Meatheads

The gym I go to is serves a community of mostly college students, graduate students, faculty and staff. One would think that this collection of high quality grey matter would be able to understand simple instructions and concepts, even for things unfamiliar to many of the brainy set, such as going to the gym. One would be wrong in this assumption.

Almost every time I go to workout I am confronted by at least one example of some piece of gym equipment being misused or abused, or someone exercising in an incorrect manner. The latter is more understandable than the former, given how much bad information and misinformation is out there regarding exercise.

Nevertheless, you would think that just by watching someone else do a proper workout you would pick up a few things. Yet almost every day I see someone butchering that simplest of weight exercises, the bench press. Earth to gym people: its not a bench press if you only bring it down three inches and then push it back up. It doesn't make you stronger if you lift your hips and bow your back like you're trying to do yoga on the bench. Lie flat on your back, bring it down to your chest, push it back up. Its just about the simplest exercise you can do.

When you're down with your bench press, maybe you'll want to do some curls or shoulder presses. That's all good. Now when you're done with that, do everyone a big favor and put the weights back on the correct rack. Preferably side by side, without taking up the middle two of the four open spaces on the rack.

To be fair, these are mild complaints. My biggest gym peeve is the flat out abuse of the exercise bike foot straps. They are clearly labeled with and "R" and an "L". They don't work if you put the L where the R is supposed to go, or vice versa. They don't look right, they don't feel right. They just get bent out of shape and eventually ripped apart. I would say that this is why we can't have nice things, but the stupid straps aren't even nice! I've long since given up using them because they were always ripped up and never available.

Its gotten so bad that the gym now has its few remaining foot straps at the desk, and you have to ask for them if you want them. You would think that would be a foolproof system, right? The desk gives you an R and an L, and you put them on like so. Ha! Sure enough, today I looked down at the bikes and saw the L and the R reversed on not one bike but two!