I swear the gym must have a sign somewhere that I keep missing that says "Warning: When benching, bar must not touch your chest".
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I swear the gym must have a sign somewhere that I keep missing that says "Warning: When benching, bar must not touch your chest".
As the gym started filling up last night, there appeared these two skinny boys, maybe 13-14 years old, being 'mentored' by one of those gruff old guys (which one of you was it?), possibly as part of a 'big brother' program, or maybe a 'scared straight' program. I dunno what they do nowadays.
Anyway, big old guy had them set up for bench press in the Smith Machine, and was trying to get them fired up. Those poor skinny boys were so frightened and plaintive, squirming around on the bench, like they were bargaining for their very lives.
Overheard quotes, all from the mentor:
"Alright, you're gonna do ten of these!"
"The wider you put your hands out, the easier it will be."
"Alright, then, gimme six!"
"Yes! You WILL hurt tomorrow! And you're gonna love it!"
"Can you just do four? Gimme four!"
The kid did actually get his four reps in. Wonder if I'll ever see them again.
My big brother had Weider's Muscle Bible when I was a teenager. I thought I knew everything back then! I did multiple sets of flat bench, 30 deg incline, 45 deg incline, decline, 3 different tricep lifts, 'military' press, behind the head press, curlz for the gurlz, reverse curlz and wrist curlz. I was 150# soaking wet, a proud member of the swole patrol and an idiot (25 years later the idiot part still applies).
Haha, that was my first routine, too, minus the behind-the-neck stuff and the wrist curls and plus upright rows. It’s incredible how just including squats and deadlifts for a few weeks beats the stupid out of you. Hard to take skull crushers seriously after three sets of deep squats...
Anyone able to explain the benefits of doing Romanian deadlifts while standing on a 10-pound plate? This is a new one for me.
The initial idea for elevating oneself while doing RDL's is to allow for even more range of motion. I see people regularly stand on boxes or benches to RDL with a ROM where the plates wouldn't come within 6 inches of the floor if they were standing on it. And that's in a generally very good gym (as you know). I think it's just people copying what they've seen.
Just a random observation- several people in my building take the elevator 20+ floors to ground level to go to the gym where they get on the tiny escalator for 30 minutes then take the elevator back up to their office. Kinda funny when you think about it.
The tiny escalator must be kinder on their knees ;)
It's the many many many people I see who use a lift to go up only 1 or 2 floors when they are clearly capable of using the stairs.....
About a week ago, a high school kid came in to the Y where I train and set up the bar to do... upright rows. When he started doing the "twist the bar in the hands" warmup, I looked around to see if maybe someone was videotaping (nope). He followed Rip and Chase's April 1 video to the letter. All that was missing was Rip in a wife-beater.
And yeah, that's the only exercise he did.