Joined a new gym last night. Hilarious

[iSquat]

I'm offended that some of you are offended by someone being offended by someone needlessly dropping weights.

[Carnivroar]

maybe when y'all snatching 50 kg (that's kilos motherfucker) y'all see the need to drop the weights.

[Enoch Root]

strong post count, fatty

That's some funny shit right there.

[Trevor45]

maybe when y'all snatching 50 kg (that's kilos motherfucker) y'all see the need to drop the weights.

Carni...50kg is 110 lbs. It's not that hard to set that back down after a snatch. And my snatch sucks.

Now, it is a lot more efficient to drop it, but it most certainly is doable at that weight. Make that 100kg, and you can slam it for all I care.

[Skander]

maybe when y'all snatching 50 kg (that's kilos motherfucker) y'all see the need to drop the weights.

Not sure if serious? Do you actually think that's a heavy weight?

I just find catching weights from overhead kind of beats up my shoulders and hands, especially since my gym theoretically doesn't allow chalk, meaning I use it sparingly. If I've got bumpers and mats, why not?

I have heard from more than a few people that feel like a slow eccentric on deadlift (eg lifting in a place concerned about noise, TNG deads, etc) actually improved their 1RM more than when they let it drop more quickly. Greg Knuckols has written that, but I've heard it from a few others. Worth playing with imo.

[poser]

I currently work with power snatches around 140-142.5. I bring it back to my waist, lower to my knees and drop it from there. Seems reasonable.


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[Rick McGarrey]

I posted this several months ago on the Elderly forum. Apologies if you already read it, but I thought it would fit here. I'll post it, and then put a couple of follow ups. I know I’m almost writing a novel, but here is the original post:

I’m 67 yr old, 6’, 200 lbs., coming back from rotator cuff surgery (my second). In the gym today, following Texas Method, doing squat sets 5x5, 280lb. In comes a very large kid in his 20s, 6’++, muscular. He’s a personal trainer. We are the only ones in the gym, and he really wants to talk (I don’t like to talk when I’m working out, but he forces it).

Him: “Wow! That’s a lot of weight”

Me (trying to think of something to say): “Well… do you do squats?”

Him: “I can do ‘three or four hundred’, but I don’t do them because they compress the spine.”

Me (the last smart thing I say): “Um hm.”

Now he watches me, and continues to comment about how my spine is being compressed, and how I’m “going back on my heels”.

Finally, I take the bait: “Well, if you maintain back extension, your spine isn’t ‘compressed’, and ‘compression’ doesn’t mean too much anyway. The point is to train the muscles that maintain back extension to protect your spine.” This had no meaning at all for him. He kept going on about compression, and a lot of other things that made no sense.

Then, over the next 15 minutes, I got caught up in one of the most inane conversations I’ve ever had, and it happened while I was trying to get through my workout. He was a nice kid, but he had 2 problems: He only wanted to argue, and he was dumb as a log. He got a book from his car by a guy named Starrett, and started going on about things that just made no sense. I didn’t pay much attention to the book, but it was obvious that he could barely understand what was in it.

I continued my workout- but every so often I was stupid enough to respond – “No I don’t go back on my heels at the bottom, no I don’t want to look at the ceiling, no I don’t want my feet to be parallel.” Finally I said, “Look, you try to keep the weight over the middle of your foot, and let the bar path go down and up in a straight line.” This goes completely over his head. I ignore him, and finish the workout, with him sort of watching, and making the most inane comments I’ve ever heard. At one point he says, “Look- you moved around a little that time.” I say, “Your right. That was the last rep of the last set, and I’m at my limit.” He didn’t seem to be able to absorb this, and went on about how there was movement.

Then set up to do deadlifts. Same thing continues- he doesn’t do dead lifts because of blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, he wants to critique my deadlift. He asks why I wear shin guards. I say because it protects my shin when the bar slides up. He almost laughs – “Why would the bar touch your shin? That’s wrong”. I say the bar slides up and down touching your legs. Now he really laughs. “I never heard that. What is that the ‘Eastern Method’?” He says my feet are too close together, and my feet aren’t parallel. He asks if I’m doing a ‘Sumo’ deadlift.

Then he asks me to show him again. I only do 1 set x5 max, but I have removed all but single 45lb. plates, so I do one. I bend over, shins against bar, then big breath, chest up, extension, tension, and I squeeze it up. Maybe not perfect, but more or less what Rip says. The kid shakes his head and says, “Wrong – your back was bent!” I say “What?” Now I’m getting pissed, so I do another one. As I bend over to grab the bar he says, “See, your back is bent!” I say, “Of course it is. I haven’t started yet. After I grab the bar, I set up by raising my chest and maintaining back extension to I do the lift. Why would I care about maintaining back extension before I even touch the bar?” He wants to keep arguing, and goes on about beginning the wrong way, shoulders position, and not having “knee rotation”. At this point I realized how profoundly stupid the kid is. The only way to get away from him is to leave, so I do.

