I set up a spare room at home with equipment and work out there now. This was partly for convenience, partly because of annoying gym rats like in the OP.
I can’t bring myself to go early in the morning, but I’ve been going during my lunch break for a while and so far the crowd level is reasonable. Much less frustrating than the after-work rush hour(s). It gives me less time to work out, but the blood-pressure and irritation tradeoff seems worth it.
But yeah, jerks who “reserve” multiple benches/machines simultaneously when there are others around need to be impaled anuswise on a barbell bar. Particularly if they cop an attitude when you unwittingly hop onto one of “their” machines.
I don’t have any issues with my gym (it’s a corporate gym and everyone that goes are people I work with, so everyone is courteous), but I do have issues with the pool we go to. Some people don’t seem to understand what the fast, medium and slow lane signs are for. I even had a lady in my ‘medium’ lane last week doing stretches at the end of the lane. We were the last lane in the pool, so there was a set of stairs in the corner. She was using the stairs to stretch for about 10 minutes, taking up about 3/4 of the end of the lane, making turns near impossible. I asked her to move (she didn’t) and then my husband said something to the effect of “If you’re going to stretch, go do it in on the other side” (where people are walking back and forth - they leave about 1/4 of the pool open for those folks). She still didn’t move. Eventually she started her swim, but of course, she was much, much slower than the three of us in the lane already. Frustrating.
However, I was reflecting on this afterwards and recognize that this exclusively happens with a certain ethnicity. I wondered if it was because they couldn’t read English. I’m thinking of bringing this up with the City (these are all City of Calgary pools) and seeing if they can get other languages on those signs so everyone can understand.
I recall a time when I needed a set of dumbbells, but someone else beat me to them by just a few seconds. No biggie, I’ll let him go first. He then sets them down and takes a call on his cell. I walk over and pick them up. He says, “Hey, I’m using those.” “No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re on the phone.”
He gave me a dirty look every time I saw him after that. I couldn’t have cared less.
Just as bad as “reserving” a bench is when someone sits at the same bench/machine between their sets. Get on, Do Your Set, then get off the bench/machine and let someone else get in there and do the same.
Another pet peeve of mine is Talkers in the gym. I like to concentrate on my workout, and get in and out in the minimal time required. What’s with these people (often including the staff) who have to hang out right by (or even on) the machines bullshitting. There’s plenty of space off to the side and in the lounge area for this.
Cell phone talkers are even worse; talking on the cell phone next to me on the Elliptical–Really? If you’re not negotiating a hostage situation or walking someone through brain surgery–GET OFF THE PHONE!
Ok, that’s off my chest. These are some of the reasons I love my 530 a.m. workouts–no jerks in there to bother me during my workout.
How big are you guys on wiping down the machines, benches and mats? Our gym has signs up about cleaning after every use, and our small weight room has 3 stations with bottles of spray and paper towels.
I am absolutely diligent about wiping down, even if I used the bench for like 2 minutes to just do tricep dips and I wasn’t even sweaty.
Some people seem to think they don’t have to wipe stuff down if it’s not a machine (just a bench or a mat), or if they aren’t that sweaty. But I say if your hands were on it, wipe it down. No one is putting their butt on the elliptical or touching much of the treadmill and those get wiped down. Not sure why a mat or a bench is any different.
I was waiting on a mat the other day and this dude got up and left the mat, and I waited for him to come back to wipe but he never did. He’d been doing pushups and left a big ol sweat drop in the middle of the mat.
I clean a lot of stuff before and after because I don’t trust that people have wiped it down. Especially during this wicked cold and flu season we’re hopefully now done with. Yuck.
I always wipe off the squat bar pad before I use it because I never see anyone else do it, and I figure it’s touching someone else’s dirty skin and it’s going to be on my bare skin so let’s keep it clean 
Actually, you rather come off as the “obnoxious person at the gym” in this anecdote.
Not to me. It isn’t polite to bogart scarce resources anywhere if you’re not actually using them. Also, every gym I have gone to in the past 5 years has signs up about not using cell phones anywhere except the lobby or lounge area.
Roddy
If the guy had made an outgoing call, or the conversation went on for a while, maybe. If someone came over and took the dumbbells from my feet the moment I answered a call, more than dirty looks would be exchanged.
Grunting at the gym has become an art form for many guys - I even wrote a post in my blog about it some months back.
