I consider myself somewhat of a middle-aged athlete with a fairly decent grasp of weight training principles and who understands the importance of cardiovascular exercise for good overall physical fitness. Prior to my interactions with Jin, I weight trained about 3-4 times a week for 1-1.5 hours each session, and played full court pickup basketball with similar frequency and duration. I figured that this level of activity would be more than sufficient to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but I didn't account for my extremely poor diet saturated in sugars, salts and saturated fats.
Starting last May of '09, I decided to kick it up a notch in an attempt to shed a few pounds prior to getting married this past September. Apparently the extra notch that I needed was Jin's bootcamp class that met twice a week Tuesdays & Thursdays from 7 to 8 AM. Keeping everything else essentially the same - crappy diet, a semi-consistent weight training regimen in the afternoons & an occasional pickup bball game - I dropped twenty pounds, two pant sizes and several body fat %age points in a 12-week period (6'2", from 210 to 190 lbs, 36.5" to 34" waist, mid-teens to high-single digits in body fat %age). If only I were disciplined enough to trade in the super-sized double cheeseburgers and large fries for more health-conscious choices, my results would've been much more impressive.
Jin does an excellent job of keeping things fresh by mixing up (and doing different variations of) the multitude of exercises that comprise his bootcamp. The strength and endurance focus of the class typically starts off with a run of 1 to 2 miles - sometimes with cumbersome medicine balls, lengthy 2 x 4s, ropes or other exercise paraphernalia held overhead - often in groups of 4 to 8. This is usually followed by some form of team-based competitions, typically in relay-race-type formats, involving anything from bear crawls, walking lunges, towel pushes, prisoner squats, kickboxing bag pushes, kettlebell walks, etc. Calisthenics also comprise a lot within his format, but he certainly isn't afraid of pulling in dumbbells, gliders, bolsa balls, ropes, kettlebells, TRX straps, rock-climbing-wall-equipment, you name it, into his training regimen. The class then usually "winds down" with some core exercises - crunches, bicycle kicks, russian twists, planks, turkish squats, etc. I've yakked or near-yakked on a number of occasions, learning early that it's best to intake at least a banana and a fair amount of fluids before stepping into a boot camp session.
So I guess the bottom line is: Jin teaches a helluva class & knows how to push your limits while keeping you motivated and engaging you in novel and actually pretty fun types of activities/competitions. & I guess most importantly, he delivers results. I'm pretty happy with how his boot camp helped me transform my physical appearance, forced me to run distances greater than one mile for the first time in my life (improving my 1-mile pace from double digits to 6:30), and forge a brand new social network of "Boot Camp Homeys" that keep me even more motivated and challenged. I actually ran my first (& maybe only) half marathon @ Big Sur this past weekend, and there's no way I would've been able to cross that finish line without Jin's training that predicated the race. Two thumbs up, fo' sho. read more
