Large Gym Moment

[SquareOne]

So, this post doesn't have a question and might be viewed as irrelevant, so the moderator might not let it through, but I thought I'd share a little moment I had in the gym the other day.

For the record, I'm a 62 year-old male novice, and I was in my globo-gym starting my squat warmups. In another rack near me was somebody else doing squats, and behind me doing something or other was a guy I'd seen around the gym before: muscled up, tatooed all over the place, hoody always up over his head, and he's always either talking or yelling to himself - "light weight!", "everybody's a bodybuilder!" etc. - (none of which bothers me, by the way).

So I'm doing my first set of 5 squat warmups with the 45-lb bar. Towards the end I heard the guy yelling, among other things, what sounded like "In the bucket!!!"

I do my second set of 45-lb warmups, and again I hear "In the bucket!!!". I think, well, that could be like "In the hole!" or whatever and he's talking to the other guy doing squats, or maybe it's just something else.

So I'm done with my second set and there he is, and he says right to me "In the bucket! ... I was complimenting you man. That's how you do it!" (Keep in mind, I was just lifting the bar!) So I said something like yeah, I'm trying to get good depth, but it's hard as hell, and he says - and really loud, so the whole gym can hear - "You bet it's hard, that's why nobody in this place does them!" (True, very few people do.)

Now I'd like to think that ego plays only a minimal part in my new training regimen, but it's not true, and so let me just say that for a few moments that guy put me on a throne and made me feel like king of the gym. There was a little more discussion of just how hard it is to get depth (it's very hard for me, I've been struggling with it since the beginning - it's fine on the warmups but on work sets it's never the kind of below parallel where you can see that it's below from across the room. I'm coming to accept that if the top edge of my thigh is strictly parallel then the crease of the hip seems to get below the patella - hope that's right...)

So yeah, and I told him I try not to go up in weight unless I'm hitting depth, and that can take forever, and he says (nice and loud) "It's not about the weight on the bar, it's about form, baby!" (Of course he means it is about the weight also - I'm pretty sure he warms up on squats with weight I only dream about - but I know he means form, and depth, come first.)

So it was pretty awesome to have one of these intense, muttering behemoths come up to this very gray-haired guy and give me an unabashed compliment - for how I was lifting a 45-lb. bar! And it's good to have a few people around the gym who "get it".

He didn't stick around to see me squat more weight, which was probably good because, well, for one thing it's not much more, but also things do get more shallow with the work sets, and I'm pretty sure I'm good for a high rep or two (usually the first one!)

Anyway, that made my week, and I thought I'd share.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'm glad he made you happy. I would have thrown him out of my gym for annoying everybody. But then again, we wouldn't have allowed him to join, and nobody in my gym squats high.

[SquareOne]

I'm glad he made you happy. I would have thrown him out of my gym for annoying everybody.

Definitely, but I did find him less annoying than the much more quiet guy, about my age, who I saw the other day come in, put on leg wraps, load up the bar with at least 5 x 45 lb. plates on each side, get someone to stand behind to spot him, and then after a lot of bull-like huffing, execute a perfect 1/25th squat. I don't say anything, of course - in fact I think my ego likes it because I get to feel smug and self-satisfied for about five seconds (until I have to tackle my own work sets!).

... nobody in my gym squats high.

I aspire to that. Mostly they're good but I have periodic brain flushes with regards to form.