I wrote a commendation for my personal trainer Yoda earlier in the month after we finished up our 40 sessions. I sent it to our gym’s general manager and our account rep, along with my before and after pictures. I expected Yoda to get some kudos, maybe a bonus of some kind, and that would be the end of it.

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Last Friday I completed my last set of sessions with Yoda. He commemorated the event by kicking the shit out of me and running me through the entire workout with no more than 60 seconds of rest between exercises. We didn’t do any handstand pushups, but there were plenty of farewell wheelbarrows, bear crawls, reverse pushups, weighted pullups and dips, and other feats of strength to keep me sore throughout the weekend. We finished off the session with ten minute session on the incline treadmill of doom, with a two minute burst at 45% grade. Total workout time: 83 minutes.

I was very happy with the progress I’d made with Yoda, but both my wallet and enthusiasm wanted some time off from personal training. I met my goal of 12% body fat in July, and didn’t have a clear-cut idea of where I wanted to go next. I wanted to figure out my next big goal without paying for a trainer, or wasting their time.

In the meantime, I’m going to start swimming again. I started yesterday. Swimming isn’t very fun for me, but my body reacts well to it. My triceps are already sore from my short workout of 40 laps. I completed all 40 laps + rest time in 24:24. I have a short-term tactical goal of swimming the same distance in 20 minutes or less. I can already identify weakness in my technique that will help me go faster with less effort. I rotate from my shoulders instead of from my hips to breathe, and this fucks up my already crappy streamlining. I am also very tense in the water, and I am not putting my head and shoulders deep enough into the water — probably related to my poor breathing technique. Plus my body isn’t straight, I kick too much, etc. etc. I have a lot of work to do, and I wasn’t that great of a swimmer to begin with.

At any rate, here are some final body shots from my time with Yoda:

The front

Still no disco tits, but I’ll take what I can get — especially since you couldn’t discern my waist at all when I started. My deltoids and arms haven’t gotten any bigger, but this isn’t a surprise to me given how I am built and the exercises we were doing. Expect to see more from swimming. My collarbones are also more prominent now, as are my apparently VERY out of balanced hip bones.

The back

I’m still happy with my back, despite my hope that working out would somehow make the hair stop growing back there. My lats are much more developed. My triceps are much more defined and larger than when I started. You can even make out the head differentiation on my right arm.

The side

Ridding myself of my desk fat was the #1 reason I went to see Yoda in the first place. I am very pleased with this result — look at that spare tire! You can’t even see my ribs in the starting photo. Not bad for four months, especially since I feel like I didn’t give up a lot of DrFaulken staples, like eating a pound of cheeseburgers at a time. If I could somehow get my hips and swayback into alignment, I might actually look like a real human someday!

I really enjoy my workouts with Yoda. I was waiting for this to happen, and it finally did — Yoda asked me to do handstand pushups. I was pretty tired by the time we got around to it. I couldn’t do a fully-vertical pushup despite a few attempts. I did get completely vertical and held myself for a few seconds before trying my failed pushup, so at least I got that far.

All of the fun, nearly-vomit inducing workouts aside, I’m going to take a month break or so from Yoda’s tutelage. The biggest reason is financial, $40 per session isn’t a lot of money, but I burn through two sessions a week. As it is, I feel guilty spending any money on myself, with the house debts piling up and the air conditioner on the fritz.

I plan to return to the pool, for at least three days a week, and then maybe take up a group exercise class or two. Spinning and pilates are two candidates; one thing I am worried about with swimming is that my core may lose the strength I’ve worked very hard to obtain. Pilates, or some other core-intensive activity, might help that. Class activities are already paid for in our membership, so there’s no harm in giving them a try. Plus, the change of pace might be interesting.

I asked Yoda to caliper me last week before I left for California. It had been a little over a month since my last pinching. I have been doing all sorts of crazy plyometric shit with Yoda, and was interested to see how I was doing. I was also hoping to punish myself, since I haven’t been doing as much cardio as I should be.

We went through the usual ritual: I’d weigh in without shoes on, then Yoda would give me the multi-pinch with the calipers. I have dropped even more weight since last time, down to 182 pounds. I was 24 years old the last time I weighed this little. Yoda measured the same sites as last time. He entered the results into the software that records my progress.

“Wow,” he said.

My stomach soured. He was blocking the monitor and I couldn’t see. “Wow what? Is it bad?”

He stepped aside. “Twelve percent. That’s pretty awesome.”

Just like that, I met my goal a month early. Sure, I almost threw up during several of our workout sessions and I had to be sent home early during a set. It wasn’t a cake walk, but it was much easier to get down to 12% with Yoda’s assistance than doing it on my own in 2001. What should I do now? Ten percent?

Total weight loss: 7 pounds

Total change in body fat percentage: -9%

Total fat loss: 17.85 pounds

Rank on the Jaine Parr Badass Scale: Cut

Before I started my session with my trainer Yoda today, he talked about a Japanese training method called the “20×20.” No, this does not involve giant tentacles or robot monkeys. It involves doing 20 sets of the same exercise 20 times. You rest for 20 seconds between sets. The idea is to put your muscles into extreme fatigue. This results in an accelerated metabolic rate, and a natural production of human growth hormone. Yoda went on to tell me that the best exercise for the 20×20 were squats, since they use a ton of muscle fiber in the legs, ass, and core.

Yoda smiled at me and said, “but we can do that another day.” To which I smiled back, “why not do it today?” He made sure I was serious, and the next thing I knew I was doing 400 squats in the Freemotion machine.

