to improve?
My biggest area of struggle is the core; my summer goal is to be able to do a suspended plank (a plank while holding myself in the air off of a pullup bar).


Thanks a ton,
That emo gone athlete,
Sam