DukeD

I agree I wouldn't just up and quit. At the very least it would be good to further explain your training history as well as your nutrition to explain just what exactly you feel is declining. From personal experience I won't lie there was a point (a couple weeks) where I questioned if this vegan stuff was making me weaker. I began to feel more lethargic or more frail when training. Now given that my work rate began to get much higher as in I was rarely taken any days from moderate to hard training. Furthermore when I made the shift to a vegan diet I switched to a pretty close 80 10 10 style diet. So my protein was drastically less than before. I was still however just as strong (benching over 315 and deadifting over 400) and lost weight from 215 to 185. When I assessed my situation I really couldn't complain. I lost weight and maintained solid strength while at the same time eating healthier foods. Now I'm slowly incorporating more protein and training for strength once again and feel good. It would greatly help others if you elaborated too.

I know the military will probably stress quantity over quality, but it's worth noting to make sure you're still getting good depth and have good form with your pushups. Watch anybody in a gym performing pushups and about 80% are straight up butchering the exercise. Also those poor habits are hard to break. So it might not be a bad idea to drop down to your knees and work on the depth/quality as well. There's an old military analogy that I use all the time for exercise form, where they say supposedly women are better at men in firing a rifle when trained properly. And this is supposed to mean that the while the men had years of shooting over the women they performed them incorrectly and thus had poorly ingrained movement pattern to break. This is very true with exercise and see it all the time. The people that can learn the best form are those with a clean slate.

Definitely pick up these books: You are you're own gym-Mark Lauren Convict Conditioning 1 & 2 - Coach Wade. These are the only books you'll need...assuming you get the fundamentals down.

Well it seems that the credential that gets the most hype is NSCA's CSCS or certified strength and conditioning coach. This certification is pretty much required to get hired to train college athletes and work with sport teams. People love placing those letters (CSCS) at the end of their name with distinction. IMO I'm not sure why this particular certification is made so special. You do need a college degree to even take the test which is good, but there are others such as the ACSM Health Fitness Specialist or Exercise Physiologist cert that require the same. I actually think the NASM performance exercise specialist is better as far as material. There were many others that used to mean something such as USAweightlifting, CHEK, and Charles Poliquin, but many certifications I believe have fallen by the wayside. As far as credentials for a book are concerned, I've noticed the general public and even those paying for training have no idea about the different distinctions or certifications. I have plenty of friends who sadly either have allowed their certs to expire, have some fly by night cert, or worse never got certified at all. I've never even had a client ask about my credentials. Although despite I think you all would laugh at the number of certs I have. They are fun though....Just took the Cornell plant based nutrition one. I personally think the best thing to have would be a graduate degree in exercise science or an MS.

Simply to improve your posture do the prone cobra at the end of every session. One of the most underrated exercises for loud lifestyle. Work up to 3min of total hold, but make sure you're doing right. I'm also a huge convert to bodyweight training (although I built my frame using traditional bodybuilding). You don't need a gym, but you do need to train hard with progressive resistance for a long time. I still go back to traditional lifts on occasion and haven't lost a step. Did a bench press first time in months last week and maxed out at 350lb for 4 reps. No crazy structured chest day(s) anymore, just crazy one hand pushups and handstand pushups whenever I feel like it. Also still at 195lbs with 8%BF. Just saying gyms are highly overrated!

I've got both and I'd say go NASM, but it does depend on where and what you'd like to do. For general personal training I'd say that NASM is much better at program design than ACSM. ACSM is much more clinical and desired among academia, however is lacking on practical applications. ACSM is a harder more rigorous test, but both are well respected.