Well since you asked!
Short term, I want to get my body fat level down to an appropriate level for what I do: play rugby. Currently around 16%, and should ideally be sub 10.
Long term, there are a lot of fitness aspects to rugby that all need improvement. One step at a time though, and some can probably even be met while cutting down the size (you need a HUGE aerobic engine to perform in rugby so that ties in rather well).
My plan for the next few months can break down by month pretty much:
- For the rest of October, I'll be maintaing current strength and endurance capabilities, maybe minor improvements, until the season ends early November. Making gains right now would be difficult as I practice twice a week (pretty gruelling too) with two games on the weekends. So working out by myself more than once/twice a week is un-ideal.
- Once the season winds down, I still have one last tournament at the end of November. However for that month I'll be practicing once/twice a week and my schedule opens up. After maybe a week of recovery, I want to start active cutting. My plan of attack for this is the UD2, created by Lyle Mcdonald. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially a cyclical ketogenic diet designed to quickly empty your system of all available glycogen, followed by a hayuuuge carbload that over compensates your glycogen stores in order to have a MASSIVE work out at the end of the week. Did a three week test run earlier (would have gone longer but ran into over-training/injury problems during the season) and the results blew me away. Came out the same bodyweight as I did going in, but made about a 10% gain on most my lifts: BP went from 185 to 205, squats from 250 to 300, etc.
- After either making my BF goals or running out of time, I'll transition to a high-carb diet with aggressive endurance/interval training. Ideally this will start about 8 weeks prior to the season, which we begin sometime in April. So that makes the transition period begin around February. That gives me about three months to drop 6% BF; aggressive, but I've seen much bigger results on the UD2.
- Once the season hits, well, its a 6-7 month season, so body composition & strength will have to stay at maintanence levels, but hopefully I can peak my overall 'fitness' by August to be fully prepped for post-season.
Well THAT ended up being longer than I intended! It's also the first time I've fully laid out my intentions and plans though, so feel free to critique!