[Rick McGarrey]

I saw the kid around occasionally after Thanksgiving. He would work with his clients, I’d do my workout, and everything was okay.

Then last week I was doing 5x5 squats. In between sets I was playing with the owner’s dachshund puppy. The kid came over and said, “So Rick, are you gonna’ squat, or are you gonna’ play with the dog?” I said, “Both.”

I assumed he wanted the rack, so I said we can share if you want. Problem was his client was a girl who I’m sure didn’t know how to squat, and probably could barely handle the bar. But in the spirit of cooperation I said, look, we can unload between my sets, lower the hooks, so she can do a set, and then load back up. A bit of a hassle, but I was taking 5-7 minute rests, so it was no big deal to make the change if he needed the rack. He never really answered. He just wandered off. So as I finished my sets, I began to pay attention to what he was doing. I noticed several things.

First, he had no plan at all. He was just jumping from one thing to another, with the girl following. Like a child, things would just pop into his head. Using the rack was one of those things, and then he apparently forgot about it.

Second, the concept of doing a hard heavy set and then recovering was not in his head. He would have the girl do some odd thing for 20 or 40 reps, and then randomly look around for something else.

Third, there was no coaching at all. He was just a cheerleader – “YES! GO! ONE MORE!” At one point he decided she should do squats holding a light bar over her head, like the finish of a snatch. This is a pretty technical move, but there was no coaching at all—only: “DOWN! YES! BACK UP!” The girl was young and flexible, and actually did okay with no help from him, although she wasn’t going all the way down.

The only coaching I saw him do was when he had her holding a couple of colored 5lb dumbbells and raising them out to her sides. He got very detailed: “Look, I go up 1-2-3-4-5, hold 1-2, down 1-2-3-4-5. You are only going up 1-2-3. See the difference?” He went on about the timing in great detail for several minutes.

That was last week. Next I’ll write about what just happened today.

[Rick McGarrey]

Okay, today, again I was doing 5x5 squats. I was on my last set, 5 rep max’s. No great weight, but hard for me. A max effort. The space is tight, with the Smith machine right next to the rack. The stupid kid is there with a client in the Smith machine doing bench presses with 25 lbs. on the bar.

I see him hovering out of the corner of my eye, a little distracting on a max effort, but not so bad. I get three squats, then, just as I’m starting the fourth, the moron steps forward and ducks under the end of my bar. Apparently he decided to go inside the Smith machine. I caught myself and yelled, “WATCH THE BAR!” Everyone in the gym heard it.

I got my concentration back, and finished the set, a little shaky. He was inside the Smith machine, spotting his client’s 50 lb. bench presses, so when i finished I turned and said real loud, “Don’t EVER walk under the bar when someone is squatting. That’s NOT GOOD!”

Everyone heard that too, and it was right in front of his client. He’s bigger than I am, but his stupidity is even bigger. There was more space to go inside the Smith machine from the other side, but this wouldn’t work for him. He looked down and didn’t say anything. I’m sure there will be more to write about this guy. Hope I don’t get pounded.

[Mark Steele]

Little bit of setup here so you can picture what I see:

Work out in my local YMCA. Place is sparsely equipped, aside from the entire Cybex line of machine bullshit on the upper level along with the stationary bikes and a couple Airdynes (no complaint on that one). Also has a few bosu balls and yoga mats.

Bottom level has three treadmills, two stair climbers, two bench stations with bars (one is incredibly low to the floor though with no adjustment, fucking weird), dual cable machine (upper and lower cables on both sides of it, it's huge), a smith machine, one power rack with bar, dumbbell rack, preacher curl bench, a flat bench, and an incline bench. There's a mat where I do my deadlifts, but since there's no extra bars, I have to rob one of the benches for one.

There's a lot of shit crammed on the lower level, but only one rack and no extra bars is the point.

A guy comes in today at the front counter and has a box with some chain attachments he made and I assume sold to the owner. Just one set of heavy chains, welded to collars for attaching to the bars. He's telling them about how you can use them for squats, bench, deadlift, whatever you want. One set of chains, non-adjustable in length, that you can apparently use for everything. Owner eats it up, even though nobody there lifts anything even remotely heavy enough to justify adding accommodating resistance, but hey, the big-name guys use chains, so they must be great for everyone.

I'm squatting now, in the only rack. He comes in the with owner while I'm in a set, they BS, I finish and go grab a drink. He chooses at that point to stand directly in front of the rack, blocking me out. Now he's selling the owner on a T-bar station because he saw some kids doing makeshift T-bar rows and he didn't think it was safe. I ask him to move, which he does, and continue with my next set.

However, I'm thinking maybe those kids could do pull-ups or barbell rows, or better yet, focus on doing something important with their time. And instead of spending money on a fucking T-bar station, and rearranging the entire lifting area to accommodate it, maybe you could get another rack and an extra bar or two. I need a new gym, and unfortunately there aren't a lot of local options. How's a guy supposed to exhaust LP like this?