Have your feet properly measured and wear type and thickness of sock you will be wearing on trail when trying on boots. Boots should fit snugly but not too tightly. Remember they will become more comfortable with wear. Make sure they fit and provide support around your ankle and instep. You will need good ankle support, especially when carrying a pack. Hiking boots will never feel as comfortable as that old favorite pair of sneakers, but if you develop blisters or have pressure points, then you need a different boot. Look for boots with foam padding around ankle and tongue for comfort. Removable inserts will help to fine-tune for a perfect fit.

Once you’ve found perfect pair of hiking boots, be sure to break them in slowly. Start with short walks around neighborhood and progress to 3 or 4 hour hikes before that weeklong hiking vacation.

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It's simple really. Everybody wants to sell you a secret. But here's real secret and here's how I stumbled on it.

I found a workout program called Max-OT. Finally, a very structured workout program. What to do, when to do it and how. And it told me to lift heavy. It also gave me a tiny insight into eating right. But not enough. Somehow I got lucky and found a Burn Fat, Feed Muscle book. I printed it out. And that was it.

That was my ah-ha moment.

The secret was KNOWLEDGE.

Let me repeat that.

KNOWLEDGE

Nothing I've run across today is a big secret. It's not like nobody is telling anybody about this. What problem seems to be is that beginners don't know where to start and they don't think they need any help. So at some point they get very frustrated and end up quitting or losing sight. Not to mention sheer wealth of information on Internet in an unstructured manner is mind boggling. So what if all this information is on a bodybuilding forum. In 34,567 posts, with 9,567 members. Let me take hex number and make it readable to human eye.

If I took 12 million pages of information, some horrible, some bad, some good and some true gold and threw it all over house, took a blower to it and scattered every paper all over, that is what you have right now.

It would take you 2 years or more to go thru each page to find out what information was good, how many others confirmed that to be true and then you'd have to make your own table of contents and put it all together.

Just because it's out there doesn't mean much if it's not good, it's not structured and it's not written for you.

Here's what I've learned in just 2 years:

"What I need to eat in order to reach my goals and how to figure that out easily and quickly with just basic high school math.

"How I need to train and how less is actually more.

"Why being controlled and having excellent form gives me 50% more gains then guy/gal next to me who drops weight on bottom half of movement.

"How I can measure my progress easily and quickly and best of all… privately. So that I know where I've been and how close I am to getting there.

"That not all carbs are same

"There's such a thing as good fats and by taking a fat pill I can lose weight

The truth is…

I tried tons of workout programs. But my main failure wasn't necessarily routines I was doing but lack of knowledge I had. Can you imagine what it would be like to take 16 years to learn how to tie your shoe? Well that's what I felt. I wanted something so bad that I tried it all.

Heck, I even skipped dinners (skipping meals is a no-no) on weekends because I was too busy and tried protein shakes that didn't mix well with water to put on weight.

So it all adds up to this…

I was a beginner for roughly 16 years. And while not physically a beginner I didn't know what heck I was doing. Reading magazines by companies with an agenda is a horrible way to figure it out. And reading books by professionals who took paths and risk I would never take is also a waste of time.

Which is why I'm writing.

I've finally figured it out. And I know I'm not alone because I run a bodybuilding forum, and a fitness site and I get 5-10 e-mails or posts a day with people just like me. Who want something and have no idea how to get there. I know they will try everything and many of them will quit. And a few will go on to struggle for years until they finally realize secret to getting this dream is understanding nutrition, training and supplements.

Trust me, nobody wants to be a beginner for 16 years.