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Fair enough. How long have you been training for? If your knees hurt from running, then try hittin the bike, or eliptical (kinda crappy), or swimming. You're replacing cardio with semi-high volume isoation movements. Don't take this the wrong way but, thats ass-backwards. You are NOT getting much of a cardio workout by curling a dumbell 15 times instead of the regular 10 times. You should incorporate cardio into your regular routine but at a different time (if possible) or a different day. I used to take a run as soon as I woke up in the morning and workout in the evening.
It sounds like you want to add a little bit of lean muscle to your build, but not too much, while losing some fat. Honestly, you should ditch the high volume (this isn't really even high-volume, more like warmup sets) and stick with a basic structure of 4 X 8-10 (1st set warmup), and really focus on a couple key, whole body excercises (back squats + bad knee = surgery; so that might be out of the question). Tall frames aren't really build for squats, you're built for pulls (deadlifts, etc), I'm sure you've heard that stuff about levers, etc.
The other thing is that your goals are mixed, you want to lose weight but gain muscle mass? You must cycle bulking/cutting phases to get the most of your training. I suggest you go on a bulking phase for 2-3 months, and really hammer out 3 quality sets/excercise. After this you should enter a cutting cycle, amp up your cardio to 4-5 days/week and lean out your diet.
As an aside, there is a high-vlume training method that Poliquin wrote about (it originated in Germany) that really works (if you don't mind puking your brains out during workouts), essentially it is a 10 X 20 (yes, 10 sets of 20 reps) approach that uses the same weight at 60% of your 1RM. Its freaking tough, but it works and it hurts. Heres a link:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/luis13.htm
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K...only thought i was giving myself some semblence of a cardio workout because I don't rest between sets or exercises for the entire workout.
i basically hate cardio but may do that guerilla cardio thing someone linked or the stuff Thremp is talking about
i work 8:30-8pm M-F so swimming is probably out of the picture.