Oh, I agree totally that getting strong is hard and people look for a way out of doing the work. What I'm always wondering is where, for example, the guy in the fire department t-shirt got the idea of getting in the push-up position (arms fully extended) and, instead of doing push-ups, quickly touches his right shoulder with his left hand and then left shoulder with right hand, repeating for several sets each lasting a minute or so. How did he convince himself that this is the best use of his lunch hour? Needed to practice quickly unbuckling his oxygen tank backpack?
They were using a bar attachment that was in the room, lowered the cable pulleys to the ground, clipped the cables to the bar, stacked a step up box next to it to take the cable slack out and started lifting.
Yep.
Please start posting videos of these things.
I train after midnight at a 24 hour globogym. It is a very large facility that is usually pretty empty until the morning crowd starts showing up at 3am.
Some months back as I was strolling up to the power rack, I saw a young woman doing some light dumbbell exercise between the power rack and the slanted squat rack, while her boyfriend was laying on the floor inside the slant rack. As I was in a fairly good mood, I said in jest to the prone bro, "sleeping in the squat rack?" He was not amused and replied, "I'm doing abs bro". He took his leave before I progressed to my work sets and was subsequently spotted performing the biceps curl movement facing a mirror.
On Thursday I saw a girl puffing on her vape in the gym: addict much.
There is a gym acquaintance that does one rep max benches each week as his final work sets. I was spotting this guy on one of these max singles (190 lb) and about half way up the bar stops and descends about an inch. This prompted me to assist the lifter, but was met with "I got it bro" as I touched the bar. So I didn't help and he struggled and completed the lift. He told me I needed to relax. I said that the bar was going down when it should have been going up, to which he replied "I got my second wind". He then does another one rep max with the same weight for a 1/4 rep to "see if he could get a second".
So yesterday I reach my gym after a hard day at work and what do I see? The power rack area is boarded up. Then I see a notice about remodelling of the gym to give the patrons a better experience. I ask a trainer when I can have the experience of using the power rack again. He tells me that the remodelling would take a few weeks. So I go to the floor manager and he gives me some vague answer. One of the trainers asks me why I can't squat on the smith machine. i resist the urge to strangle him because killing someone is a criminal offence in my country. I go to the girl at the front desk and request for a transfer to another of their gyms in the city. She says that it can be done but there is a hectic transfer fee. She asks me why I can't use the machines like everybody else. I tell her that I follow a barbell based training. Also that I joined their gym only for the power rack and now my training is stuck. She gives me a blank stare. So I ask for the gym owner's number which she readily gives to drive me away.
So I talk to the gym owner (a well known celebrity trainer who trains some of the biggest movie stars here). He is sympathetic and understands that I need to squat, but tells me that free transfer to another branch is not possible. But he offers that he will free up some space in the machine floor and move the squat rack there. I don't understand how he can do that unless he throws out some of the stupid machines that are crowded by the abs seeker bros. Anyway he promises that he would find a way before Monday. Now let me see what happens.
My gym has just gone through a remodel, and it's a great example of decisions being made based on what somewhat thought looked cool rather than what they thought would produce a better training environment. Previously there were only 2 places to squat, 2 non adjustable half racks that I had to walk the bar all the way out of to hit depth, and one functional enough if banged up full rack. They have been replaced with new hammer strength racks on top of rogue platforms. This is a big improvement.
However, they bought some new barbells, again from rogue. They appear to Ohio bars. Good bars, but no center knurl yet there is an insistence these are the ones that should go in the racks because "they are the good bars". They also bought an assortment of rogue bumpers for the racks/platforms, but dropping the weight on the platform will result in a ban.
Update: They were not able to move the power rack to a convenient location till Tuesday. So I contacted the gym owner again to request to waive the hefty transfer fee(did I type 'hectic transfer fee' last time? Yes, I did) to join another of their branches. He agreed. Nice guy. So today I went to the new branch. I could find a decent power rack, but none of their bars had centre knurl. I was a bit worried if the bar would slip, but then I googled between the warm up sets and found this thread: Squatting with bar that has no center knurling... . Then I squatted in peace.
Old gym had the power rack in a secluded area. But the power rack in this area offers a good view of the gym floor. A few things observed:
a) A guy with massive upper body and chicken legs doing quarter of an inch shoulder shrugs with a pair of heavy dumbbells (I think 50 kg).
b) Guy glued to the mirror doing 1000 rep set of bicep curl with 2.5 kg dumbbells. I guess this is a very common occurrence across the globe.
c) Positive energy guy with vacuum cleaner type laugh spending more calories for talking and laughing than for lifting.
d) Girl doing side bends with 1 kg dumbbells in both hands.
e) Skinny fat kid rushing from one type of cardio machine to another.
I was the only one who touched a bar during the 90 minutes I spent there.