gym follies

tonight i was in one of the power racks at the gym. i had just stepped under a 95 lb barbell and was in the process of lifting said weight overhead. suddenly this mensa giant, who had been quasi-training a woman beside me, decided that my rack had the only 2.5 lb plates in the entire freaking gym.

he suddenly grabs for a plate and my eye immediately tracks to him. i drop the barbell back down onto the pins and stepped out of the rack. i did not hide my displeasure although i didn't say anything. goober walks to the other side of the rack to get another 2.5 lb plate. at this point he stops and asks if it is okay. i was ignoring him and i may have been frowning in the general vicinity of my barbell.

you are going to risk injurying me for 5 freaking pounds??? i still can't believe that he intended to increase the woman's rack deadlift by 5 lbs??? that made about as much sense as adding a second set of clips to increase the resistance. a 5 lb increment is better for smaller muscle groups; delts, bi's, tri's. chest pressing with free weight falls under the same guideline because delts and tri's are a very real weak link in pressing movements.

a rack deadlift targets the legs and the back. the delts and bi's aren't a real factor in this lift. if you miss the lift, the bar harmlessly slips out of your hands. you are not likely to damage your shoulders or biceps. a lift like that you should be increasing by 10 lb increments. and before you say that she isn't a bodybuilder or powerlifter, that guideline rings true regardless of the person's fitness goals. as long as there isn't a predetermined health issue a 10 lb increment makes sense. i know there was no such health issue as she had been pulling in excess of 135 lbs.

i was in a tank top for the first time this year and there were a couple of young guys training to my right. one of the two started hanging out in my periphery, he kept looking over at me. he seemed to be spreading out his arms and puffing out his chest. he had to have been all of 125 lbs soaking wet. i weigh significantly more than that, so yes i was bigger than he was and i didn't need to stand beside him to figure that out.

after i finished my set, i put my weights away and i put the bench in an empty smith rack. that smith rack had the same weight that i had been using. i watched that kid adjust the bench under the bar. i guess he was going to crawl under that bar and try to do the same exercise that i was doing, with the same weight i finished with! part of me wanted to watch how it would have turned out for him. most smith racks are counter-balanced to 10-15 lbs. which means if you have 95 lbs on the machine, you are actually only lifting about 80 lbs.

i was doing a reverse bench press which is a difficult lift, the weight of the bar would have been about 40 lbs less than his body weight. yeah that would have ended all kinds of bad.