so there was this guy in the gym . . .
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Holiday is correct, the 'behind you' deadlifts are called hack squats. They're mainly a quad exercise.0
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I watched a guy do them for the entire time I was in the gym once. I was like, good luck using your legs tomorrow!0
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Is long bar row the same as a T bar row? I had to google what aT bar row was a while back because when I still belonged to Planet Fitness they had signs around proclaiming that T bar rows were forbidden.0
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Yes. I think tbar-and long bar row are the same thing, but maybe slightly different. I'm also jumping on the hack squat train.0
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Yup - just looked at a video of hack squats. That's what he was doing. And the self-admiration society was doing T-bar rows.
Y'all are smarty pantsters!
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My google search went along the lines of "exercise barbell with plates on end". It was very scientific.0
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So, this was from a week or so ago, but I didn't post it then.
There is this girl at the gym who likes to think herself a trainer, but isn't. Mostly, I think she just likes bossing people around...at least that is what it sounds like to me. She is fit, but nothing outstanding.
Anyhow, last time I saw her, she had a little entourage around her. 5 women were with her and they were going as a group around the weight room. I was benching on an end bench. The group comes over to a cable machine and are standing around chatting right next to me. I have headphones, but my battery had died. I still had them in though so that I could pretend I couldn't hear. So I finish my bench and put the bar in the ground in front of the bench to do rows since their group in standing in the spot that people usually use for deadlifts and stuff. It was super tight and I only had a couple inches clearance on one end of the bar.
All 6 of them are taking turns using one cable machine. So one finishes a set, and waits for 5 other people to take turns before they get another set in, and they are all chatting, so no one is hurrying. They are kind of milling around, keep walking right in front of me while I am lifting, even though there is a huge amount of empty space on the other side of the machine they are using. Then, I am getting ready for my 4th set, get in position over the bar, grab it, and some woman walks by and STEPS RIGHT OVER THE BAR I am just pulling off the floor. I had to drop it to avoid hitting her with the weights. When I told my friend later that night, she thought I should have just carried on and hit her with the bar. Maybe then she would learn :P
Then, last night, some kid walks right in to the end of the bar as I am about to start my OHP while going to meet his buddy. Luckily there isn't much weight on it, and I hadn't moved it off my chest yet. At least he had the decency to look sheepish and apologized.0 -
Does the wanna-be trainer actually work for the gym? If so, I would say something to her about gym safety and keeping her entourage in check. Or speak up next time. I would have NO problem telling dipshit-bar-stepper to back the hell off. That's just NOT OK. Ughh.0
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My Y closes at 7 on Friday so I went to Golds after work and was 2nd in line waiting for the only cage (no racks). The guy in front of me was like almost apologetic for using it. He was assuring me it would only take 10 minutes etc. So as soon as he's almost done some random upper body day only guy with knee sleeves on comes up and I guess Nice Guy told him I was next. UBDO guy was like, "Are you squatting?" Me, "No, I'm over head pressing." "You're what?" "OVER. HEAD. PRESSING." And then he walked away. Now it could be possible he was just wanting to work in if I was squatting, but it really sounded quite judgey/accusatory and I think he was hoping I'd be all "Oh are YOU squatting you big sexy bag of muscles?! Here. YOU take the cage. You are much more deserving." I mean don't normal people ask if they can work in/how many sets/how long you're going to be/if you can get them when you're done? All with pleases and thank yous. Jokes on him cause I was on week 3 day 3 of smolov jr which is 8 sets of 4 after warm ups. I was in there for ev er.0
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there were two guys in the gym yesterday . . . i was listening to them as hard as i could and trying to take mental notes, but the discourse was so vapid - and strangely, so LOUD - that a lot of it has totally died from my mind in spite of all i could do. i guess these are what you actually get in some of the mainstream/broculture gyms and if they are then all i can say is, 'thank GOD for the rec centres then.'
the distinguishing feature of one of them was that he didn't have any. he looked like the kind of slacker/stoner/loser dude who vaguely hopes to get told that he looks like seth rogan because he has roughly the same kind of hair. beard and thick glasses and he was lifting in a pair of those offensive cargo-pant baggies that come down to the knees and are made of some shiny false canvas that would melt if you held a lighter to them. full of zippers and snaps and such stuff, and i'm pretty sure i saw a giant dog-chain leading from his belt to the place where his oh-so-precious wallet was kept.
it was pretty quiet, pretty much just me and them and this other far more sane-seeming young guy. who was also wearing slacker pants and had a skateboarder's type ponytail to keep his hair out of his face, but he looked as if he had a brain. oh, and my bucktoothed buddy who took such delight in my big deadlift a few months ago. beard-guy was doing a don't-do-this-you-fool form of squats in the smith for at least half an hour by himself, and all i did at that point was make a slight snicker and record his baby-bird-needs-to-be-fed facial configuration for @crabada's benefit. eyes screwed tight shut and mouth screwed wide open to show off his pain, and face tipped up to the ceiling and all while he prayed for deliverance under this terrible load. but then his loud lapdog showed up, and they moved into the actual rack and things hit a new gear. i guess they work out downtown. or something. some loud, obnoxious, aggressive place where everyone is a ufc cage-match fanatic when they're not in clubs.
