Bill Cammack

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ok… Here we go AGAIN! :D

The last entry I made in my “Gym” category was back on August 4th. The plan at the time had been to increase my weight by 20-30 lbs. That didn’t work AT ALL and right after that, I got bogged down in work to the point that I wasn’t thinking about or caring about working out at all.

When I started putting my game plan together for 2010, I realized that the area I needed to make the most improvements in physical shape. I’m always in good physical shape because of my parents’ genes, but I used to be in the gym every day and I used to enjoy the soup-up-factor of being in insane shape. It was necessary for sports I used to play and it makes it about a gazillion times easier to pick up chicks when all you have to do is take your shirt off. :) Read the rest of this entry »

About two weeks ago, I announced that I was going to try for 190lbs. That plan is SCRUBBED, as of yesterday, haha. It’s not going to work. :D

The first thing I did was overeat. That immediately put me to sleep for a couple of hours, so I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to sustain my productivity with this style. After that fiasco, I switched up to eating a bunch of small meals all day. This works out fine, and at this point, on a scale that I wasn’t using for my previous weight assessments, I’m a consistent 164, which is actually a perfect spot for me to hop back in the gym. Read the rest of this entry »

Technically, this is gym day #10, but it’s actually #9, because I just posted on that day, so I haven’t been to the gym since day #8 which was the 13th, 4 days ago.

in 165.2
out 165.6 (water)

Yes, I already took Brian’s advice and I’m not concerned with my actual weight at this point. I’m still going to mark it down for archival purposes.

I still had zero motivation after four days out of the gym, but I felt like going today to see what would happen. It was too cold to go to the real gym, so I went to the bogus gym and got what I paid for.

Of course, there were a bunch of people there, so I ended up waiting around for a couple of the machines, and it was impossible to find a couple of sets of dumbbells I wanted to use, because there’s only one or at the most TWO sets of each, and people take them with them to the ends of #&$*(#& creation to do sets and then don’t bring them back to the racks. :/

I had decided that the only thing I was really interested in today was working towards getting my dips/pull-ups back in order on the weight-assist machine, but without using the weights. The problem with this particular machine in the bogus gym is that there’s no function to change the width of the dip bars. Since I’m a slimmer person, that means that as I’m doing dips, my arms aren’t where they’re supposed to be, at my sides. Instead, my arms are kind of out to the sides as if I’m about to draw two guns in a western movie. :/

Obviously, this means that I’m using more sets of muscles than I’m supposed to, and I’m not getting to isolate my triceps & chest properly during the dips.

The wide-grip pull-ups weren’t that bad, but the close-grip COMPLETELY SUCKS, AND is also too wide for my frame, so I end up holding my arms like a referee right after someone kicks a good field goal. :/ Read the rest of this entry »

Reader Brian, from Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia left me some GREAT comments that I just read on “Gym, Day 08″.

Let me first say that THIS is the benefit of self-expression on the (literally) world-wide-web. I can’t explain to you how amazing and incredible it feels to have people reading and responding to my posts, LITERALLY from around the entire world. :D
I can’t explain it because I couldn’t have explained it to myself before I got involved. It really expands your mind and your “vision” beyond localities and territories.

It’s really fantastic that Brian a) read my post, and b) commented. It’s icing on the cake that what he had to say was on-point, thought-provoking and useful. I wanted to be sure to respond in a post instead of just in my comment section.

Brian: “Throw your scales in the river. They are demotivating and often very misleading. Water retention/loss will mask any short term changes.”

That’s what I was noticing, and the reason I started marking in AND out weights. The reason I was paying attention to weight at all is that I stay at a base weight unless I really make a big deal out of consuming extra food (and formerly weight gain formulae and protein drinks). Back in the day, when I would TRY to gain weight, I had to pretty much stand perfectly still not to lose it all back, haha. This was fine down the line, when I wanted to ‘cut up’, but it was a drag for the overall prospect of gaining weight. Read the rest of this entry »

in 164.6 (electronic)
out 165.0 (water during workout)

Complete and Utter lack of motivation.

I opted out of the real gym yesterday (part of my lack of motivation is now lack of motivation to BLOG about my lack of motivation! :D ) and went slummin’ in the convenient gym. I was totally and completely disinterested in going, but I know that if I don’t, it’s eventually going to get to warm weather and I’m going to wish that I HAD gone, so I went.

My recovery system’s down to < 24 hours and will eventually be < 12 hours. I decided that I was going to work on sections I needed to work on rather than concentrating on a routine or overall plan.

The electronic scale said 164.6 lbs. Admittedly, it's a slight rush to be ~3 lbs heavier just by getting on a different scale, haha. It takes weight to push weight, so for some reason, I just felt better, even though, mentally, I knew there wasn't any difference and that if I went back to the metal scale, I'd be back down to 161. Read the rest of this entry »

in: 161.5
out: 162.25

I knew this morning that something was “wrong”. I was actually fully recuperated yesterday, and could have gone to the gym then, but I decided to hold off until today, just to see the difference. Today, I was completely ready to roll, but I had a hard time getting to the gym.

Physically, I’m doing fine. Mentally, I’ve hit a stage that I had forgotten about, which is “lack of motivation”. I’m basically already satisfied with how I look, which is the purpose of working out if you don’t play a particular sport. It’s like when Fonzie goes to the mirror and tries to comb his hair, but before he touches himself, he’s like “AAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY :D ” and just walks away, hahaha. So I knew I needed to go to the gym today, I knew I could have gone yesterday but chose not to, and still, I just didn’t feel like going, haha. :D Read the rest of this entry »

in: 160.5
out: 160.5

I’m not concerned about the .5 lb difference between today and three days ago. That could be any number of factors, including some 300 lb dude getting on the scale and stressing it out before I got on it.

It does look like my system’s planning to balance out in the low 160s, so I can kiss 170 goodbye! :D

I realized this morning that I had played myself last time by starting out with pyramids. You really want your first exercise to be heavy, so I overdid it, trying to find my limit. I found it, but in order to do that, I did a lot more reps than I should have, and pretty much jacked the rest of my workout. By the time I got to weight-assisted supersets, I was pretty much kaput.

This time, I decided to keep it heavy up front and save the light for the supersets at the end. I made some pretty good guesses, so I have a good template to start from next time I head back to the gym.

I do 6 reps per set, ’cause that’s how my coach @ MIT taught us to get busy. I know Dino doesn’t read this, haha but I’m sure he’ll never forget when I was happily benching and up to reps 7 and 8 and Coach was SCREAMING AT ME at the top of his lungs, and I stopped in the middle of a rep, looked over at him and said “Who? Me?” hahahaha :D So.. Yeah… Keep it heavy. If you can do more than 6 (or, actually, if you can do a good 6 and don’t feel stressed at the end of it), increase the weight for the next set. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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: