My friend told me this story the other day, I think its pretty funny. He is a powerlifter and works out in a hardcore gym that is located on the first floor of a building with a glass front door (kinda like westside gym if you’ve seen it). So people on the street can see what is inside. This is a very hardcore gym all men are competing powerlifters, none of them is under 200lbs, most are young guys late 20 early 30s though. So my friend along with other guys were preparing to test their new max on squats, they warmed up and psyched up with heavy metal music, were looking pretty mean ready to set new prs. Suddenly the front door opened and an old fat short man entered the gym. He wasl bald, hasn’t shaved for days, looked like a homeless bum, had some worn out clothes on and held a six pack of cheap beer in each hand. When the guys stared at him in surprise wanting to ask what the hell are YOU doing here? He said, I used to lift too, then put his beer on the floor walked up to a squat rack and knocked off three perfect reps below parallel with 500-something pounds without any warmup. Then he picked his beer said ‘those were great times’ and left. My friend said that after the guy left, for a while nobody could get back in the psyched up state …
Score one for us Old Farts!
Reminds me of an anecdote John Grimek wrote
about in one of his columns. When he was in his late 70s (he was in his early 80s when writing this and admitted he couldn’t do it anymore) he was in the gym and wanted to work in with squats with these young guys.
They were somewhat impolite and said they didn’t have time to take the plates off for an old man. But he said he’d just work right in, no need to take the plates off. (They were already at 400 lb or something.)
As they kept putting on more weight he kept right up with them till the end, though he had to start doing them a less than parallel as the weight got past 500 (!). He got up to about 650 before they packed it in.
Fred Hatfield apparently still works out with around 750 or so, and he’s in his mid 50’s.
Yup. Gotta watch us older guys.