I have seen a lot of stupid shit in my gym. Quarter squats on the smith machine, leaping lateral raises, and the guy who does 15 sets of abs just so he can strap on a backbelt to do tricep kickbacks. The thing that takes the cake is one day I witnessed a guy doing barbell shrugs while talking on his cell phone. He had his neck bent so he could rest the phone on his shoulder while he shrugged. I wanted to say something to this ass, but deep down inside I wanted to see him fuck his shit up. He is the same dude that told me explosive shrugs from a hang would screw up my posture.
You know, these threads start up all the time, and I can’t get enough of them.
When I worked in Spain we had a guy who would end each rep with “BAH!” no matter what he did. It bugged everybody. So one day, my workout partner at the time and I decided to shout out “BOOGY!” every time WE did a rep. After a couple sessions of that shit he simmered down.
Yeah, sometimes I think it’s best just to let the chest crushers, 900# 1/4 squatters and cell-phone shruggers do their thing so when they eventually screw themselves up there’s more room for us!
And now…the Most Creative Exercise Award goes to: That guy wearing the shorty-shorts and long t-shirt so it looked like he wasn’t wearing pants!!
He was at the cable curl machine (the kind with pulleys at the top and bottom for tricep/bicep work), and he was facing away from the stack doing this kind of overhand throwing movement - like a pitcher only in slow motion - using the cable and weight. I give him an “A” for originality!
bradtgif i think you and djwlfpack go to the same gym. or have encountered the same individual. BEWARE, IT’S MR. PEEPERS (BAH BAH BAH snl skit… no?)
ok, all of yours are the regular, but, i find this one fascinating
when i’m doing my workouts, i’ll hear a big THUD!!@ so i look, its some guy dropping the 125lbs dummbbells etc… blah anyway to make this story short, there’s a bunch of guys who have some kind of mental problem. they take the big dumbbells and lay them out on the floor, then they either socialize or walk balk and fourth and drink water from the water fountain… and after months of going to this gym, i’ve noticed that some of these guys never use the weight… and they leave it there on the ground, so people will somehow know they used it or people will think they are using it…
its FREAKY
Here’s one that is common but I don’t see mentioned often. The guys that stand on a plate or platform and do straight-legged deadlifts but don’t go all the way down to where they would actually achieve a greater range of motion so they might as well be on the floor.
[quote]iamnobody wrote:
bradtgif i think you and djwlfpack go to the same gym. or have encountered the same individual. BEWARE, IT’S MR. PEEPERS (BAH BAH BAH snl skit… no?)
ok, all of yours are the regular, but, i find this one fascinating
when i’m doing my workouts, i’ll hear a big THUD!!@ so i look, its some guy dropping the 125lbs dummbbells etc… blah anyway to make this story short, there’s a bunch of guys who have some kind of mental problem. they take the big dumbbells and lay them out on the floor, then they either socialize or walk balk and fourth and drink water from the water fountain… and after months of going to this gym, i’ve noticed that some of these guys never use the weight… and they leave it there on the ground, so people will somehow know they used it or people will think they are using it…
its FREAKY
[/quote]
That’s the Bis tris and socailize workout coming soon to a gym near you.
At a gym I used to go to, the biggest perpetrator of stupidity was… the owner of the gym.
everyday, without fail he would be working arms and chest, chest and arms. everyday. and I talked to some of the workers. it was also all day.
The guy was scrawny like 130 lbs scrawny. And weak as hell too, his dumbell press was eighty pounds… combined. and he would get mad at me for using the 100’s because it’s difficult to set them down lightly from a prone position.
In my gym currently we have 3 power racks and a smith machine, and the smith machine is used far more than the power racks… its sad.
