Older, bigger noob questions before beginning

Hello to everyone. i'm very pleased to have found GB.

Before jumping into GB with both feet, it would be helpful if I could have a few questions answered and maybe a few fears put to rest.

Brief history-competitive team athlete until 3 years ago. Hockey through university and rugby thru 2008. I am 38 years old, 6'2" and weigh 240lbs. I've always weighed 240, but I believe I'd be happier if I lost some muscle and dropped to <220. Both of my shoulders have been surgically repaired-a simple seperation and rotator cuff repair on the right shoulder-seperation, rotator cuff, SLAP tear, and Bankart tear along with various other labrum and bicep tendon tears in the left. I have 25 years training experience and am pretty knowledgeable, but feel like a complete moron reading through all the informative posta on this site. There is simply so much I don't know and I'm finding it hard to pull a thread loose to begin unraveling the mystery.

My questions are these:

1. Given my size and injury history, should I even attempt this course of action?

2. Will BtGB provide me with the tools to strengthen my shoulders and wrists, or is there a different product I'll need to supplement?

3. Do I need any training outside of GB? Especially as I lose 20odd lbs of muscle? Currently using Squad PT from milathlete.com

4. There are no adult gymnastics classes in my area. Assuming I can move forward, would you recomend hiring a coach to at least teach me the very basics?

5. does anyone know when the follow up volumes from Coach will be released?

Thank you all very much

1. Yes, if you want. Take it slow because of yours zise.

2. To some degree, you'll find some of the shoulder and wrist prehab in the beginning.

4. http://usa-gymnastics.org/pages/usagymc ... ml?prog=ms

Thank you for the reply BlairBob.

After actually doing the math, I realize that losing 20 lbs from 240 to 220 and reducing bf% from roughly 12% to 8% I'll only need to lose 5 lbs of muscle. You don't have any opinion on whether or not I'll need more training than GB? Having no experience with this sort of training, it just "feels" to me that I'll require more activity to lose the weight. I suppose it's possible that a simple dietary adjustment will allow my body to adjust it's weight to suit the demands GB puts upon it. My training experience leads me to think that an additional 5-10 hours/wk of training would be beneficial. Would really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks for the link. There are actually 5 gymnastics gyms in my area, but none offer adult instruction. Surprisingly, the 2 most competetive gyms weren't listed by the search engine. My thought is to hire a coach privately to teach me the basics of "hollow", "flat", etc. Basically to help me learn to the basics of rings, bars, and high bar and hopefully shorten my learning curve.

Thanks again.

Sean

that's probably what you will have to do. they may or may not allow you to do privates there because of their gym insurance.

you want GB to help you lose 20lbs? Diet and burn a lot of calories off.