Finished the training footage last week and I can honestly say that this was far more work than I had anticipated. The sessions were much longer and coupled with running the blast for a few weeks longer than I had wanted to and dieting at the same time, it was pretty tough. I am cruising this week after beating the shit out of myself for almost the last 9 weeks with filming for the last 2. The rest of the filming will be much more fun and less stressful.
Even though this DVD is not about contest prep but more about longevity – training and competing into your late 30s, 40 and even into your 50s, I am still going to have some prep related things in there. Obviously, I will break down the skiploading and the changes and adjustments that I have made to these protocols but other things like a chapter on posing correctly. I am going to break down the mandatories, in detail, to show how to post correctly and effortlessly. I don’t like a lot of what I am seeing on the stage these days with “new” ways of posing. Whether I am judging or competing or putting someone on stage I think that posing correctly is a necessity.
A lot of big shows going for TEAM SKIP. Clients in the LA show, Contra Costa, European shows, Minnesota State coming up and Jr Nationals just to name a few. TEAM SKIP clients are representing well this year, as usual.
Jimmy arrives at camp in about 2.5 hours (as I type this) so I am dissappointed to see him leave here last Friday but excited for him and his upcoming season.
So, my stress levels are down as I take a deload week, this week. I will keep my cardio up and diet on track but will be spending time at my youngest daughter’s play on Tuesday, signing my son up for fall football season, getting my truck mods done and Sissy’s new car in for some minor bodywork/upgrade. Basically, I will act normal this week. Well, as normal as it gets around here, anyway.
I am in the writing mood but I don’t have much on the brain after the last several weeks of running crazy. If anyone has any ideas about what you might like to hear me rant about, email me or respond here and let me know. TEAMSKIP@IntenseMuscle.com.
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Boy, if I didn’t have any friends before some of my earlier blogs, I am REALLY going to lose them with this one. I have put this blog off for so long thinking that it wouldn’t be necessary but the truth is, I just can’t get around it. I owe it to myself and the people that are being lied to, to put this information out there for all to read and then decide what to do with it. If you still think I am a shady serpent and you most avoid me at all costs, so be it. However, at least you will be able to hear the other side and not just the lies that are being told about me and about the situation for the past year.

Here goes and I will work hard to keep this as short as possible and I plan to take this down after a short period of time so that all can read this that matter and then it comes down. I don’t want to clutter my blog with bullshit like this. The people that come to read my blog don’t deserve to have to sift through all of the shit:

Cameron Bodner worked for me under the TEAMSKIP name doing some prep work with female clients for what I believe to be about a year, give or take a few weeks. The name of their training was called TEAMSKIPdivas. This was a made up name (not a business name) for publicity so that we could promote the female side of TEAMSKIP. TEAMSKIP is a legitimate corporation in Colorado and is in good standing. It can be publicly referenced or checked at any time by pretty much anyone that wants to check on it. TEAMSKIPdivas is not a business of itself and was never owned by Cam despite both Cam and Tracy referring to that business name as theirs in online biographies and in talking with other people and clients. They simply did training under the name TEAMSKIPdivas.

I provided Cam a private forum at IntenseMuscle.com to train these clients and promote TEAMSKIP. I turned clients towards him that would approach me by saying that I had someone else that did the female training for me and to contact Cam at blah,blah, blah email address. I gave Cam TEAMSKIP t-shirts to give to his clients that were doing local shows so much that I would bet the total would have been over 80 shirts in total, for free. In fact, let’s get this straight right now: I never charged Cam a dime for anything. I didn’t charge him for the private forum, I didn’t charge him for the shirts, I didn’t have him pay any sort of commission fee and when he organized a 20 some client dinner after a show and it was me who paid for the dinner. His clients that were there will vouch for this. He paid for NOTHING, EVER. I offered him to train females for me for two reasons: 1. Because they were friends of ours and I felt it would help to get him more exposure because he didn’t have a website to work from and 2. Because I felt that with their (Tracy too) energy it would help to get TEAMSKIP even more exposure in an area that I was neglecting because I wasn’t training many females at the time. Now, it is important to note that I didn’t train females at the time out of choice, not because I didn’t know how to train women. I know that seems absurd and you might wonder why I would make that statement but you will find out later in this blog why I made that statement.

So, after things started out well, they started to go downhill quickly.

