Plate Removed During Squat, Real of Fake?

The gym here is like one of those Twilight Zone episodes where an alien race has based its whole society on old radio shows it got from earth or something.

The guys all make sure to wear all the things that let you know they are going to the gym. I mean Under Armor skin-tight clothes, belts, wraps and straps and shaker bottles with pre-workout or protein in them all the time but most every guy only does Smith bench, getting to maybe 135 or 155, lots of shrugs…shrugs all fucking day. Why? Because it’s the fucking smallest exercise on earth. Upright rows too. Basically anything that requires very little movement.
There’s no curling in the squat rack because that would indicate at least a 45lb curl.

And spotters. Every guy seems to have learned everything from a Muscle & Fitmess that must’ve fallen out of the sky in 1990…they spot each other on literally EVERY rep of EVERY set. I mean like assisting, not just ready to help.

By the way I do not judge someone by how much they lift. If they’re working hard then I will acknowledge it. I even understand that some guys are just there to do 3 sets of 10 on the machines, stationart bike for 20 and sit in the sauna. That’s great. I’m talking about the guys that are all dressed up and checking themselves out and grunting while benching 30lb dbs and dropping them.

[quote]Nards wrote:

[quote]Andy.Now wrote:
There was once a bench that had shafts to store the unused plates.
The shaft to store the plates on was parallel to and close to the barbell.

In my memory, I went up and took a plate from the shaft.
The guy using the bench irritatedly says “I was using that!” (he was between sets).
I asked him and he claims that I took it from his bar (I might have and just didn’t realize it).

I said “haha, I am that disoriented” and put the plate on his bar.

I still don’t know if the plate was really on the bar or on the shaft.
(I had already got the sense before that this guy was irritated to be around a younger guy lifting heavy)

One other time I was at a new gym and there was some sort of strange looking seated calf machine where plates are loaded on the sides (like on a leg press sled).
I thought it was a funny looking plate rack, especially because there were atleast 4 plates loaded on the side.
I took a plate off and some guy says “hey…”
I forgot exactly, but I think I assumed he wanted to put another plate on this “plate rack”.
After he does whatever it was he did, I proceed to pull the plate off of the “plate rack” again.
He says “YO!” (he was a wigger).

I realized that he was using the machine and had a good laugh and appologized.[/quote]

I have a story similar to that.

One time at the gym I saw a woman go up to the hack squat machine, which also has those pins to hold extra plates, and I recall it had 3 45s on either side. Not on the sled mind you…on the pins that hold the extra plates.
So anyway, the sled has no weight on it and she gets on. Gine, the sled itself is a good warm up.
She does ONE REP, gets off and takes a 45 from one side. Right as she does this I think “Whoa! She’s moving up fast!”
But she took the plate and out it away on a weight tree a few feet away, as well as one from the other side, gets back on, does one rep, gets off, removes another 45 from either side of the machine, does one more, removes the last two plates, then did about 15 reps.
So she ended up doing 18 reps…one rep each time she thought plates were on the machine’s sled, then 15 when she was only doing the sled. Ugh.

Yeah…I watched the whole thing happen. It was like a train wreck; Icouldn’t look away.
[/quote]

Something similar happened to me the other day.

I just got finished using the plate loaded low row machine and fully unloaded all the plates onto the highest up pins that hold the plates and move on to plate loaded high row machine.

Some girl comes up to the machine, gives me a look like she is disgusted at my lack of unloading the machine, then moves 3 of the 4 plates on the pins to the floor (not onto the other lower pins). She goes to row what she thinks is one plate per side and almost falls off the machine due to no weight actually being loaded up on it.

I couldn’t help but laugh since the look she gave me was really uncalled for.

Ha! That’s Gym Justice.