Kelly, I agree about the swiss ball part. I’ve actually witnessed this guy doing ballistic db deads in the squat rack on a Swiss ball on several occasions.
The thing about those unilateral presses is that people increase their weights by moving theit working shoulder further into the centre of the ball changing the centre of gravity. Why not increase the resistance by making the same weight more difficult. Slide toward the weight.
Complicated hey, Kind of reminds me of the way astronomers tried to hang onto the earth at the centre of the universe epicycles thing 
If this is a core exercise and not being used for sport specificity there are better choices; Saxon side bends, Roman Twists etc
“sometimes he brings this wierd dumbell looking thing into the gym but it is round and has an extra large handle on it”
that would be a kettlebell
Guilec-
Kelly’s whole post was a tongue-in-cheek description of how he must look to a non-clued-in gym member. The other “silly” exercises he describes are cleans, snatches, full squats, full front squats, and figure-8 walks. He was describing the way gym members will stare at us because we’re doing things they’ve never seen before.
If you all wanna see some crazy shit in the gym, come to any gym in Korea. Shit, they don’t even have a military press bench at the gyms in my area. I asked one of the (somewhat) English speaking trainers if they have a swiss ball. Guess what he said??? I had to show him what it was in (gasp) Muscle & Fitness. Anyone over 30 is retardedly ballistic in their movements. Shit, all the gyms here still have inversion benches and hula hoops with these little balls on them that will ‘reduce fat in the waist’.
A girl-friend of mine was in the locker rtoom changing and witnessed a woman actually wrapping Glad Wrap around her waist… before putting on her sauna suit, headband, and gloves for her daily bout with the treadmill!!!
Brider, your pronated grip dips on the Universal machine is the exact same exercise I’ve witnessed a lot of World Class pole vaulters do. They of course don’t stop at the top and do dips, but start again at the bottom and it becomes a sort of compound pullup/dip. The coach that had my college teammates doing this was a member of the 2000 Olympic team in the pole vault. So I wouldn’t discount it as being completely silly or dangerous.
Thats called a ‘muscle-up,’ isn’t it? A combined pullup and dip.
Yeah, I seem to remember them calling them muscle ups. I tried them once and they got a pretty good laugh at the 290 lb. thrower doing them, or attempting to do one at least!
Nothing too crazy here. But I remember the second year of my lifting career when a new guy started working out in the morning at my gym.
A little background on my gym first, it was filled with weak, ignorant men (who of course thought they knew everything) and flabby women.
I would get funny looks for doing deadlifts (go figure).
So this new guy busts in, first day, does ass to the floor squats, then some jobber comes up to him and tells him he should only do 1/4 ROM b/c any lower is not necessary.
The next day the new guy is doing one arm barbell curls with an olympic bar and a 10lbs on each side…meanwhile the jobber who lectured him the day before was busy bouncing and subsequently dumping 225lb on bench press.
Well, looks like this one turned into a gym rant…but I did think it was pretty cool that a guy did one arm Barbell curls with 65lbs and strict form.
BradTGIF,
These are called Jump Squats and Push Presses. I really hope you were kidding, if you were, I didn’t pick up on the sarcasm whatsoever.
LOL Kelly, that’s really funny. I’ve never considered how weird they must look to cardio hamsters. The funny thing is that in my gym the olympic weight lifting area is right beside the far side of the cardio machines, so i get people looking at me funny on a regular basis.
Two different yet equally insane old guys dancing between sets, wearing laceless shoes and knee-high socks, and shorts.
An old guy with bleached blonde hair walking into the dumbell area with nothing on but a purple speedo doing dumbell curls.
A middle aged dude doing nothing but 20 reps of everything, explosively. Somehow manages to be pretty muscular anyway, so I held my tongue.
Yesterday, i saw a new kid doing barbell curls with ballistic eccentrics, and doing military press but only up 90 degrees. I couldn’t stand to see him wasting his time, so I told him that if he wants to get bigger he should always control his eccentrics, and go for the full range of motion. When I asked him why the hell he is doing only 90 degrees with military press he says he was told to only go to 90 degrees with every exercise. UGH. I said, “Yeah, that’s what a DOCTOR would say. But don’t do that”
Anyway, he actually thanked me and tried to do the military press again. Of course, his muscles didn’t have strength below 90 degrees, so I witnessed him having major trouble at the start of the concentric, but he stabilized after a few reps. Then he looked at me with a mixture of bemusement and anger, that I “made” him work so hard and that he didn’t develop his ROM.
Luckily for me, a friend of mine who is a soccer player pointed out to me that I should do everything with a full ROM back 3 years ago when I started going to the gym, so I didn’t have this problem.
I think it’s our duty as T-men to help those who are severely in need. If they listen to you, keep talking, and eventually give them the t-mag link (make sure to tell them to read the FAQ). If they give you consideration, they deserve to be told more. If they prefer to keep doing their idiotic exercises, then just leave them to their misery.
its surprising how many people have no sense of humor
Jeff, lift heavier weights first, then laugh at your friend Whachu, you’ll feel much better
M Spqr: nothing wrong with using hack mach (or any piece of equipment) in different ways. Remember they are just tools and a means to an end, which ofcourse is overload! (yeah bad form is crap tho)
As for unilateral movtments, me thinks they are good for variation, but not too flash as a staple in your iron diet
…jumping with a bar on your back, what next!! 
We have an older guy…like late 50s in our gym. He only trains traps. He gets in the power cage and sets the safety bars so he can do “barbell shrugs” off of them. He puts 5, 6 and 7 wheels on a side, wraps his straps around the bar and grunts. The bar may move 3/4 of an inch with each “rep” but all the motion is coming from his legs and the flex in the bar. He then goes over to the Hammer Strength shrug machine and fills it with 45s and slides a couple more down over the handles and commences the bouncing up and down there too. Most of the motion comes from the rebound off of the rubber stoppers.
There are other entertaining individuals because after all it is a 24 Hour Fitness place. This guy is just the most consistantly funny of the crowd.
The “Watch Got” post above reminded me of another one: years ago in the first gym I ever trained at there was a big, extremely ripped black guy who would always come in on roller blades, wearing a shirt that said “Fuck Drugs Mah Brothers and Sisters”. When doing curls (he took off the roller blades first) he would scream into the mirror “I got to lift the weight! If I don’t lift the weight I won’t have big arms!”
Based on his build, it was an effective technique.
If he was huge and ripped, I wouldn’t be picking on him!
The other day he was doing cable crossovers silently, and one of his peeps started saying shouting at him “I can’t hear you!” And then, the screaming resumed.
I’m so tempted to grab his bar or 'bells for a set. But even though I’m stronger than he is, he is much taller and weighs a lot more. He would probally squash me like a bug!
Okay, for the life of me, I could never understand all the rants about people curling inthe squat rack, because I’d never seen it (between college weight room and when I was at a couple of different gyms in the past). But just last week, my wife and I had gone to the Target store at Sea-Tac Mall (don’t get me started on that), and my wife, for some reason, drove right up to the 24-Hour Fitness that’s just behind the Target, and there he was… the monkey-motion was just hilarious. I started laughing right away, and myy wife is just looking at me trying to figure out what I’m laughing at…
I just added the Figure-8 Walks to my routine, and I am certain that the few people who have seen me do it think I am a nutjob. I don’t think you can do that exercise and not look insane. Luckily, I work out around 11 pm, so the gym is usually pretty empty.
I’d do 'em naked if I thought it would help my rotator cuffs…