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, Read the rest of this entry »

In: ?163?
Out: 164.8

I had to go to my main gym today. I have two gym memberships. I have my REAL gym, and I have this bogus gym that’s really convenient for me. I was reminded today why I’m a member of my REAL gym.

I had nothing to do this morning @ 6 am, so I thought I was going to the gym, except my bogus gym doesn’t open until 9 am on Saturdays. :D So I had to make the trek to my real gym, which opened @ 7 am.

I actually started working out before I realized I hadn’t weighed myself, because the bogus gym has the scale when you walk in the door, for some CRAZY reason. :D So I hit the locker room and found the scale. It was an actual, physical, metal scale. For some reason, I trust those more than I trust electronic scales. So I got on it and it balanced @ 163 lbs. That’s why I have question marks around “163″. I got on a completely different scale, so it doesn’t really count. I’m not sure which one is more accurate, however, at least it confirms that I’m actuall in the low 160s, and that the electronic scale isn’t 10 lbs heavy or something.

It was good to be back in the regular gym. I had a much better workout today than I had going to the bogus gym. That was for several reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

I decided to bring this June 2007 video back because it reminds me of the release of the “tension” of 2008 (which, granted, there were very few things that got on my nerves last year) that I received, waking up fresh this morning in 2009.

It also represents the work that’s going to be needed to be put in this year if I’m planning to remain on top of my game.

2008 is done. “Hazing” is OVER. Time to get down to REAL business.

~Bill

in: 164.4
out: 164.6

Day 03 was the first semi-”let me at ‘em” day. Days 01 and 02 were like “I don’t wanna go, but I have to get started sometime”.

I started today on the weights instead of the bag for two reasons… 1) I was getting fatigued ahead of time and wasn’t able to judge where I was with the actual weights, compared to what I used to push, and 2) Since I primarily stand “righty” when I’m striking, I was excessively fatiguing my left arm, which meant that once I got to dumbbell curls, my left failed way before my right.

You don’t want that, because you have to stop working on the stronger side when the weaker side fatigues so that you don’t maintain the right side’s superiority. Ultimately, you want both arms to ‘fail’ at the same weight and the same number of reps.

It’s also important because when you do exercises with bars, like wide-grip pulldowns, for instance (or even leg extensions or leg curls where you use both legs at the same time), if one side’s weaker, you end up compensating with the stronger arm.

This would seem to be a good thing, like the stronger arm is helping the weaker arm to push/pull more weight, as if you were being ‘spotted’ by someone. What it actually does is make the stronger arm work MORE, since the weaker arm already failed and is kind of just there “fakin’ the funk”.

Fakin’ The Funk

The obvious problem with this is that one side remains weaker and overworked the entire time, leading to UNDERworking your strong side, waiting for the weak side to catch up. I decided to avoid that this time and go for the weights first.

It wasn’t so bad this time. I probably pushed 1/2 of what I’m used to. That’s good for day 03 / first week back. I walked in @ 164.4, another Guinness World Record weight for The Kid, haha. My metabolism is (according to Steve… WAS :/ ) incredibly high, to the tune of I need to consume ~5,000 calories/day in order to gain weight.

Obviously, the problem with that is that I’d have to spend A LOT of time eating and A LOT of time resting in order to maintain weight. Especially back in the day, when we used to hit Roseland or Palladium or Underground and I’d drop four (4) pounds in one evening, dancing hahaha, that was pretty much a drag. :/

Anyway… I figure the extra .2 lbs was from the water I drank while I was there. I feel good right now… Way better than I felt after days 01 and 02. Muscle Memory works in stages. The first stage is “I don’t want to do this”. The second stage is each individual group getting its wits back. The third stage is the groups starting to work together… biceps working with lats on pulldowns. triceps working with chest on dips or pressdowns, etc. The fourth stage is unity… The whole system working as one machine.

I’m currently in stage 2. The wrong muscles are failing on the exercises. My shoulders are failing on the “dip machine”, when it’s supposed to affect my triceps. My biceps are failing on the wide-grip pulldowns, when it’s supposed to be my lats. At some point, the weak links are going to come online, and I’ll progressively get a lot more out of my workouts.

Current prediction of max weight = 170. I still don’t believe my system’s going to sustain any more weight than that without sweating it all away.

I still haven’t prepped the day 01 video and haven’t even looked at the day 02 video, so I’ll repost a video from July, 2007, back in the 155 days:

In: 163.7
Out: 163.9

So, of course, I increased my food consumption now that I’m back in the gym. The same electronic scale reported that I was 163.7 when I walked in the door and 163.9 on the way out (most likely due to drinking water while I was working out). Read the rest of this entry »

Most likely due to all the beer I drank, it seems that my base weight has gone up to 162 lbs. I’m defining “base weight” as how much I weigh without working out at all for a long period. Read the rest of this entry »