Yes, you, over there, with the treadmill incline cranked up to 25, walking at a brisk clip while HOLDING ON to the treadmill (and not just lightly grasping the heart monitor handles, I am talking about holding on like you’re going to fall off if you let go – which you would).
Exercising this way is pointless, unless you’re just looking for a way to waste time instead of actually accomlishing anything. Besides bothering me for its shear stupidity, it also bothers me that there are no treadmills available because of a bunch of folks like you using them inappropriately.
Also, while I have a thread open, the stupid Sarah Connor Chronicles thread just drives me up a wall…its up to around 6 pages now, instead of a weekly thread for the new episodes like everyone else, I always have to open this huge long thread and try to navigate to the last coment I read, and I never know if a new comment is going to be about the new episode or the one we watched 2 weeks ago.
No it’s not. If you get your heart rate up to what it would be if you did the way you think they should, it is doing exactly the same thing. That’s the point of the heart rate monitor.
You can wait your turn like the rest of them. And you can keep your opinions on how I work out to yourself until I ask you, which I am not going to do.
A woman at the gym was doing the same thing on the treadmill yesterday. It’s pointless. Same goes for those on stair steppers who lean on the rails. I hope those people don’t think they’re really burning that many calories or getting the muscle workout they would walking up a normal hill.
But don’t say anything to her. A few weeks ago I asked if I, as a fitness instructor at the gym doing my own thing, should correct someone using a machine wrong, and the consensus was that I should keep my mouth shut.
If you do put your treadmill at a high incline and hold on for dear life, why? Why not lower the incline, walk up the hill without holding on, and reap more benefits?
Serious question here. While holding onto the bar might not make for the most efficient workout, is it really not accomplishing anything? I would think anytime you get your heart rate up you are doing yourself some good. Am I mistaken in that?
What difference does it make if they are doing it properly or not? It seems that doing it properly or not won’t affect the availability.
To be fair, there is a difference in using equipment properly, but it’s not necessarily directly related to availability. I constantly see people use cardio equipment at max incline and high speeds while holding on for dear life. Yes, they are burning the same amount of calories as if they were using it properly, but they’re also doing more wear and tear on the machine (which indirectly affects availability), making a hell of a lot more noise, and sweating profusely all over the place. If you use the machine properly, you can more efficiently get your heart at a higher rate and chances are it won’t do as much damage to the equipment, it won’t be as noisy or obnoxious (since that type of use usually involves stomping feet and panting), and because it’s more efficient, you probably won’t sweat as much either, meaning you won’t either have to clean up as much or just be inconsiderate and leave a disgusting puddle for the next person.
There is a potential correlation between using other pieces of equipment properly and availability. I often see people using equipment VERY wrong or very clearly doing the wrong amount of weight (too much or too little), and either of those can result in much longer use of the equipment. There’s a lot of clueless people who just pile on weight because they can do that much once (often on press movements), but they want to get ten reps, so rather than doing one set of ten, they do ten sets of one; it takes a lot longer. And then you have their opposites who put five pounds on something they could easily do considerably more on (often on back or calf movements) and then do 100 reps, when they’d be better off doing more weight and doing fewer reps. Hell, I don’t care if they’re doing high reps like 15-20, but that’s still a lot less than 100.
And to the fitness instructor upthread who said they would just keep their mouth shut, I generally agree. If someone has bad form and doesn’t want help, fine; often enough they ask me or someone else if they’re actually interested. But if someone is going to damage a piece of equipment or otherwise doing something so obnoxious it hurts me to look at it, I’ll say something. Even as that goes, I’ve only actually felt compelled to say something to about four or five people over the nine years I’ve been at my gym.
Yes, you an also do strength trainign with very poor form, slinging weights about by using inertia, etc, instead of workign your muscles. Doing this, people typically use weights that are much heavier (makes them feel more manly, or whatever) and it takes much longer to get the same amount of benefit. Since we’re both paying for a shared resource, you’ll pardon me if I complain when your stupidity interferes with the time it takes for me to do my workout.
If you set the treadmill to a reasonable walking speed for your size and age, and exercise that way, you’ll see more of a benefit from your workout in a shorter time, and I won’t have to wait as long for a treadmill to become open.
I’m not surprised that you feel entitled to act like a dick, however. It’s completely within your MO.
They would typically be available more quickly because the exercise woudl realize the net benefit of a proper workout sooner.
I realize there’s a fuzzy line to be drawn abuot “appropriate use.” But no one would think I was crazy if I complained about people using treadmils to just stand there for 20 minutes, would they?
Can you fix it, please? It’s really annoying that I can’t start new threads.
The complaint was raised a while back in those threads, and it was generally ignored, and the thread style for that one show continues to defy all others. I could swim upstream and start my own thread each week, which would likely get ignored or merged with the old thread, or I could just vent a little about how it annoys me.
Not that I’m much of a gym rat, preferring a pair of running shoes and the great outdoors for cardiac workouts, but: Isn’t perspiration pretty much linked to the effort exerted? It seems to me that an “efficient” workout is one that gets you sweating profusely.
(It also seems that if being around perspiring people is a problem, perhaps a gym isn’t the place to hang out.)
This presupposes people are adjusting their workouts by something other than time. When you workout, do you set the machine for a certain amount of time (maybe speed and distance) or do you set it based on a “net benefit” (whatever that means)?
If they are just standing there you may have a valid complaint because they can do that somewhere else. But if they are moving, regardless of how fast or “properly”, that is really up to them.
I typically set it to the time that corresponds to the amount of work I am able to do. for instance, around 2.5 miles is about 25 minutes, and there is no way to tell the treadmill to just go for 2.5 miles, so I set for 20 minutes and off I go. my goal is to make it 2.5 miles.
True, some people might be going for, say, 30 minutes of workout time. fine, I have no problem with that, but I’d like to see them get a better workout for 30 minutes than they are getting by misusing the equipment in that way.
I also suppose that a lot of people do it that way because they like looking at the much bigger calories burned number, so they can justify that milkshake after the workout.
You seem to coming from the perspective that they aren’t working out how *you’d *be working out, which is flawed, imo. Hey, they’re at the gym, that’s a lot more then the majority of the population does. Who cares if they’re doing it a different way then you?
The perspective I come from is the potential harm they’re doing to the equipment or to themselves. Using the treadmill like that causes undue strain on the upper body and strain on the equipment.
You might want to lower your nose just a bit, you get a better work out that way.
I was doing Push Presses one time when some dickhead came up to me and said “you know, you’ll get much more out of your workout if you slow down and don’t let momentum do all the work.” I didn’t have the time to explain to him how stupid on how many levels his comment was, so I just told him to fuck off.
Thing is, though, it’s not even clear that this is true.
If using the machine properly gets our hypothetical exerciser’s heart rate up to 130, and using the machine improperly also gets it up to 130, then the cardiovascular benefit to the person is exactly the same. Sure, the muscular benefit to the legs, etc., might be slightly different, but probably in such small measures as to be almost unnoticeable.
As for the “shorter time” thing, some people work out based on time (as you yourself have already demonstrated), so the amount of time they use the machine will not change, even if the alter the settings and their form. I really don’t buy the connection between exercise form and machine availability that you are arguing in your OP. Many gyms have time limits for cardio equipment (usually 20-30 minutes) when people are waiting. Does yours not have such a system?
Look, i understand the frustration that comes with seeing someone at the gym using equipment in an inefficient or incorrect manner. I have to consciously stop myself from offering advice to such people. But i DO stop myself, because most people who offer such unsolicited advice end up looking like a tool.