I find that many people don’t understand the necessity of sitting quietly on a machine in between sets. I use this quiet time to close my eyes and breathe deeply, visualizing the growth in the muscles I just exercised. This is an important technique used by yogis and trainers around the world to help people reach their maximum potential, but an alarming number of folks don’t seem to know about it. They get angry with me for sitting there with my eyes closed. Sometimes I get so relaxed, just sitting there on the machine between sets, that I doze off a little, dreaming of having huuuuuuge muscles, only to be awakened by some incredibly rude guy who says derogatory things like “I’ve been waiting on this machine for 30 minutes while you just sat there” or “If you want to sleep, go home!”
I try to block out these naysayers when I exercise, but Lord knows it’s difficult. They apparently don’t care one whit about achieving inner peace by working out.
People like this is why butterfly was invented. Of course people like that are why I joined a Masters swim team and usually the people are much better. Usually.
::slight hijack:: My gym has numerous signs 20 min limit on cardio equipment when there is a line. There are only two StairMaster’s. What do you do when people don’t want to get off?
The other day I asked a girl on them if she’d be long, so she knew I was waiting for it. She said yes, because she’s on her lunch break. (Like I don’t work. :rolleyes:) I lifted first, but noticed she was still on it ½ hour later, while the other one was still occupied (by different people because I didn’t get there in time.
Do you camp out, doing nothing, waiting for someone to finish? Do you complain to staff?
My gym features a twenty-something female that runs the desk a few afternoons a week who cranks the stereo up to dance club volume with what I can only describe as some sort of techno-disco, usually featuring some female vocalists with a rather repetitive lyric, a breathy sounding voice with an electronic beat underneath it.
My company has a fitness room on the premises. It’s pretty modest, a handful of treadmills and ellipticals plus a decent rack of dumbells and a bench. There are a couple of guys who do the whole grunting routine while using the dumbells and then drop them to the mat, which makes a pretty good thud. It often startles the others in the room, and can definitely be heard quite well in the conference room next door. I guess I could understand it if these were serious lifters doing reps to absolute exhaustion, but they don’t appear to be doing that, and this isn’t the place or the time for that anyway.
Company gyms seem completely disrespected in my opinion. The gym at my company has had holes kicked in the shower room walls. It’s had weight benches broken, weights stolen, stuff written on the wall, and stuff stolen.
The lat pulldown machine was out of order one time and I asked the guy in the gym before me if he knew what happened. He said that person X was working out and let go of the weight and it crashed down and the cable broke (or the wheel, I can’t remember which).
I always have a backup plan of other stuff I can do to stay moving while I’m waiting, and then stuff to do instead if I don’t get a chance to do what I want. We’ve only got 2 stairmasters too so usually I just walk the track while I wait (which is easier than doing a different machine while I wait because I keep passing the stairmaster and I can jump right off the track).
If someone is breaking a 20-minute rule then you shoulda just shown up at the machine after 20 minutes and asked if she’d quit because it’s policy that she only take 20 minutes. The worst she can do is say no.
“For a while” being defined by you, I presume, to suit your own convenience. Thank you for not belonging to my gym.
Not using a cell phone means not taking calls, not just not making calls. Unless you’re listening to music or internet radio on it, you can leave the phone in your locker. And if you are using it for entertainment, you can turn it on airplane mode so you don’t get calls; or you can screen the calls and only take emergency calls (and if you’re taking an emergency call, you shouldn’t expect to get to hang on to the equipment during the call.)
Roddy
Don’t answer the call. This isn’t difficult. Cell phones should be completely banned in gyms. Go outside to call people.
I usually go to the gym after work when it is insanely busy. It’s an all-women gym and about 90% of us get it, do our thing and get out. However, in the last few weeks, there have been a lot of new members.
On Wednesday, I saw:
A woman doing 5 pounds on the leg press. For 20 minutes.
A woman lifting free weights right in front of the rack. (She nearly hit me all four times I went to get weights.)
All five benches were ‘saved’ with stuff when there were only two other people in the weight area.
Bwah!
Oh, come off it. It’s a fucking gym, not a library or a movie theater. At my gym it wouldn’t even be heard over the shitty dance music blaring from the overhead speakers.
If someone’s 30-second phone conversation is going to throw you, your workout and your temper into an irrecoverable tailspin, you’ve got a lot bigger problems to deal with.