JD_Johannes’s BodyBlog

My gym got a bunch of new equipment, everything from benches and racks to machines.

I have no idea why they did it.  The new racks and benches look cool and hi-tech, but are crap.  The machines, and I use machines a lot because my body has a few parts that don’t work so well anymore, are junk and don’t have enough weight on the plates.

I fully understand that the business model for most ‘fitness centers’ is to get a person in the door, put the hard sale on them, close the sale hard and fast, get a debit card number and have the new member sign on the dotted line then collect $19 bucks a month and hope the customer never shows up.

But I’m the guy who pays cash for a year or two in advance.  I show up five days a week and wear out the equipment using lots of weight.

Some of the big chains really don’t want serious lifters as members, which is why the dumbbells only go up to 80 pounds at most of them.  Serious lifters also are bad for ‘add ons’ like computerized training programs and salesmen masquerading as personal trainers.

Serious lifters destroy the illusion they are selling.

The gym I work out at was a real gym for a while, now they have multiple branches and it is becoming a fitness center.  That is great for the ownership group and more power to them for making money.  But not so great for the few serious lifters.

In a large market, say Phoenix, a fitness center can churn and earn because there are millions of potential resolutioneers who will hand over the debit card and never show up.  In a medium market where I live, there is a limited pool to churn through.  But the serious lifters are bread and butter–$200 a year for 20 to 30 years.

I’ve done the math and I can build a pretty good power gym for myself, but since my office is in my home, I really do like going to the gym to get out of the house.

If I open up a real office again, I’ll probably set up a gym at home and weld together some safety racks so I can do bench to failure without crushing myself.

One of the ways I track progress is by calculating the lean tissue diameter of my upper arm.  It is a decent way to quantify gains.

By the skinfold calipers, the fat thickness on my upper arm is 1.9mm

By the measuring tape my flexed bicep is 44.6cm or 446mm.

Now I use pi to determine the lean tissue diameter of my upper arm to see if I am building muscle.
So, the circumference is 446mm.  I divide that by pi which is 3.14 which yields a diameter of 142.03.

Now, I subtract the mm of fat thickness, 1.9, which results in 140.13mm.

I call 140.13 my lean tissue diameter.  I use this number over time to quantify whether I am building muscle or not.  At the stage I’m at, the gains are measured in milimeters per year.

Ok, 335 lbs for 7 reps on flat barbell bench.  I was a little low on carbs today, so the velocity was down a bit.

The zag is moving up on the rep max chart, still off my ‘high’ but going from working with 315 to 335 is a pretty good jump up.

Both are down a little this week because I went up in weight.

Friday I did bench with 335 and got 6 reps on the first set.  Not to bad, but nothing stellar.

Today on curls I did 160 for 7 reps.

I haven’t been on an accurate scale in a while but "feel" like 215.  I’ll have to do a caliper test late next week and see where I’m really at in terms of lean muscle diameter.