Having trained in a commercial gym for 6 and a half years, i have got to the point where i could have been driven to insanity by some of the idiots i am forced to train around.
The idiots are only half the problem with my gym…the other is the equipment. No power rack, no reverse hyper, no glute ham raise. However, i still manage to train using the westside template, despite not quite having the variety of equipment i would like.
This is a huge commercial gym and is better than any other gym in my city. Sadly at this moment in time i can not afford a home set up, hence the reason why i still train where i do. It could be worse, it does have a squat rack;)
What really rattles me is the people. No one in this gym TRAINS. They all workout. At best you have some guys who can bench heavy weights using massive hip thrusts, usually accompanied by really neanderthal postures and thick tracksuit bottoms to cover chicken legs.
No one, and i really do mean almost no one, trains legs. Squats and deadlifts are a rare commodity indeed. Although, perhaps this is a good thing as i never have to wait for the rack! Strangely i sometimes have to wait for a bench, even though there’s 5 or 6 of them!
In general the guys who “workout” around me while i train have really shitty attitudes.
I get dirty looks while deadlifting 4 plates a side(it makes too much noise), yet its ok for them to bang the weight when they finish their 12th set of tricep puchdowns and admire their guns in the mirror, all the time ignoring the fact that they have no lower body, often terrible posture, injuries and their strength levels have not gone up since the dark ages.
My final gripe is with the music in gym. The lack of equipment and viable training partners is bad enough. Some badass music could really help the atmosphere. But NO, this gym regularly plays 60’s love songs!
However, all this leads me to my conclusion. Today i was box squatting and 2 guys were incline benching on the smith machine next to me. They had the bench set so that the bar was about 8 inches in front of their chest!
I kindly pointed out that they should move the bench closer to the bar so that they were bringing it down in line with their chest. Gruntingly they took my advice.
I was so fired up by these clowns(with 16inch arms and 15.5" legs) that i used this anger to produce my best set of box squats( and it was my last)!
Conclusion…even when you feel like your in a less than optimal enviroment(in this case a training enviroment) if you ask yourself intelligent questions you can come up with some helpful and productive answers!
I simply asked myself… “whats great about this?” and figured that at least two people in the gym( me and my bro) are doing something right and getting stronger. This seriously fired me up and channelled my anger!
The war goes on…
