[quote]joshua hudson wrote:
I am actually a fairly active 400 pounder[/quote]
This leads me to think a change in diet will have the biggest impact. How were you eating, like, for the last few months?
Not trying to give you a textbook-perfect diet from the start, but If you cut the milk, it’d be even better. Eliminating pretty much any liquid calories, even skim milk, will go a long way towards dropping fat.
If you could find a way to get it accurately diagnosed so we don’t have to guess at what’s going on (and guess at a way around it), it’d be great. Especially since that’s obviously prone to reinjury. In the meantime, it’s just a guessing game.
General prehab/mobility work to keep the hips and low back healthy could help. Or it could just be a matter of dropping the first 50 pounds and then you’ll see it magically start to feel better. Were you this heavy, or close to it, when you first injured yourself?
Sled variations can be great cardio. Nick Tumminello has some cool ideas for using a tire here:
I’m as big a fan of the clean and press as anyone (cough, cough, The Biggest Exercise in Bodybuilding , cough), but I do think you’re trying to overinvest in this one exercise when a focus on figuring out a well-rounded routine will obviously be better overall. Could it be useful to incorporate it? Sure, but I wouldn’t try to make it the cornerstone of your training just yet. Unless, like we said earlier, you want to make it one of your concrete goals (in addition to dropping X amount of bodyweight/fat).
I agree with HT that it’s something you two could certainly do together, especially since your new meal plan will be a big part of your daily life. If you’re not actually training together (from experience, this doesn’t always work out well for both parties), you could at least be in the gym together each doing your own thing.
How much available time do you have for training each week? As in, not counting walks with the Mrs., could you fit in 3, 4, 5 workouts of about an hour each? If time is a commodity, we need to know how much you can spend before we figure out what to spend it on (the actual plan).