I started getting concerns from his clients that I thought were small issues at the time and didn’t really think much of it. It wasn’t until months down the road that things started to surface. See, when you work a regular job and then try to keep up with client work it sometimes takes a while to get a response to a client with a question but it shouldn’t take 4 days and this was happening on a regular basis and I started to hear this from clients. I also was hearing that clients were feeling that they were being over-charged and that the fees weren’t discussed clearly and would end up to be much more than they were quoted. About this same time Cam was starting to treat my business, TEAMSKIP, as if it were somehow his. I was getting argued with about things that were none of his business and I was constantly reminding him that it wasn’t his business or his decision, it was mine.

Fast forward to this time last year and the shit hits the fan. This is the part that all of Cam and Tracy’s friends and clients both past and present need to read very carefully. I am going to very clear on what happened and it is going to contradict what Cam has been saying for quite some time. You can read this and figure out who to believe now that you have both sides to the story. Honestly, I don’t give a shit who you believe – what I care about is that everyone has the other side of the God damned story. I have been played as a “serpent” and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. When you play with someone’s livelihood and business, you get shit-canned. I think it was just hard for a control freak to realize that he had been fired – plain and simple and he was PISSED about it. Here is what went down:

With all of the problems I was hearing about, I figured there were many more that I wasn’t hearing about. I went into the forum that I provided for Cam and started checking on how he was treating clients and what was going on. Remember, it was and is my fucking business (TEAMSKIP) and it was and is my fucking board (IntenseMuscle.com). Contrary to stupid rumors, I have not sold IntenseMuscle.com and I won’t be selling it at any point in the future. I am one of two owners of the board – period. I don’t know how that could have been misconstrued but it was by someone, somewhere, and apparently it just grew from there. I have free reign to go anywhere I want to on my site and I don’t have to ask permission from anyone – especially Cam – for whom I provided this forum to. The things I found were incredibly unnerving to me, the owner of the business that Cam was a representative of. Please note: I have the ENTIRE forum archived at IntenseMuscle.com. I can pull it out at anytime that someone wants to consider calling me a liar and show exactly what clients were saying and the lapse in time for responses to clients of 3 and 4 days at a time, etc.. So, before someone starts running their mouth about something that isn’t true, just know that I can back up what I am saying and will, if need be.

I found issue after issue but for the sake of keeping this blog to only about 10 pages I will use just one: A client was ready for a big show out of state and at about the 3 week out mark, the client was told that they owed another 800 bucks. The client is, of course, freaked out because they can’t afford that and it is only 3 weeks out from the show when it is sprung on them. The client argues that the fees were already discussed and that this is what is owed but “don’t stress over it now – We will get it figured out when you get back” was the response the client received. I am sure that left the client pretty calm and unstressed at that point before such a big show. Oh, this wasn’t the only one. There are many stories like this and some of their past clients might be reading this knowing that they, too, were scammed or bilked out of extra money. Jerryme was treated the same way with the same story and all of the threatening to “beat his ass” by any Scratchy Package client is laughable – especially when it comes from someone weighing about 100 pounds less than Jerryme. However, considering the source, I was not surprised.

One of the big issues that needed to be discussed was that clients were admitting that they were provided “supplements” from them that I had a HUGE fucking problem with because they were not a formal business and they were working under my name so had they gotten in legal trouble it would have been terrible for my business name and reputation. Was this true? I never got to talk to Cam about it. He wouldn’t talk to me about anything.

