Tip-off

We are two old friends who are dealing with our physical vessels and attempting to squeeze the most out of our athletic prime while trying to balance the rest of our lives.  We've got a lot of work to do and a long way to go. Sometime early on we'll provide as much backstory and context as we feel like, but ultimately our aim is to use this blog to hold ourselves accountable in our fat loss journeys.

While our life paths intertwine and our interests overlap, our fat loss oddyseys are at different stages. If I were to put in terms of the eponymous literature from Homer, I'm probably a lot closer to handling my business on Ithaca while my counterpart is still somewhere in the Iliad, dealing with his own Trojan War. That's enough convoluted conceit lest I lose you and tempt my fellow blogger to make clumsy references to Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom.

At my highest weight and arguably, my lowest point, I was either 16 or 17 years old and around 220 pounds on a 5'6" frame with a body fat percentage too high to be measured by any means I could have afforded at the time. At some later juncture, I had bought a scale that provides a body fat measurement, a device which informed me after countless readings of "Err-H", that its upper limit was 45%. Even though I was mostly composed of fat, I guess I "wore" it well, people probably thinking I was 20 pounds lighter than I actually was. What I couldn't hide was how terribly out of shape I was. Outside of P.E., I never lifted weights or ran. At that point, I could barely negotiate my own body; I couldn't do a single pushup or pullup.

Flash forward about 6 or 7 years, late March 2010, I weighed in at 128 pounds with a BF% of 14.6. My consecutive pushups total was nothing to write home about, probably around mid 30s to 40. My consecutive pullups (palms away from you) total was a little more impressive (if one understands how difficult a pullup can be to execute properly); it's almost been a year and I would have to check my written logs, but at my peak I was approaching 13 nonstop pullups done with proper form. (None of that kipping nonsense.) The stops and starts from 220 to 128 pounds will fuel many posts, and definitely couldn't fit here.


It was through blogs and the internet that I managed to learn what I needed to know, where else to look, and what else to read. Desire and will can only go so far without knowledge. As we experiment with how this blog keeps us on the right track, I hope that anyone reading it finds something of value. If you've been a fan of the NBA in recent years (I recommend it), you probably know that our title derives itself from an ad campaign that recently has been replaced after its permutations were exhausted by whoever handles the League's marketing. With that said, expect some NBA stylings mixed in with our own. Many serious athletes keep some sort of log of their routines so if nothing else, we'll at least try to keep each other posted here on our training progress.

Accountability still is King, (no Lebron), so don't be surprised if we post about our compliance (or lack thereof) with our eating or nutritional plans. I have been using a calorie logger for a while, since in weight loss, the calorie is king. Though accountability reigns supreme,  I reserve the right to be as indulgent as possible, if not in my consumption, then in the ongoing creation of this blog. It's been a labor even to put this post together, gestating in my brain, spanning a couple of NFL playoff games, and I finally can hit publish while watching the Knicks and Lakers. Apropos that this blog becomes official as Kobe stalks the court while Amar'e shoots free throws because Black Jesus, Lord Knows, we're doin work.