I just moved to a new school and put in my first workout tonight.
The free weightroom isn’t awful, it’s small but it looks like people stay away from it.
The one problem I really see myself having is when I deadlift. The gym has octagon plates. In the past few months I have stopped doing touch and go deads, and always try to do dead stop reps.
But what I am afraid is the flat sides of the plates won’t stay lined up and I will fighting the plates with every rep.
If you have had to use these kinds of plates to pull before, how did you deal with it and how did it work out?
I don’t so much mind the barked shins with those plates (the bar will roll into you at times) so much as the misalignment of the bar for the next rep. I ended up getting in the rack and DL’ing from a platform so the height between the soles of my feet and the bar was the same as DL’ing from the floor. Other wise I just accepted having to reset for each rep.
Its fine for single reps. Make sure all the flats are lined up (if they’re all from the same design, i.e. all 10-sided or whatever), then pull. It changes your setup if you normally roll the bar into you, but any height difference between round and polygon is millimeters. Multi-rep sets are awful with them.
I used to lift at a gym with octagon plates, and I would simply lift in a rack almost exactly like this one and set it across the bottom supports. The plate corners would be very close to the floor but didn’t touch.
That is what I was afraid to hear, that multi-rep sets suck.
Looks like my 5X5s are gonna take a long time.
Oh well, I am gonna give this gym a week or so. If it sucks to bad, I think I will check out East Carolina Barbell. Apparently they have 2 of everything awesome (monolifts, ghr, competition benches, deadlift platforms from what I have read.)
LOL um I think you should already be at that East Carolina Barbell gym…wtf are you doing in that gym if you have a gym like Carolina BB…you’ll get stronger just bein around those boys.
What kind of moron thought making Olympic plates in an octagon shape was a good idea? The only thing I can think of is that if you can track down 2 regular plates, the rest could be octagon because the round ones will always touch first. (Unless the diameter of the octagons is more than the 17.7 inch spec, in which case you are hosed.)
I actually have heard the the octo plates were thought up by somebody concerned with the insurance liability of people DLing or doing Oly lifts in commercial fitness centers. They are meant to prohibit one from doing them. That is what I was told by a Gold’s manager once a few years back, makes sense to me.
The rack pull version is one good option, one place I train I have two 25k oly bumper plates I place first, and it works just as humanjhawkins states. Otherwise join the PL gym now, you may be happier.
I have those now and I have no adjustable power rack, so I usually just do singles. I just set a certain # of reps and work up to a nice heavy weight focusing on technique. Works pretty good, especially if you have never really done all singles before
rasturai- I am amazingly poor right now (being a full time student, in a new state=no job currently). The gym is at my University, and is free for students to use. And I’ve been here for 2 days. I will most likely end up joining Carolina BB.
PeteS- You may have heard right. One of the rules of this little gym is no Olympic style pulling or pressing. Which isn’t a big deal for me, as I have always trained in a powerlifting style. But still, super gay, everyone should feel the pain of doing some hard squat cleans on occasion.
Screw it, I am driving out to the powerlifting gym tomorrow. Maybe I can finally lift in an environment that is friendly to equipped lifters. I love raw lifting, and feel like I have accomplished some decent things with it, but after 6 years of training for football and powerlifting, it might be time to cross over to the dark side and squeeze into squat suit.
Gear is fun, and not fun, all at the same time. Every geared session I get so excited for the weight, but dread it at the same time. But as an old man with achy shoulders and sore hips, EFF RAW. Cross on over.
Side note: the trend I have seen in commercial gyms the last few years is suddenly the PTs are going from trying to teach everyone how to curl on a bosu ball to trying to teach everyone how to squat, pull, do bodyweight movements like chins, dips and pushups, a trend due to the fact that a) that is the shit that works and b) the popularity of sites like this one, elitefts, Alwyn Cosgrove, CrossFit (does have a postive influence, to some degree). Locally, a large chain recently purchased another large chain and got ride of all round plates, all ‘true’ oly and dl bars (except where the trainers sneakily hid them), ssb bars, etc. And replaced everything with crap bars and the damn chunky plates. It is funny seeing the trainers try and teach how to do a proper pull, or anything from the floor, with these shitty plates. But they know they have to teach these movements a) because they work and b) if they don’t the local crossfit will.
I had them for ~2 years when I trained at Gold’s. I got really good off the floor with the extra ROM. Going to a meet with real plates and a deadlift bar felt a lot easier.
They have octagonal plates at my mom’s gym, so when I visit I have to deal with using them. They are indeed a humongous pain, but recently the gym bought 2 bumper plates which seemed to help, without adding much radius to the plates.
Hope the funds don’t get too crazy for you, it would be lots easier to train for free…how much are they charging?
Maybe you can apply there for a job? Clean up?
That wouldn’t be too bad if it’s good to go.
Other than that if nothing you might have to work some lame part time job for the gym…but the gym is worth it. and if nothing work somewhere where thers lots of cute girls…won’t even feel like work if your talkin to them lol
It’s super cheap actually. It’s a warehouse style gym and I can tell that some of the equipment is second hand.
$25 a month for students, no contract and no joining fee.
I opted for the $35/month membership, as that package gets me a key (24/7 access). They offer the discounted rates for students, military, police and firemen. $50 a month for a key membership if you don’t fall in that category, which is not bad at all considering how much some us have paid to train in typical commercial gyms (only to be bitched at for certain training methods/lifts).
I don’t know a whole lot about the owner (Mike White), but from what I can tell, he has another job, and doesn’t own this gym to make money. If I had to guess he started it to have the equipment he wanted to train with and like minded people around, so really I think the membership fees are mostly to cover rent/bills. Hell, you wouldn’t even know the place was there from the road. It is in the back of a warehouse complex.
But it is freaking sweet. 2 monolifts, 2 competition benches, a deadlift platform with band hooks, GHR, reverse hyper, among other things in the front. Out back there is a long hallway to do sled drags/prowler pushes and tire flips. Also there is a stock pile of gear there for everyone to use and try out. I am way excited to start using that.
Anyhow, I love the place already. Awesome people, I was getting coached through my squats with 15 minutes of showing up. I HIGHLY recommend this place to any powerlifter in the Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC area.