-Dave
I’ve got one about spotting. I was benching one time, on my last set. This guy asked me for a spot before I was ready for my set, so I said sure. After finishing his set he wanted to return the favor and for some reason I felt obligated to let him. I planned on doing 265 for 10 reps, which wasn’t a struggle. But this homo had both his index fingers underneath the bar the whole time! After about the third rep I told him not to help me, and he said he wasn’t. But I know what 265 felt like and whether he was lightening the load by 5 lbs. or 20, it wasn’t the whole 265. Anyway I finished my set and gave him a pissed off “Thanks!” I hate assholes that think they either: A)have to help you the whole time or B)as soon as the bar slows down they take it from you.
Those stories are pretty funny and I love watching people who are in the gym without a clue. What annoys me are people who are either oblivious, careless, or both. These people can not only hurt themselves but everyone else around them. I was in the gym fall semester (prob about 8 months or so ago) and this guy is squatting with 315lbs. I don’t really remember his form but I assume it was shitty. In the squat rack right next to him was a friend of mines GF who surprisingly enough was squatting also. After this guy is through with his set he goes to strip the bar, and wouldn’t you know it he takes all three plates off from one side. As soon as he takes the last 45 lbs plate off the bar springs up, almost catches him in the jaw and slams violently across onto the adjacent squat rack where my friend’s GF was lifting. Thank God she was not in the squat rack at the time. Well needless to say I gave the douchebag a lecture on Gym safety and Classical Physics 101.
Here’s the Idea! A T-nation GYM. The requirements for membership would not rely on strength, or size, or 4% bodyfat, but instead, on not being an idiot! If you do squats in the power rack, GOODBYE. If you are bouncing 300 pounds off your chest… SEE YA! Cell phones will be destroyed, membership revoked. And anyone who doesn’t understand what a “negative” is can get the hell out. There will be a test to get in, too, you either pass or fail, and can retake it in 3 months if you fail (some people can learn). We will make sure everyone has a food log with them, a training log, and goddamn if everyone doesn’t make some gains. If you wanna be a part of the gym you’d better bust your ass, and for god sakes, go all the way down on their squats!
How about the people who don’t rack their weights, I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off to strip a bar on a sqaut rack because someone was curling and I wanted to squat, and the clown the before me didn’t want to put his toys away. My feeling is if you can put it on the bar you can take it off the bar
[quote]CU AeroStallion wrote:
Here’s the Idea! A T-nation GYM. The requirements for membership would not rely on strength, or size, or 4% bodyfat, but instead, on not being an idiot! If you do squats in the power rack, GOODBYE. If you are bouncing 300 pounds off your chest… SEE YA! Cell phones will be destroyed, membership revoked. And anyone who doesn’t understand what a “negative” is can get the hell out. There will be a test to get in, too, you either pass or fail, and can retake it in 3 months if you fail (some people can learn). We will make sure everyone has a food log with them, a training log, and goddamn if everyone doesn’t make some gains. If you wanna be a part of the gym you’d better bust your ass, and for god sakes, go all the way down on their squats![/quote]
I hope that was a typo, because I know a lot of people that squat in the power rack; and I do too.
And I don’t like the idea of a food log. A lot of powerlifters and strongman could care less about their eating habits.
Yeah, I think he meant “curl” in the power rack. Anyway, I agree with BradTGIF, I like these kinds of threads, too. In other threads, I’ve already mentioned “Jazzercise guy”, “80’s guy”, and the creepy naked old dudes in the locker room, but I have discovered another… … interesting person who just started working out in my gym. I call him “Skinny guy”. He weighs somewhere around 130-140lbs, at about six feet tall or so. His workout consists of just about every movement you can think of – performed with the same 8lb hexagonal dumbbells. I have never seen someone exrcise so much and accomplish so little in the hour that I see him in the weight area. It’s like I want to go over and say “uh… I know you’re a pussy and all, but could you PLEASE try and lift more than 8 pounders when you do dumbbell presses? And yes, you CAN take more than 10 seconds rest between the 4000 sets that you do with those same weights. Ya know, it’s also okay to not go through the entire catalog of exercises outlined in Arnold’s Bodybuilder’s Encyclopedia while you’re here. The next time I see you doing dumbbell deadlifts – with these 8 lb DB’s – I’m going to force-feed you a sandwich.”
is it me or have weight belts become the girtle of the new millinia? I see all these fat ass guys at my gym wearing belts wrapped so tight I think their head is going to pop off. THey are also they guys who hit on my wife WHILE I’m spotting her or helping her (enter the TC sissy boy toe crush). Some dude was checking out my wifes A$$ while she was doing bent DB rows so when she was done I took the weight from her and dropped it on his toe “OOPS, sorry I didn’t see you standing behind me checking out my wife’s A$$!!!”
