How do you politely get rid of people giving bad advice?

[Raw Power]

In all seriousness I've dealt with this a ton. Usually people tell me I'm lifting "too much weight". I recall the first time I brought my wife to the gym, I had her deadlift 205 (at 105 pound bodyweight). I fully acknowledge this was wrong but I was ignorant of proper training and just so excited to see what she could do. Anyway a bodybuilder guy ran up to us and started berating me for having a "little girl" lift so much weight. He told her it was too heavy and she was going to hurt herself. The whole time he held an aggressive posture and glared at me. He was trying to establish himself as her protector and to assert dominance over me in his territory. (It was my first visit to that gym.) My wife just completely ignored him like he was some crazy person she wanted to pretend wasn't there. Women are very good at deflecting unwanted attention from men. I just looked right at him with a relaxed smile and self-assured posture and said nothing. He just stood there a moment, glared at me, looked at her, looked back at me, then threw his hands up and walked away. My wife and I just looked at each other and laughed. Solidarity is key in these situations.

[Mark D]

"Probably didn't help that this guy was bothering me about them mid set, which meant my breathing was reserved for valsalvas and at the top exhales, not talking to him."

Something like this happened to me a few years ago in a commercial gym, I'd just gotten down in the hole on my first rep and this jackass came up behind me (!!) and started yelling "Dude, you got this, crush that weight, make it your BITCH!" I told him (after completing my set) in no uncertain terms to leave me alone during a set, because if he distracted me I was liable to get hurt. I may have also questioned his parents marital status, whether is parents were in fact first-cousins, recommend he perform an anatomically improbable act of self-copulation, and tell him if he ever yelled at me during a set again he'd find a 20 lb dumb bell inserted into the terminal orifice of his alimentary canal.

Seriously though, people need to be left alone during a set, distractions cause injuries which none of us want. Don't worry about being impolite. If he's that experienced a lifter he should know that, if he doesn't he needs to be taught it in a way he'll remember.

[Fulcrum]

[k_kws]

Just be simple and brief.
If someone tells you you're gonna hurt your back squatting, just say 'It's a low bar squat' and leave it at that
If someone wants to spot (air hump) you at the bottom of a squat, just point to the pins and tell them that you don't need a spotter.
If they insist, just tell them to leave you alone.

I'm not going to waste my time explaining all the mechanics of a lift because of some gym-bro's half-baked opinion on training. I know a lot of us have some kind of fantasy where we in turn teach these people something, but that's just a waste of time and they won't (and haven't) put in the effort to learn anything useful yet anyway. Just wave them away and keep training.

[Soule]

I yearn for gymbro advice, but they just don’t seem to offer it anymore

[CommanderFun]

I need to get some of those cards printed. That is a glorious image. You do that up yourself or find it somewhere?

[Yngvi]

This jackass interrupted your set and you still want to be polite to him?

[CommanderFun]

That sux, and it's one of the reasons why I try to train at home. I assume you are just starting out? Most people after being on the novice program a few months are stronger than 95% of the consumers at commerical gyms in my experience. So once you are moving a few plates the chances of being harassed go down dramatically. Also headphones, even if I don't have anything playing, I have them on.

The dude can probably sense you are green, because you can always tell. It will go away in time. I'm not a tough guy but I only remember being approached a couple times, or had idiots run in trying to spot your set and I just gave them a strange look like they had AIDS and said 'no thank you' until they left me alone. Gyms is not for talkin'.

See a coach, it will help your confidence. And if nothing else you can always tell the bullies: "sorry my coach told me..."

I've been at this since June. It was a medium day squat load (and I've been losing weight) so it was only 220, but still, it was enough to get hurt under if I fucked something up. It's also still more than I see anyone squatting at this gym, especially below parallel (just about everyone who even squats there does high bar partial squats). My confidence is decidedly not shaken, I just wanted to get rid of the guy fast without it turning into a shouting match (and thus risking getting thrown out of my gym). He seemed to lift the way most people there who are just fucking around lift. He was doing tricep pushdowns for god knows how many sets, changing the angles he was doing them at in weird ways with partial RoM. The main difference between him and most "fucking around" types was that he had very big muscles and low bodyfat. Must be he has superior form, right? Either way, I can probably squat more than him if it were actually judged for depth.

[Jovan Dragisic]

One should definitely not compare their lifts to other people's and not think about the gym being some kind of dominance game like one hears narrators talk about in documentaries and shit.

[Batbat]

Tell them to google low bar squats and Starting Strength. Gets them to leave you alone pretty quickly.