Building endurance while losing weight

[skull]

I should be leaving for the army in August. I'm 5'11" 170 lbs. I know I'm not overweight at all. I'm just hoping to lose about 20 lbs. of extra flab before I start trying to build muscle. I'm not in very good shape. I've only run 2 miles once in my life and it took around 20 minutes. I can do about 30 push-ups in a row un-timed. By the end of training I need to be able to run 2 miles in 16 minutes 36 seconds. Do 40 push-ups in 2 minutes and 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes. My goal is to be able to do better than that by the time I leave for basic.

My plan is to start eating right. Start doing HIIT every other day. Can I do push-ups and sit-ups everyday? As it is right now I feel a little sore after doing push-ups the next day. As far as I know push-ups and sit-ups are more endurance than strength. I shouldn't have a problem increasing my reps while in a calorie deficient should I?

 

[brikis98]

You'll be fine. Although progress will be slower than when in a caloric surplus (or at maintenance levels), you can definitely get stronger and build endurance while losing weight. In fact, since you are a beginner, you shouldn't have much trouble making gains at all. However, I thought I'd toss this out: look into Crossfit. It is used by a lot of military personnel, both for improving their fitness in general and as preparation for the APFT. The Canadian Army found Crossfit to be significantly more effective than their standard training methods, despite taking less time (read about it here). There are also tons of posts on the CF messageboards discussing the APFT and CF (example 1, example 2, example 3). In all likelihood, you'll get in much better shape using Crossfit than any program you come up with on your own.

 

[conorvansmack]

Originally posted by: skull
My plan is to start eating right. Start doing HIIT every other day. Can I do push-ups and sit-ups everyday? As it is right now I feel a little sore after doing push-ups the next day. As far as I know push-ups and sit-ups are more endurance than strength. I shouldn't have a problem increasing my reps while in a calorie deficient should I?

Push ups and sit ups require *some* strength, but you're mostly right, they depend more on endurance for the numbers that you mentioned.

The soreness will start to lessen once your body adjusts to doing multiple sets of push ups throughout the day. Adding in pull ups would be a great way to add in another body-weight strength exercise. Doing burpees will help with strength and cardio too.