Bill Cammack

in: 161 (metal, not electronic)
out: 161 (metal, not electronic)

I had to make the trek back to the real gym this morning, because I could feel that I was going to have a solid workout. I couldn’t take the chance that the bogus gym wouldn’t have what I needed to get ‘er done.

Also, by the time I would have gotten to the bogus gym, the meager resources would have been occupied by the jobless and the night-shift-workers. At the real gym, I wasn’t in anybody’s way, and nobody was in my way.

I need it like that because my workouts, like my life in general, are dynamic. I just *know* what I feel like doing and then I do it. I don’t follow a routine other than feeling out the first exercise I want to do, because that’s going to determine what body parts get fatigued sooner and it’s going to affect the amount of weight I can push in other exercises.

So I wanted to start with perfect-grip close-grip pulldowns. Those fatigue the biceps VERY early on, which affects curling later, but the alternative is curling more weight and being able to do the pulldowns with less weight. Unless you’re focusing on biceps, which I’m not, you don’t want to do that. In general, you want to go from larger muscle groups to smaller.

I’m ahead of myself, though. When I got to the gym this morning, I got on the same metal scale that had listed me @ 163 lbs two days ago, on January 05. I was fully expecting 164, so I slid the marker there, and nothing moved. It didn’t move at all until about 161.5 and balanced out @ 161. I drank water while I was working out and weighed out at the end at 161 flat.

This is what I was wondering about when I first started back to the gym 10 days ago, on December 26th. I was surprised that I walked in the gym @ 162, because it’s always been a struggle for me to get past 160.

So now, just as I suspected, my body’s starting to consume itself, commandeering materials for rebuilding the tissue I’m destroying. I had thought that I would go up to maybe 170 before stabilizing, but I actually LOST two pounds in the last two days. Meanwhile, I did a better workout today than I did any of the other days before.

Basically, I’m getting bigger, stronger and “slimmer” at the same time.

It seems that not only does my body sweat away weight above 160, but I also lose my appetite. So while resources are being commandeered for rebuilding purposes, I’m actually eating LESS, which leads to more resources being internally pulled which leads to my having even LESS of an appetite. I would swear that over the last week, my stomach has been able to hold progressively less…

Apparently, my body isn’t built for gluttony.

I don’t eat because I have to. I eat because it’s fun. :D This makes it an incredible CHORE for me to attempt to gain weight. So I’m guessing now I’m looking forward to remaining stable around 160 and just redistributing resources.

So anyway… I did my close-grip pulldowns. I started out with “150″, whatever that means. It’s amazing to me that different sets of weights, that are clearly both marked in POUNDS weigh completely different amounts on different machines. I know it has to do with the grips you use and how well-oiled the cables are and all that, but it’s really ridiculous. So I did my pyramids, starting with 150 “lbs” then moving down 20 lbs at a time as soon as I couldn’t do another rep at that weight. I did a few more sets of pyramids, starting at 130 and then 110.

Next up was bent dumbbell rows. I can’t remember whether those are an either/or with pulldowns, but I wanted to do them anyway. My biceps were clearly extremely fatigued already, so I was only using 40s. I expect to be back up to 60s immediately. I might already be there if I make that the first exercise. Either way, I’m nowhere near where I’m going to be soon enough with those.

I think curls were next. EZ-Curl bar. LOOOOONG way to go with those, but it was better than doing dumbbell curls, because your whole upper body gets into stabilizing the motion and lifting the weights. After that, pressdowns, then an exercise I can’t describe which is 1/2 pressdowns and 1/2 decline bench press.

Next, I hit shrugs, but I wasn’t feeling fatigued with curls, so I went back around to curls, pressdowns, shrugs.

I finished the session with weight-assisted dips/pullups, which is really the litmus test. Once I get it back together, I’ll be able to do the exercises without using the weight assist at all. That’s probably another month away though.

I hopped on the g1 to check some email, etc and then after that, I felt slightly refreshed, so I did more pressdowns, curls and weight-assisted-exercises. From there, I weighed myself @ 161 again and then left.

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