And it really shouldn’t take you 20 minutes to get dressed! Crikey, what is it about the old guys walking around naked???
And stop hiking your balls over your shoulder to dry them off…that’s a hair dryer for your head.
I won’t even mention what they do to dry their butt cracks…:::::::shudder::::::::::
They use the endless towel?
Well if they never drop the weights, how is somebody else ever going to use them?
More annoying gym behavior, witnessed today:
When you are done with a weight and are putting it back on the weight tree, please make the extra effort to gently guide the weight down onto the storage bar, rather than just dropping it on. Notice how the bars on the “tree” are tilted upwards? There is no reason - none whatsoever - to put a 45 pound weight over the end of the bar and then just let go of it and let gravity pull it downwards on the bar, so that it crashes noisily into the other weights. None whatsoever. Please, please, take the extra two seconds to place the weight there rather than just letting it fall. Please.
My old gym was sold off to people who not only don’t know how to re-rack the dumbells, but managed to make everyone else unable to re-rack the weights. That was just one of the reasons I left that place. Now I go to a different, better, gym and sure enough lots of folks won’t take the plates off the machines when they’re done. But at least they’re better about re-racking the dumbbells and barbells.
I go a masseuse now who has a little room in a Gold’s Gym. It’s kind of funny, really, because you go into the gym which is harshly fluorescent and full of grunting guys and sorority girls, and then you open her door and it’s this beautiful calming oasis, right?
Except it’s a two story gym and every so often somebody upstairs will drop the shit out of something heavy, which does not improve my relaxation, dickbags.
I was reading the wiki article and the bit about this policy had me mostly persuaded that this was the fitness franchise for me. Heaven!
…and then I got to the bit about them handing out free Axe body spray to all their members, which is so much of a dealbreaker it isn’t funny. I’d go to a gym that was periodically flushed with BZ gas first.
I don’t know how you guys work out, but back in my gym days grunting was not always something that could be controlled, it just came out. We hit the weights hard and lifted as heavy as we could, always pushing for one more rep or one more plate. Also dropping weights in the tree was sometimes unavoidable, doing shoulder shrugs with 90 pound weights in each hand (wrapped in straps) until burnout can sometimes make it hard to lift them into the tree and put them down gently every time.
I don’t see how this can be imtimidating to anyone and if it is they are way too sensitive. Some people go to the gym to socialize, some go to say they went, some go to work out and get in better shape and some go to push themselves as hard as they can. I don’t call you a pussy for struggling with the pink dumbells, so don’t bother me for working harder than you. I think if you are serious about it and are trying for a body builder look, in 6 months you will be pushing hard, grunting and occasionally dropping weights.
I’m at a new gym these days. My only real complaint is the morons who leave their gym bag on the bench while they’re working out or showering. Man, there are some stupid/selfish people in this world.
Trust me, the people at my gym who are doing this are not the serious lifters. They’re dorks and dabblers, plus a few high-school boneheads.
I’ve been lifting weights at gyms since I was 14. Trust me, I know that grunting can be a good thing. I even said it in my OP:
I always grunt slightly when I do heavy lifts or the last few lifts of a set. The guys who I object to are the ones who feel that everyone in the gym needs to hear them SCRRRREEEEEAAAAMMMM at the top of their lungs every time they do a rep.
No offense, I hope, and I am not doing it on purpose, but when I hit my top set that’s a total of 180 pounds, and if I go to failure it isn’t going to nestle onto the floor in a heap of eiderdown.
I am not going to abuse the weights, or the floor, but that’s why God made rubber mats.
No, I am not dropping them from arm’s length, but even a couple of inches can make a bit of a thump. You’re going to have to get used to that - it’s a gym, not a sensory isolation chamber.
And if somebody suggests setting up a lunk alarm like the dorks at Planet Fitness, I’m dropping a dumbbell on their foot to see if they grunt, and then setting it off.
Regards,
Shodan
I spent the first 30-35 years of my life believing that others were at fault for being offended by my actions. Boy, what I’d give to change that.
It isn’t intimidating, it’s freaking annoying/startling when I’m trying to lift and some guy screams like he’s being tortured, or he drops the 75-pounders from two feet high. I grunt when I lift but I think of those around me as well. I know what it’s like to hardly be able to put the weight back on the tree. It’s often the hardest part of the set. * But I do it anyway*. Even if I have to put the bar on the ground and rest for a bit first. If one is lifting so hard that one can’t put the weights down properly and instead drops them, then one is being a dick at the gym.
Dude, if you push yourself so hard you can’t put your weights up, I’ve got to wonder about your safety there.
It’s not about being a dick or my personal safety, it’s called lifting till burnout.
My gym partner and I used to do what we called passovers. We would take the 90 pound EZ curl bar and I would do ten curls then he would do ten and pass it back to me, where I woud do nine and so on down to one each. When you get down to doing the last two good luck gently putting anything back, you would be lucky to scratch your own ass. It’s one of the best burnout exercises we did and very effective.
I’ve lifted til burnout and managed to not drop the weights down. Of course, I used a spotter, not just for my safety but for those around me. I’ve done even trickier things with that bar curl where my workout buddy would throw weights on after 10 and I’d keep going for another set and then another pile of weights. Even on simple things like shoulder presses with free weights I’d have a spotter who would make sure that if I can’t safely put the weights down, he would. So yeah, it’s still being a dick if you’re dropping the weights.
I’m not saying I’m perfect. There are times when I’m pushing myself to see if I can lift more on things like deadlifts (just got up to 245x8) and my increment is larger than I could do and the weight doesn’t land as quietly as I would’ve liked. But that’d be a one-off, and not a repeated thing.
As for the loud grunting, I can see how it’s a psychological thing, but it’s far from necessary.
