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Troy Meyers, one of the owners of JockBoyLocker.com, has been a certified personal trainer and sports conditioner for more than five years. Meyers offers his five tips on the biggest mistakes to avoid when starting a workout program:

1. Setting unrealistic goals. When you start a workout program, make sure that your goals are realistic and reachable. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to reach goals, which leaves most people quitting and giving up on working out. Set short-term goals, track your progress and set new goals once you achieve your original ones.

2. Starting out too fast. Don’t go to the gym in the first few weeks of working out thinking you are going to follow a workout program all the way through. Give your body time to adjust to the new routine. Your muscles are going to be sore your first couple of times lifting weights. Over-doing can cause injury and discourage you from going back to the gym.

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Marynell Meadors was named head coach and general manager of the Atlanta Dream in November. Since then, the veteran college and professional coach has been busy assembling the new expansion team and readying it for the upcoming season, which opens in May.

Meadors offers her five tips on what it takes to successfully launch a WNBA franchise:

1. Great expectations. You must bring a positive attitude to work every day because you are working at the highest level in women’s basketball. Starting from the ground and working to opening tip-off takes a lot of hard work and dedication to your goals.

2. Opportunity. Our owner, Ron Terwilliger, has a passion for the game, for women’s sports and for the success of our team and franchise. He wants to give Atlanta an opportunity to support women’s professional basketball the same way Atlanta supported our USA Olympic team in 1996.

3. Hard work. It is very difficult to be an expansion team. Most of the other teams in the league, with the exception of Chicago, have been around from five to 11 years and during this time, their rosters have developed into very solid teams.

4. Confidence. You must have in depth knowledge of how franchises work and years of watching players during their collegiate careers and in the WNBA. You have to know how they can play and how they perform in pressure situations. You must have knowledge of their work habits.

5. Adversity. You must be able to handle adversity and criticism. You will not make everyone happy.

Fab Five is a weekly feature that quizzes personalities about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.

Catch up on past Fab Fives:

Michelle Martin on starting and sticking with a fitness routine.
Mark Pettit on how the Atlanta Dream should reach gay fans.
Gary Sisney’s tips for watching the Super Bowl.
Philip Rafshoon on page turners for the sporty type.
Mike Horton’s gay sports hopes for 2008.

Michelle Martin, a massage therapist in Decatur, started swimming with the Atlanta Rainbow Trout at the age of 50. Two years later, she entered her first international swimming competition and now holds several records and won five gold medals during the International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics championships last summer in Paris. Last month, the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance named her Sportsperson of the Year.

Martin offers five tips on how older adults can start – and stick with – a fitness routine:

1. Start small. Don’t smart with something big. Don’t go from doing nothing to registering for a triathlon.

2. Start with something you already know. If the only thing you know how to do already is walk, then start walking.

3. Set your priorities. If you are going to do something, put it into your schedule. Say I am going to run every Wednesday at 9 a.m.

4. Set a goal. Work from goal to goal. When you achieve your first goal, as soon as you are done, set up your second goal and never leave yourself goalless. That is the twilight zone and you stop doing everything. For example, say for the month of February, I am going to walk 15 times this month.

5. Have a team – chiropractor, therapist, acupuncturist – to go to when you hit minor setbacks so they can help you heal. Because an older athlete has a whole different set of problems than younger athletes do, they get hurt and it takes them longer to heal. The big thing that discourages older athletes is that they get hurt and their body isn’t responding as it did when they were 30 or 40. You are not too old to do this. Have a team to get you patched up and running again.

Fab Five is a weekly feature that quizzes personalities about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.

Catch up on past Fab Fives:

Mark Pettit on how the Atlanta Dream should reach gay fans.
Gary Sisney’s tips for watching the Super Bowl.
Philip Rafshoon on page turners for the sporty type.
Mike Horton’s gay sports hopes for 2008.

Mark Pettit is president and CEO of Creaxion, one of Atlanta’s leading marketing firms. His company helped launch the Atlanta Beat, the city’s former women’s professional soccer team. Pettit is an avid spots fan and plays second base for the Atlanta Packers in the Hotlanta Softball League.

Pettit gives his five tips on how the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream should reach out to gay fans:

1. Openly embrace the gay market and actively promote the team to members of the GLBT community. There are thousands of sports fans in and around metro Atlanta who just happen to be gay. Once members of the GLBT community feel wanted and welcomed to attend games, they will.

2. Treat members of the gay media just like you would the mainstream media. Offer those outlets “All Access” press passes to the games, invite them to press conferences, etc. They have a loyal fan base just like writers at the AJC.

3. Proudly promote lesbian members of the team. They could become “darlings” of the GLBT community and help drive ticket sales.

