Stupid Gym Employees

Just needed to vent about some stupid shit that happened in my university’s gym today. I don’t know why it is bugging me so much, but anyways…

So today I decided to just so an active recovery/light speed day at the gym. I hadn’t done snatches in a while and I believe I have strained the flexors in my wrist and fingers so cleans were bugging me, so hang snatches were the start of my workout.
I start doing my sets, and I’m about 3 sets deep, figuring I’m going to do about 5-6 sets. I’m setting up to do my 4th set and I get positioned then out of the corner of my eye I see one of the gym attendents standing right next to me.
He starts saying that I can’t do snatches due to liability issues that won’t allow people to do any exercises that bring the bar over your head while you are standing. If he had just left it at that it would’ve been fine because every place has their own rules, even if I don’t agree with them. But then he goes on to recommend me doing the seated military press right behind me, saying that it works the same muscles as the exercise that I was doing.
I stood there ready to just humilate the guy because he obviously had no clue what he was talking about, but I bit my tongue in hopes of preserving my workout that he had already interupted and thrown off key. It was obvious that he had no clue what a snatch was or a clean or anything other complex lift. I just dont understand how somebody who was so unknowledgable could’ve gotten a job at the gym, especially since he was giving out poor information. I had applied for a job at the gym about a year ago and remembered it saying that you needed to be knowledgable of exercises in order to give advice when asked for.
This wasn’t really anything signifant, but for some reason it really bothered me. Just figured I’d vent here.

On what LevelHeaded wrote:

This guy needs to work out what a “pressing” movement involves! Even the non-educated lifter could work out they are not the same sort of exercise.

I guess he also recommended doing the militaries “behind the neck” as well…

I feel ya LH. To further add to the list of dumbass gym trainers/attendants:

The other day my friend was doing one-arm snatches at his university gym. Then this “trainer” comes up to him and says “Dude, this isn’t Karate” (he pronounced it as ka-raw-TEE) “class.”

My friend just said “WTF are you talking about…go away I’m busy.” Then the guy just left.

For some reason I found it hilarious that someone would find some correlation between doing snatches and karate class, but at the same time it pissed me off to hear about it.

-ton