“You’re going to be doing a lot of counting today,” I told him, as we started off the first set at 140 pounds. We peeled the weight down to 120, 100, 80 (one set at each weight). I did 9 sets at 60 and then rest at 40 pounds. 25,200 pounds in total. That’s hardly any weight at all per rep, but trust me, it was brutal. I was winded, sore, and completely soaked in sweat by my 400th squat. I thought we were done, but then we did a round of standing leg curls and then a round of seated calf raises. Then I high-step ran around for two laps in the yoga room, and kicked-my-ass ran for three laps. And then we did abs.

I was completely exhausted by the end of the session, but it was nice knowing that I impressed my trainer. As we moved around the gym, he called out “this guy just did 400 squats!” to other clients and trainers. One of my favorite things about Yoda — and this is why I dubbed him such — is that he’s always making me do crazy exercises that other people don’t do. I’m sure that if there was a way to levitate rocks or raise an X-Wing out of swamp, Yoda would have me do it.

After hearing Lady Jaye talk about swimming again and reading Fish Sprout’s latest swimming adventure, I decided to get back into the pool today. Wow, I’d forgotten how much swimming can kick your ass. I probably haven’t been in the water since the tail end of 2005 (seem right, honey?), and it was all I could do to crank out 50 laps. I did so in 30 minutes, 22 seconds. I normally rest for a minute every 200 meters, but for the life of me I couldn’t keep that up all the way through. My first 200m split was 3:12, the rest were much slower than that ;)

At least one thing hasn’t changed: swimming is fucking boring.

So, it’s the end of my second group of sessions with my trainer. As such, it was time for a fat caliper test. I knew that I was still losing fat around my midsection, but I felt guilty for slacking on my cardio schedule and for eating more cheese than I have in awhile. I make a grilled chicken breast, ham, and jack cheese sammich that is too awesome to ignore. Anyway, I got pinched. My first test from mid-March was a little off due to a different person doing a different caliper test, so my trainer and I decided that my base fat percentage was about 21%.

My triceps, rib area, and quads either went down very slightly or stayed the same. I have very very little fat on my quads, and Yoda mostly got skin. I don’t have OMG MUSCLES! popping out, but the days of chasing that squirrel is over. My chest went up this time, which was kind of interesting, but not a big deal. The big change was in my stomach, I went down about 30% from my last measurement. I guess my body is finally done storing those french fries and tater tots I gave up a month and a half ago. My overall bodyfat percentage is now 14.1%, or as Ms. Parr would put it, I am “cut.”

Anyway, for those who give a shit, here are some stats for the day. In the last three months I have: had a total weight reduction of five pounds. I have gained ten pounds of muscle and lost about fifteen pounds of fat. If I can shed another 2% body fat, I’ll be extremely happy and will consider my fat loss journey to be at an end. With some determination (and more cardio), I should hit my goal in time for my birthday.

To embarrass myself into more cardio time, it’s time for the monthly development shots.

The front

Holy shit, I’m starting to look like a real person! If my trainer can make my abs show, he will trick my body into doing something it’s never done before. More fat loss around the waistline, and some more chest development.

The back

My back and my quads are my lucky spots. There’s a big improvement here. You can also see my triceps peeking out. I have no idea what those muscles are on the left side of my lower back, but they weren’t showing when we started.

The side

I had to flip this picture because I was facing the wrong way (honey, don’t freak). Thinner, but still have a long way to go.

I feel a lot better about myself. The core (stomach and back) exercises I am doing now are pretty sweet. I’ve had a few people stop and watch me do them with while my trainer supervises. While you can’t see them, the muscles I’m the most proud of over this time period are my abs.

Another 60 minutes of cardio down yesterday, bringing my weekly total up to 120. I have at least two more cardio sessions to go this week — I am hoping to get involved in a spinning class and maybe start swimming again.

It’s been less than a month since I posted faceless pictures of myself as a benchmark for my workout sessions. After my last fat-pinching, I had Lady Jaye take some updated pictures.

The last rev of pictures are on the top in each group.

The front

The differences are subtle, and I’m not talking about the awful lighting. You can see my hip bones a lot better now, and I’ve started (slowly) to add some mass to my chest. Despite going up in strength quite a bit in the last month, my arms and shoulders still look about the same.

The back

From this angle, it looks like I’ve thinned out quite a bit. Either my back is becoming more muscular again, or I’m just shedding some of the center fat.

The side

Okay, admittedly I cheated last time and stuck my stomach out a bit, but nevertheless you can see some improvement from the side, also. I apologize for facing the opposite way. The one thing I immediately noticed was HOW AWFUL my swayback has gotten. Sitting for 14+ hours is really messing up my posture. How do I fix this? Holy shit!

Okay, that’s enough for now. Hopefully we can do this again in a month and there will be even more improvement.

I got calipered today by my personal trainer, Yoda. Another trainer had pinched me almost a month ago, and the result was 24% body fat. That was the highest my percentage had ever been, and I was determined to lower that number.

Today, Yoda did a seven point measurement, which means he pinched my chest, torso, scapula, tricep, hip, belly, and quad. The previous pinching was only a three point measurement, covering the chest, tricep, and belly.

I was hoping for a big percentage reduction, maybe as high as 4%, although 2% was more realistic. Unfortunately because the two pinch tests were different, the results were different, too. I was 17.7% body fat as of today. Given that the other test put a lot of bias on my stomach area (which is by far the greatest location of fat on my body aside from my head). Since it’s impossible for me to lose almost 7% of body fat in less than a month without drugs or surgery, I’ll have to chalk this month’s measurement up as a draw.