This warrants its own thread I think, so I’ll start. What is the absolute worst advice you’ve ever heard given in a gym? It’s even better if it comes from a supposed (or self-appointed) professional.
What got me started: Saw a sort of buddy of mine (knew him a couple of years ago somewhere else and hadn’t run in to him since) doing the most god awful deadlift. So I asked him. He engaged a personal trainer to get him stronger and said he wanted to deadlift. He’s a noob but really wanted to do this right. She apparently looked up the form in a book where is said to have a “flat back” so she coached him to
– get this –
back up to a wall and completely flatten his back against it, even his neck, then try and do heavy deads. He was having trouble moving 135 off the floor like that and he had an awful backache she told him was “just training soreness”.
Face palm
How’s 'bout you? Any similar advice you’ve heard or been given that just beggars belief?
The best I’ve got is deliberatly planting a bad exercise to see who’d do it. Some seriously large powerlifters I knew once would do this. The best I saw was when they hung upside down from a Lat Pull down bar and then using their arms to pull themselves down head first to the seat. They counted a few skinny little guys trying it.
Buy huge life insurance policies on credit. It was this convoluted scam that I could never figure out how people were making money. I decided against it, and the guy was arrested about 6 months ago.
Invest with Bernie Madoff. Turns out I didn’t have enough money at the time to get fleeced. Actually, I asked questions, they feigned indignation, and told me they didn’t do business with pushy people like me.
Buy Enron. I lost about $12,000 on this one because they actually had a business plan that made sense. They just did a bunch of other crap that was stupid and didn’t tell anyone. I bought a big ENRON sign (a cube made of granite, but hollow, like ENRON) that was out in front of one of their buildings. I put it in our garden and drink Scotch on it when feeling too smart.
Don’t go below parallel when squatting. Did this for a decade.
Don’t eat fat and protein. High cards! This was the 80s. I ignored this advice.
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
I bought a big ENRON sign (a cube made of granite, but hollow, like ENRON) that was out in front of one of their buildings. I put it in our garden and drink Scotch on it when feeling too smart.
[/quote]
HA! I like this!
Worst gym advice was probably a guy advocating supersets of behind-the-neck shoulder presses with behind-the-neck lat pulldowns.
Another guy used to advocate snorting norandrostenedione (“nor-andro”) for faster absorption. The same guy used to take a ton of Canxanthin (sp?) - the carrot-extracted fake-tanner, and had skin tone like he had been dipped into a big bowl of Cheetos.
Probably worst advice I got was when I used my free PT session to have the trainer see if my squat, deadlift and bench technique were good and let me know what I need to fix on it. He basically said they were fine. Told me I should sit back a little further on the squat but couldn’t tell me how to do it. Just said you just do it. Plus this asshole would only watch 1 or 2 reps and go back to texting on his phone.
Watch the So you think you can squat series and learn so much about how to fix my technique. My hamstrings and glutes were sore the day after changing my technique. It was great. Same with the So you think you can bench series. Hope they do a deadlift one eventually.
Another funny story was I asked a PT if they had a glute ham raise station. He takes me over to the machine section and points to the machines that work the hamstrings and says those work the hamstrings and points to some other machines and says those work the glutes. I tried to explain to him that I wanted to do a GHR and what that was but he wasn’t listening to me. He just kept telling me I could work my glutes on the glute machines and hamstrings on the hamstring machines.
How the hell can it be your job to be a PT and you don’t know what a GHR is. Man PTs piss me off.
I had a PT interupt me while I was deadlifting to tell me that using my back when I deadlift would injure me. I responded as I always do when I get this kind of terrible advice and asked him to demonstrate. He then squated down and grabbed the bar and tried to hold it out in front of him while squatting back up. He spent a minute trying to figure it out before attempting to lift it and (of course) hurting his back.
I got told once that doing pushups with my elbows in and touching my chest to the ground at the bottom was bad for my shoulders… I then proceeded to do full range parralel bar dips whilst he was sitting on the chest press machine next to the dip station.
A famous german coach who established quite the franchise wrote in his shitty book that you have to deadlift “wrong” (rounded back) to do it “right”.
I’m not kidding.