I needed to talk with Cam about this stuff and find out how to remedy the situation or what his side of the story was so I called him and asked if he could meet me the following weekend which was actually Labor Day weekend. I tried to downplay it on the phone and act like it was no big deal but control freak Cam had to press me for the details of why I wanted to sit down with him but I just kept saying it was no big deal and that we just needed to talk about some business stuff. This was on a Monday. I called him a couple times as the week went on because I wanted to be sure that he was going to meet me and not cancel due to it being Labor Day weekend and he kept saying that he would. We get to Friday and I am on IntenseMuscle.com and notice Cam in the forum I provided for him deleting threads. He is deleting entire threads at a time and I am watching thinking “what the fuck is this clown doing????” See, it is a rule that nothing is deleted on the IM site, ever. He was a mod and so was Tracy and they both knew this. If someone (mod) were getting rid of something, it was to be archived, never deleted. Yet, Cam is in this forum deleting client threads one by one. I got on my phone to call him and after a few attempts he was not answering his phone. At this point I am beginning to think that he knows what I am going to talk to him about and is just plain pissed about me questioning him (control freaks are like that) and has decided: “fuck it, I am deleting everything” and goes into the forum to get rid of everything all the while not answering his phone when I am calling him. So, I banned him and Tracy right there. Why? SO THAT IT WOULD STOP HIM FROM DELETING ANYMORE OF THE THREADS UNTIL I COULD TALK TO HIM AND FIND OUT WHAT THE FUCK HE WAS DOING. It was the only way for me to stop him from deleting information on my site. Some may not understand this so I want to be very clear here because Cam didn’t get it either: Anything and everything on that site is mine. It is property of IntenseMuscle.com as soon as you post it. Everything in the forum that I provided for Cam was mine and property of me – plain and simple. If you don’t understand that, I don’t know what else to say that will convince you of this but it is fact and if you don’t believe me, go talk to an attorney. They will tell you what I just said. I think when you pretend to own a business vs. actually owning one (or two in my case) you just don’t know what is legal and what isn’t. Example: Making money without being a legitimate business but using a business name is illegal. The IRS doesn’t like that kind of thing.

Now, after the “banning”, Cam decides that he won’t answer his phone that night and all the next day. He did finally call me and leave me a message saying he was pissed that I banned him and acting as if “who the fuck did I think I was”. That part was laughable. However, it was typical of Cam because he always treated my business as if it were his. Now the game that Cam is playing is “ignore Skip”. This is another control freak trait. So, you think he would meet me? Of course not. I had to fire him via email and I still have the email to prove this and I will post it in it’s entirety, if someone wants to call me out on that, too. Even after firing him, a couple weeks go by and I figure that maybe he is just stubborn and maybe I should give him the chance to still meet and get this figured out to at least salvage the friendship even if we can’t salvage it from a business standpoint. He still was playing control freak and not returning any of my calls or emails. Finally, I just had to drop it because he wasn’t going to say anything…. until I cornered him at the gym a few months later and we finally got to talk. The talk was nothing but frustrating and was filled with things like this: “You didn’t fire me because I didn’t work for you” and things like denying that I sent any emails or made any calls. It was pretty pathetic. No accountability at all but consider the source.

Another fast forward to the months following all of this and the lies that are being told to his clients and “friends” it comes to the point where I have to post this to set the record straight.

They (Cam and Tracy) did not leave IM on their own. I fired Cam so they pretend that they left on their own. I offered to reinstate them as mods if he could give me a good reason why he was deleting all of those threads and he refused to so they remained banned.

Another lie is that I was going through Cam’s forum “learning how to prep women”. This is easily the most arrogant thing to come out of his mouth and maybe the funniest. For the life of me I can’t figure out why he would say this or think that anyone would ever believe this. Skip needs to figure out how some low-ball, 3rd tier trainer that I hired to work for ME, knows so much more than I do. Obviously, I thought he was good at what he did at that point in time or I wouldn’t have asked him to train people under my business name.  At the same time, I should have seen the red flags like when he wouldn’t ever  get into a discussion on any board about nutrition or supplementation because he doesn’t have the knowledge to discuss and debate these topics. I challenge anyone to go to any board and search on Cam’s posts and find even 3 posts that he discussed anything nutrition or supplementation related, in depth, or more than a 6 word response. He probably has 20k posts on more than 7 boards so take my challenge and see what you come up with. There will be nothing. Of course, most of Cam’s clients won’t be surprised because they never had things explained to them, either. Just another complaint that was received on my end of things last year. I guess people figured that my reputation was important to me and thank God they contacted me to let me know. I have heard that they are still doing the same shit and just lost two long time clients this last month that went to Dillon Armbrust at Armbrust Pro. I am not surprised, at all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I am blamed for them leaving, as well.

When it is said that I “stole” clients from Cam, that is also an exaggeration of epic proportions. I think this one was just plain desperation. He had nothing else to say after I fired him so this is likely the best that he could do. He must have thought it would make sense because of me checking up on clients in the forum that I provided him. What REALLY happened was that the people that were unhappy with the way that Cam treated them (6 or 7 clients were leaving at the same time after complaining about everything from them changing fees to how they were ignored), decided to up and leave and it was me who ran them down apologizing for Cam’s behavior and offered to train those clients for pennies on the dollar if they wanted to stay under the TEAM SKIP name vs going to train with someone else. Some stayed and some left. The ones that stayed I took on as clients. When you own your own business (a legitimate one), you do things like this to “make it right” with your clients that feel they were shit on under your business name.

