A Journey of A Thousand Miles...

...begins with today's workout.

The goal is to get onto American Ninja Warrior, and you do that by trying out. Tryouts this year were in the middle of May in Venice Beach, CA, and you got to run the tryout course either by camping out on line and being lucky, or by submitting an audition video that made the producers want to give you a guaranteed spot. Mind you, this was just to try out; far as I know, no one was guaranteed to survive tryouts.

So I figure I've got 'til March 2012 to get in shape enough to make a tryout video or show up in Venice to take my shot at the course. From today to the week of March 11, 2012 is 36 weeks. So I give myself that long to get ready to compete one way or the other.

Which is perfect for me. I've been a garage-gym weightlifter and summertime road-racer for years, but lately it's been hard to get excited about another pre-dawn pullups workout or another running of the same ol' Memorial Day 5K. Now I've got a goal, however unrealistic, that I can pursue for over six months.

But what to do over those six months? How do you train for this unique game show, one where the obstacles can change from season to season and even guys who (if you believe what you see on G4) devote their lives to training for this competition come up short? Well, in any creative endeavor -- and devising this training schedule is a major exercise in creative writing -- it helps to have restrictions. And I've got mine.

--no more than an hour a day of training. I just can't get up any earlier before I have to get myself and my daughter out the door in the morning.

--no more than six days a week of training. I've always taken Fridays off, since my races are usually on Saturdays. But now I've come to enjoy starting the weekend a little early by not having to work out Friday morning. So we'll keep that schedule.

--No exercises I can't do on the roads, the track, or in my garage. That means I won't be building my own Spider Climb, and if you don't know what that is then you're not wasting enough time watching reruns of Ninja Warrior. I also won't be joining a gym. There's plenty to choose from around here, from CrossFit to Gold's Gym to Planet Fitness, but I just don't have the time to drive anywhere to work out.

--No equipment I don't already have or can't afford. And I can't afford to spend much on this "hobby." RIght now I've got a pullup bar hanging from the ceiling, a bench that I use mostly for plyometrics, a Swiss Ball, a weighted vest, and some ropes and towels for hanging on the pullup bar. And that's about all I'll ever have. I just bought a climbing rope to hang in the gym, and I'm still figuring out how to break that to the missus.

These restrictions actually make it easier to plan a workout program. Obviously, I'll be doing a lot of bodyweight work, with some endurance and sprinting work out on the roads and the local high school track. So I don't have to worry about whether I'm doing bench press or DB flys. But I still need some structure.

A little Internet research pulls up the basic concepts of periodization training. Basically, you spend the time furthest from "the season" focusing on endurance, fat loss, and anatomical adaptation, the first step in developing sport-specific skills. The next phase is for strength development, adding muscle. The last phase before the season focuses on developing power and sport-specific skills.

I've got 36 weeks, so I'll just do three twelve-week phases. I also figure I'll go light every fourth week, and change up the routines every four weeks. I got the idea for a light week from the computer-generated running workouts I've used for years at Runner's World's website. And the consensus in fitness and weight training resources appears to be that every four weeks you need to change things up to avoid plateaus in development. Basically, in about that time your body adapts to the stresses of the current workouts, and your progress planes off. This common-sense principle seems to be at the heart of P90X's "muscle confusion" philosophy, though I know nothing more about P90X than I've seen on the infomercial.

That means that the first four-week period in the first phase started today. I've posted on the sidebar a link to my training calendar, which I'll add to and update as I go. I'll only get the first four-week plan up at first, but I expect that I'll comment here about my progress in each workout.

I'd intended to debrief on today's first workout, but if I don't get seven hours sleep I'm a mess the next day, so this will have to be it for me now. Suffice it to say my body has not yet adapted to this stress.