Well, the moment of truth has come.  Today I went through my personal assessment with Craig and Justin and I now have a clear starting point I can compare against.  I will be posting the actual assessment I received from Precision Athletics on my Facebook page if you want to check it out. So, foolish me thought that the assessment would be a walk in the park, so I actually didn’t prepare myself mentally to take it on.  It started with the normal stuff I expected which was a weigh-in and a body fat % test.  Here I would like to add that I actually had the real fat % test done, the one with the calipers that measure skin thickness.  I must say I was impressed since I thought they would just use the hand held machine which I know does not work.  Other trainers have told me in the past that it doesn’t work and I’ve confirmed it.  Try it yourself.  Use one of those machines twice in the same day and it will give you two different results.  Anyway, back to the assessment. After tipping the scale at 195 lbs it turns out I only have about 11% fat on my body (keep in mind I am almost 6’4”).  Sounds good right? Not so fast.  Most skin folds went pretty good until we got to my belly.  While my arms and legs were easy to measure, my belly fat is so thick that we almost had to get a bigger set of calipers.  Like most other people, one of the main reasons I am trying to get back in shape is so I look good strutting my stuff down the beach this summer.  So my goal is to get rid of the belly fat and put some more meat on the broom sticks that protrude from my shoulders. So, after being measured up I thought I was off the hook.  Riiiiiight.  These guys were going to do a full physical assessment of my current fitness levels.  This included: running on a treadmill with a heart monitor; doing as many push-ups, chin-ups, jump squats, crunches and burpees as I could in a minute, as well as skipping rope for a minute.  Yup, I had to push myself to the max on each one of these exercises to get an accurate measure of where I’m at.  Needless to say, I was beat by the end. Why did I do it?  Well the folks at Precision Athletics recommended that I did, and now I see why.  As you know, over the past few years I have kinda done my own thing when it comes to working out, with very mixed results at best.  Part of the reason was that the only way I could tell if I was getting any results, was by looking in the mirror.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but its not very accurate.  Don’t you agree?  Standing on the scale alone doesn’t quite do it either since loosing weight is only one part of getting back in shape.  Now that I know exactly where I stand I can see the progress I make over the months not only in how I look, but how good of a shape I’m in.  I’m convinced that looking good is nice, but being healthy, feeling good and having energy are also important. A bit of advice for getting your assessment done. 1. Do get it done (it will serve as a guide to help you reach your goals). 2. Push yourself (if you work out half-ass you will get half-ass results). 3. Don’t worry about the results the first time (if they are not what you expected and you get discouraged they will only get any better if you quit, but work hard to improve on your second, third …) That’s all for now.  I will now start with the Bootcamp and CrossFit classes and keep you posted on that. Talk soon.