Another thing to address is the Luis Santa video: Brandon did that video to give Luis some exposure after winning the Rocky in 08. When he did it he was going to put it on IntenseMuscle.com and I asked Luis if he also wanted it on my new site: teamskip.net as I was just getting it finished up and it would add content to my featured athlete section. I felt it would give Luis some added exposure and his video sitting next to a professional football player might not be too bad, either, for him. Add to this that my site is badass and kept current and sits at the top of google search engine and it is a good place for him to have his video seen by a lot of people. He was all for it and gave permission for this. Read that again if you missed the permission part. He raved about the video to friends and family. I thought it was great and I was happy that Luis liked it. So, to the Cam camp that wants to make it sound as if I used Luis to promote TEAM SKIP, that is yet another laugh. Sad reality is, with an NFL athlete on my roster I don’t really think that the rocky winner was going to need to be pimped out by me. With all due respect to Luis, he hadn’t won anything at that point other than the Rocky show. At the same time that this is being said about me, Cam finally spends a couple bucks and gets some t-shirts done and gets Luis into one and ever since, is pimping those pictures around and posting anything and everything that he can about his new buddy on FB while wearing one of their shirts. I don’t know, I didn’t ask for anyone to wear a t-shirt of mine that I didn’t train and I don’t pretend to prep people by handing out t-shirts. I was asked a couple times if I trained Luis for any of his shows and said absolutely not. I explained that he gets himself ready for his shows and works with no one. I know that the AF newspaper thanked Cam for his “invaluable knowledge” during Luis’ preps but …. seriously, what are good friends for, right? LOL Cam picks his friends well. Luis is a good guy but if he wasn’t a bodybuilder with potential Cam wouldn’t give a shit about him. He won’t admit that but others are reading this knowing full well how he is and shaking their heads. Check Cam’s friend list and tell me if 90% aren’t bodybuilders and figure competitors and tell me what percentage of those people he actually knows.

I am going to stop here for now. My stomach is turning. I still stand by what I said last year and what I told Tracy at the 09 Colorado: Had Cam just spoken with me when I found out about all of these competitors being upset about how they were being treated, it is likely that none of this would have gotten to where it has. I think Cam needed to not talk to me, though, so that he could put his own spin on it and pretend to still be the goody, church guy that is so Godly and I am just the bad serpent guy. Cam questioned me about the issue surrounding the Aurora police department asking around about him selling steroids and for the life of me I still can’t grasp that. As if I would go tell the police that he was doing something like that to get him into trouble. Cam should keep in mind that I am not the only person in Denver that cannot fucking stand him and I am not the only one that he speaks badly about. The list is long. Hell if Cam ever trained at Armbrust there are a hundred people there that would love to drop a plate on him and some are in his friend’s list. I guess he just doesn’t know who his friends are or doesn’t care. It is more important to have a nice long list of friends that he doesn’t know but that are known in the industry.

It worked out well, though, that we aren’t friends. Trials and tribulations suck but they do let you know who you can trust and who will screw you over in a heartbeat. I don’t have the time to list everything that happened so this is going to have to do. Again, you can make your own decision as to whether this is true or not. I just don’t fucking care anymore and just feel better that my side is out there. Do with it what you want but please understand that when you hear one side of something it will always sound oh-so-very convincing. Ask yourself how you would react and how you would feel if these things happened to you. Then, you might begin to understand why this has angered me for so long. Hopefully now we can all move forward now that everyone knows both sides of the story.

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I have worked with Curtis 2 times previously and aside from his outing where he dropped to the ligheavyweight class to get his pro card, he was in his best condition while working with me. Tonight Curtis hit the stage for his 3rd pro show and by all accounts I am getting feedback that this is his best condition as a pro, thus far. We got together only about 6 days ago so there is plenty we can improve upon but his condition at the Europa Pro Show tonight shows clearly that if this is what we can do in only a week, we have a bright future ahead of us. I look forward to working with Curtis in the future. He is a great guy and has tremendous potential that I feel is yet untapped. He and I are on the same page in that we both believe in keeping it simple in regards to contest prep and that is going to be the difference in his condition in the future. Keep an eye on this guy and it appears he will likely crack the top 5 at what is being called the year’s best 202 line up of the year.