4. Promote the Dream as a great outing for gay families. Even consider a “Rainbow Row” that gets kids and their parents close to the action.

5. Launch a casting call and hold open auditions for the “Dream Team: All-Male, All-American Cheer Squad.” It would be a hoot (and maybe newsworthy) to have an all-male team of cheerleaders promoting an all-women’s professional basketball team.

Fab Five is a weekly feature that quizzes personalities about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.

Catch up on past Fab Fives:

Gary Sisney’s tips for watching the Super Bowl.
Philip Rafshoon on page turners for the sporty type.
Mike Horton’s gay sports hopes for 2008.

Gary Sisney, one of the three owners of Woofs – the only gay sports bar in metro Atlanta – offers his five tips for gay fans watching Super Bowl XLII on Sunday. (Game time is 6:18 p.m. on Fox.)

1. If you’re planning on wearing your team colors to any venue to watch the game, you have a problem. The colors of the Patriots and Giants are the same. Go the extra mile and buy a T-shirt for 15 bucks so people won’t be confused.

2. Cheer loudly for your favorite team during the game, but remain quiet during the commercials. If any company spends $2 million for a one-minute spot, we need to hear the message so we can laugh at them.

3. Don’t plan on an exciting halftime show – it’s Tom Petty and the Heatbreakers. The committee wouldn’t spring for the extra bucks to hire Cher.

4. Play trivia during the game with the person standing next to you. Questions should be Super Bowl orientated. Try these: What is the official beer of Super Bowl XLII? What kind of underwear does Tom Brady endorse?

5. Be a good sport and keep the bathroom lines moving.

Fab Five is a weekly feature that quizzes personalities about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.

Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse, gives us his five favorite books with a sports theme:

1. “Man in the Middle” by John Amaechi. A thoughtful and revealing look inside the world of professional basketball. Amaechi takes us inside the locker rooms as he tells his story of being a gay man in pro sports who struggled to maintain his integrity in the face of homophobia and the fear of being outed.

2. “Breaking the Surface” by Greg Louganis. This is one of the earliest memoirs to honestly tell of being a gay Olympian. Louganis’ struggle with being gay, as well as his HIV status, and his ability to overcome these make for a moving and triumphant story.

3. “For What I Hate to Do” by M.W. Moore. This one is a recent addition to literature about gays in sports. This novel about an Olympics-bound college track star who is seduced into a life of hustling and drugs is the first in a trilogy.

4. Track is the sport in “The Front Runner” by Patricia Nell Warren. It’s the classic gay sports story.

5. “Alone in the Trenches” by Esera Tuaolo, a former Atlanta Falcon. It’s the inspiring story of a young man who overcomes a childhood of poverty to become a professional football player. He is also gay. Tuaolo gives us an insider’s look at the world of the NFL. People who know nothing about sports will find his personal story fascinating, while sports fans will also love the behind the scenes details.

Fab Five is a regular feature that quizzes people about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.

Mike Horton, chair of the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance (AGSA), gives us his five resolutions for 2008:

1. Everyone who wants to do so finds a sport within the AGSA family through which they grow physically, socially and emotionally. As a lifelong athlete, some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned have been on the playing field. Ditto for friendships. Sports keep us physically fit and socially active, and many of the situations we face prepare us for situations we face in life. We love welcoming newcomers into the AGSA family. Come out and play.

2. 2008 will be the Year of the Woman … in Atlanta gay sports, anyway. Hillary might seem to be in trouble, but we’re doing fine in Atlanta gay sports where female leadership is concerned. The Atlanta Team Tennis Association, our tennis league, has a female president, Hope Black, for the first time in 20 years. It’s obvious she will only strengthen our league with her skills. More women in our other leagues need to join her and the female leadership of the Hotlanta Softball League. It’s a great thing for all of us.

3. The Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club will be very successful, and have a lot of fun, at Bingham Cup 2008 in Dublin. Talk about some serious off-season conditioning! The Bucks have been training very hard to represent us in June. With five months to go, you can bet they’ll make us all very proud.

4. The Hotlanta Softball League will produce even more champions than last season’s three winners at the NAGAA World Series. Talk about dominance in 2007 and you can start with our gay softball league. The competition is fierce and we proved that Atlanta gay softball is truly elite during the tournament in Phoenix last October, as our league representatives won three of eight divisions. We can do even better in the Emerald City (Seattle) in late autumn.

5. Atlanta’s entry into Gay Bowl VIII in Salt Lake City in October ends New York’s run. We’ve listened to New York talking about their dynasty and about how Atlanta’s always been the team that could possibly beat them. This year should be the year that our team from the National Flag Football League of Atlanta ends your dominance.

Fab Five is a regular feature that quizzes leaders in Atlanta’s gay sports scene. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.