Farrell's Results

The results are in. I did not win the grand prize for the 10 week session, but I feel great.

Here are the stats from the beginning.

Mile Run: 8:56
Push Ups (on knees): 28
Sit-Ups: 31
Sit & Reach: 21 1/4 inches
Body Fat: 34.35

At the end my results:

Mile Run: 7:52
Push-Ups (on knees): 60
Sit-Ups: 43
Sit & Reach: 22


So I cut my mile by more than a minute, added 32 push-ups, 12 sit-ups and 3/4" on the sit and reach. I lost 4% of my body fast and 15 pounds total.

This is a picture of the woman who did win the challenge.  She lost a total of 22 pounds and looks great!

My Review of the Program:

The Coaches:  One of the big advertisements for the program are the personal coaches that each participant gets. There were 3 people in my group and we had two coaches.

I think it is better to describe the coach as an assigned friend. I don't know how they are picked, but they seem just to be other participants who have been at the gym for a while.

One coach would send us weekly emails of encouragement and some recipes. The emails were obviously stock emails that went out every week (our coach forgot to replace old coach names).

The coaches were both very friendly, however I didn't feel like they were pushing me to work harder.

So if you go in to this, then realize that the coach is not actually a coach, but rather they are your assigned friend.


The Instructors: I have a few favorite instructors like Angela, Angie, Joe and Kevin. Each instructor came up with their own plan for what they would teach that day, although you would basically be doing the same sort of exercises.

It is harder to stay motivated and engaged during the Strength Training days. You are mostly stationary working one group of muscles at a time. Some instructors were very good at keeping Bands fun, which meant that those who were not as good were noticeably lacking.


Class Times: I mostly went to the 5:30am class during my 10 weeks. I liked that it was in a smaller room so I could completely focus on what I was doing and not notice people walking behind.

A couple of evening classes offered babysitting which was nice when Morgan was out of town and I had to take the kids. It is just hard because in the evening I am worn out from my day.


The End: I actually did not win any prizes at the Celebration party, which bummed me out. Especially because they had a "Friends Prize" for people who came with a friend for the program and Charity and I totally did.  One of the instructors told me that was his fault, he forgot to put our names in for it.  Bleh.

I also wish that I had done my beginning testing for push-ups on my toes. You can't really increase speed, but you can increase endurance and strength. I recognize that this is me just being a little bit of a sore loser. I also know that you could purposefully do poorly at the beginning testing to have the results skewed, however I did not want to do that. I wanted to see what my level of physical activity was. I would have been cheating myself if I did not push myself.


So I am doing another 3 months of the program. I have switched to the 6am class so that I can sleep a little more and have more time with Morgan. I miss the teachers and other students from the 5:30am class, but I have to do what is best for my family.