Hi all, King Robinho here (yep, I'm a City fan )

I've just recently got back into getting fit after a long time of sitting about and getting flabby. I'm 27 and throughout my teenage years I played alot of football(soccer to those in the snowglobe that is the US :P) so stayed pretty fit at that time. I stopped playing football at about 18-20 and haven't really done any exercise since. That was until about a week or so ago. Since then I've spent quite abit of time on the exercise bike and bought myself a rowing machine, which is great. I'm also on the weight watchers diet, which I started about 1 month ago or so, after seeing my brother lose 2 stone on it with considerable ease.

I weighed 16+ stone before I started the diet and exercise and am now nearing 15

I've signed up here mainly to find out how to get a certain body type. I'm not into getting a muscular body in the mold of Arnie, I'd much prefer to have a very lean muscular frame. I'm wondering whether there are different training techniques to accomplish this goal?

Here are a few stats of mine, incase it helps.

Age: 27
Sex: Male
Height: 6foot
Weight Around 15-15.5 stone
Bodyfat: Dunno, but I haven't seen my abs for years :P


Thanks in advance for any help. I think I'll be sticking around for a while. It looks as tho there's lots of info here.

Sounds like you are on the right track toward your weight loss goals. The main thing that is going to help your overall progress is to increase your metabolism. You want to have your body burning calories and a high rate when you are NOT working out.
This is achieved through proper nutrition, strength training, and interval conditioning.
Nutrition: 5-6 small meals per day, spaced out about every 3 hours with at least 20g of protein with meals
Strength training: start with large movements using body weight- squats, lunges, push ups, chin ups then progress to using some weight with the movements. You want to recruit as many major muscle groups as possible with each lift. This is efficient and effective. Strength training will build lean muscle which will increase your metabolism due to the high activity of muscle tissue compared to fat.
Interval training: stay away from steady state cardio. Pick an exercise (bike and rowing machine are great) and perform a minute interval as fast as you can, then recover for 1-2 minutes. Do this 5-6 rounds to start and then build yourself up. This will burn more calories, increase your metabolism for up to 36 hours post workout, and will take much less time than slow cardio.
These are just some basics but check them out and see how you do!