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I have been getting a lot of questions about what I am doing in the off season this year so I figured I would respond here. It is none of your fucking business. That should about cover it. Thank you.
Seriously, I am doing so many different things that I am hesitant to even mention them for fear that some of you will just jump in and do them too and they may not work well in the end. Look, I experiment so I am going to be doing some things that just simply won’t pan out or work at all and some other things will work great. It is so early in my offseason that I have no idea what will pan out and what will not.
I am currently still doing 100g protein drinks and I love it. This one will likely pan out just fine but it isn’t the cheapest thing to do because protein powder isn’t cheap. Another bone I will throw is that I am waking and doing 2 cups of fresh fruit with a scoop of BCAA powder right away. Why? Because as most of you know I like my coffee in the morning for an hour or even more before I eat my first meal. I have gone YEARS with eating my first meal 1.5 to 2 hours after I get up and after I enjoy my pot of coffee everyday. I have been doing this to get something in me right away and yet not have it get in the way of my enjoying my coffee. I make a fresh fruit salad every 3 or 4 days and keep it in the fridge.

I am going to offend the DC training Gods with this one but I have gone back to not separating carbs and fats to a certain degree. I do cut carbs completely at some point in the day but I am having some added fat with my carb meals earlier in the day. What? Skip is having CARB meals???? I added carb meals, as well, about 2 weeks ago. I am not terribly hip to it because my guts hate me and my wife will hate me shortly if she doesn’t already due to the incredible gas that is emitted on a regular basis. I find myself disgusted with myself if that gives you any idea of how bad it is. I do think it is getting better and I hope that this continues because it is not fun.
Now, there are some up sides to the added carbs. First, I have never been this full. It is almost painful how full I am, sometimes. The pumps are insane and I am not talking about in the gym, only. I am talking about walking up stairs and having my calves want to explode or shaving my head and having one delt want to explode. This is affecting my strength, as well. It has skyrocketed (or started to) with the addition of the carbs. I find myself handing weights without that depleted shaking thing going on and the muscles just feel better while training.
I am currently only training 3 days a week with a moderate volume program. It isn’t real low volume but it wouldn’t be considered a very high volume approach, either. I am focusing on my chest and back size and leg size, too, this offseason. Training at Armbrust Pro Gym has been a Godsend. I absolutely love the place.
I don’t have a lot of time so I apologize for the lack of consistent updates but I will be getting them posted in a more consistent pattern very quickly. I still have a few things that I haven’t yet decided that I want to give away but I am sure I will in due time. For now, the progress is coming very nicely and I anticipate my biggest and best off season.
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I know I shouldn’t do this but I am going to do it, anyway.  This blog should be about things related to bodybuilding, nutrition, weight training, etc., but sometimes something happens that pisses me off so bad that I just can’t stand it and I am going to break the rules and post about it tonight.

I  want to say THANK YOU to Miss California for having the backbone to give her opinion on national television and honestly answer the question she was asked at the Miss Universe Pageant last night.  Good for her for putting the crown on the line and being honest.  Now, I want to be VERY clear here:  I don’t care that she is for or against gay marriage – it doesn’t matter to me.  What does matter to me is that she gave her opinion based on her beliefs and potentially lost the crown due to her answer.

Let’s think about this for a minute:  You have a homosexual judge on the panel asking a question about whether she (Miss California) supports gay marriage.  Apparently, this gay judge figured there was only one answer but I thought that when you asked a question, you did it to get that person’s opinion or answer.  Not so at the Miss Universe Pageant.  Apparently, she GAVE THE WRONG ANSWER.  That’s right, she gave the wrong answer.  She didn’t agree with gay marriage and said so in a very articulate and, I thought, sensitive and well thought out answer and yet the word is that she was not given the crown due to her answer???  I mean, are you fucking kidding me??

So,  I am laughing all day today when I read something or see on the news that she lost the crown.  I think it says a lot about her (much more than the idiot that asked the question and expected only the one answer – fancy that, not everyone is for gay marriage – shocker) that she was honest and stood her ground by giving her honest opinion.  She was quoted afterwards as saying:  “her God tested her with that question” and I thought that was a great answer.  In the bigger picture, that crown means nothing while she can stand firmly on principle.

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