La’
Redsol1
Arioch,
I think everyone has a story like that one but, we have this guy who sports a 500+ squat and I swear when he’s standing there with the weight on his back you can’t tell the difference than when he’s buried it (nudged it actually).
One day this idiot walks away with 495 loaded and continues on with his workout, after about 15 minutes I walk up to him and ask him if he’s done. He says yes so I glance at the rack and then back to him (he has skinny guy syndrome read bad right down to his spandex shirt) “do you mind unloading your bar?” he get’s pissed but does it,
Unbelievable!!
Here is one that i saw a few weeks ago, this is no bullshit.
So i see this guy attempting barbell curls by violently swinging the bar and actually arching forward and backwards while doing this.
I seriously thought he was having a fit but this is not the end of it… so i kept looking he then proceeded to move sidewards a couple of steps and then he actually rotated himself, yes rotated himself 360 degrees while performing his ‘reps’.
I watched in utter disbelief at what had just taken place.
Damn Redsol, that weight HURT! Whaddaya want, she’s gotta nice ass I can’t help it! Especially since she works out in a thong, c’mon guys.
I’ve got another one. The guy that some how combines two exercises in to one seamless movement. Like the one-arm DB row straight into a tricep kickback. Or a lat pulldown with a tricep pushdown to finish. What the fuck are they doing?
I hate folks that don’t un-rack the weights as well. I used to belong to a yuppie gym where the trainers there were the worst offenders.
Other things I hate:
The Body for Life “nesters” You don’t see them as much any more but they used to fill the gyms around here. They grab all the dumbells they need for the whole cycle and pile them around them until they are done, so they don’t waste their precious minute of rest putting dumbells back on the racks.
The mirror gazing rack blockers. The ones who have to see themselves curl in a mirror but must be nearsighted, so they block access to the dbs while doing their thing.
The weakling know it alls. The guys who curl 35s in something that looks like a half goodmorning to get the weight up then turn around and comment on your form or tell you an exercise you are doing is dangerous.
My favorite story involves a rack blocking know it all (a rare hybrid, seldom seen in nature). There are a couple of guys who work out when I do who are flat out monsters–so much so that I will sometimes watch the freaky weights they are lifting. One day they were doing biceps and to finish up they started at one end of the db rack, curled a weight to failure and moved down the the next, starting at 125s and going down to 10s w/ no rest for several sets. In each set they were blocked by this guy checking out his arms in the mirror on the 25s After he finished, he said something about the form of one of the guys who was struggling by now with 10 lb dbs and who had to move around this guy several times. Needless to say he got a few choice words and was lucky he didn’t get pounded.
Hey guys,
I’d like to share a practice of mine with you in hopes that maybe we can start a trend:
I first learned this from a DC in Santa Barbara? his first name was Rusty, but unfortunately I can no longer recall his last name…so Rusty, if you’re out there, kudos to you.
OK: Citizens of the T-Nation are roundly scorned and envied as we all know. So here’s a way to become your gym’s favorite member, and also identify yourself as a T-Man to other T-Men:
Instead of the typical brain-dead cardio warm-up, pick up/replace/straighten all the errant plates, bars, and DB’s in your gym as your warm-up. This is a super “functional” warm up? you’re making your gym a safer place to train while at the same time getting in some light farmer’s walks AND identifying yourself to other T-folks while you’re doing it.
OK, over to you guyz…