weird thing was, beardy guy was the alpha dude of the pair. the other guy who showed up was a whole lot younger, head and shoulders taller, and just generally a much more preposessing type guy. at least physically. but as soon as he opened his mouth he branded himself from top to bottom as one of the most slavish 'follower' types that i've ever seen. it was bizarre. i overheard him whether i wanted to or not for at least 60 unceasing minutes, and he didn't seem to have a muscle anywhere in his entire psyche. and for some reason he'd attached all his devotion to this totally nondescript twit, and was just following him everywhere actively feeding him alpha-dog lines. mr beard didn't even have to do or say much, it was more like the groupie was hoisting him onto some pedestal all by himself. they did squats unfortunately too near the bench while i was benching, and they spent the whole time telling each other the entire time various back-stabbing gossip stories about various lowlifes in 'their' own gym. when mr submissive wasn't putting his own thoughts into the mouth of the other guy and then waiting with audible anxiety to hear them approved.
it was so boring, oh god help me. it really was. i'd forgotten how awful men like this are because i ahven't had to even be around any of them for so long. every story was designed to show someone at a contrived disadvantage that wasn't even an original one. and then they'd both pretend to find the target person's stupidity completely hilarious, which honestly couldn't have been real because you could hear the pause after each punchline while both of them searched hard for something to mock in whatever the target had done. the time x got showed up as a total *kitten* by some chick who was benching y weight. the total asininity of beardy-guy's mom for bringing beardy-guy's niece to some family thing, when beardy-guy's mom 'obviously' should have known there wasn't room in beardy-guy's mother's car for both beardy guy and his awesome physique and a child of, say, three.
interspersed with exchanges of pre-workout and post-workout and who knows what brand names, of course. and form tips to make the groupie as awesome at squats as his great hero was. 'don't go so low. stop there. no, higher. look up.' and some bragging, of course. beardy guy and his chiropractor who won't even work on his neck because beardy-guys' traps are so huge that his bones can't be reached. no word of a lie, and the lapdog crowed 'dude!' like it was a mental orgasm just hearing the tale. and so and and so on and so on and so forth. and so on. oh my groke. the only good part was, both of them were such losers they didn't even have any of the anti-'chick' stories i was just bracing my whole body for. they were such losers that in a weird sort of way they were kind of harmless. like eunuchs, almost. they seemed to have removed themselves from the whole reproductive chain by sheer brainlessness.
or other more physical means. because went off to stretch they were in the stretching zone too. not stretching of course . . . still lifting but now into the real specialized technical stuff. beardy dude was showing off some new kind of fancypants idek, some triple-gainer landmine row with a toeloop and a reverse russian halftwist - almost literally, actually. i was determined not to give them the oxygen of looking at them, but i did see that he was straddling the barbell, but kind of sideways, and he seemed to be corkscrewed around so he was using only his opposite hand torow with, behind his own bum. or something, while his groupie stood by with his hands on his hips and loudly watched and admired and yapped about how he wanted to learn to do that as well.
and then came the glorious moment. the beard guy said 'OW.' oh how it gladdened my heart. i had my back turned at the time. strongest discipline of my whole life but i didn't whip round to look. there's a moment silence and then the groupie says 'what?' beard guy says something all mumbly, and starts up again, and then a moment later he gives off a REAL ow and some good ol' swear words, and throws the bar down. groupie's all what? what? where does it hurt? and the beardy-guy starts in not so much telling him as - well, by the sounds of his voice he was showing him too. the groupie's beside himself with excitement and joy. 'there? right there? dude! that's so awesome, me too! that's where it hurts me as well!'
well, i mean, what would you do? i turned around. and i almost caught them at it. showing each other their prostate glands, or at least something right in that zone.
rec centres. where all the normal folks lift.
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oh, and of course during their squatting session there was the 'oh-so-platonic and totally straight bro-hug of safety' thing being given as well. i noticed that because it honsetly wasnt' like young-gun seemed to know what he was doing at all, and i'd just been reading rippetoe's claim that you should NEVER, not EVER, physically interfere with someone while they're involved in a lift.0
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canadianlbs wrote: »he looked like the kind of slacker/stoner/loser dude who vaguely hopes to get told that he looks like seth rogan because he has roughly the same kind of hair. beard and thick glasses and he was lifting in a pair of those offensive cargo-pant baggies that come down to the knees and are made of some shiny false canvas that would melt if you held a lighter to them.
There is a lot of people who tells my husband that he is a Seth Rogen look alike, and most of the time, I think it's because of his curly thick hair, thick beard and thick glasses. At one point, it was embarassing. When we were working in college together, he replaced me with a student one on one and gave him an assignment to write a short story about his day at school. When I came back, the student (who was 17 years old at the time), wrote a story about how Seth Rogen was there to help him with is french, and how cool he was. He gave me a picture of Seth Rogen with my husband name written on it (and a little heart drawed next to it, which was a little bit weird). I kept the picture for a while on my bulletin board, often getting questions about my apparent love for Seth Rogen.
Well.
Husband not a loser, though. He had his beard and thick glasses before Seth Rogen was a thing. :P
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canadianlbs wrote: »all i did at that point was make a slight snicker and record his baby-bird-needs-to-be-fed facial configuration for @crabada's benefit. eyes screwed tight shut and mouth screwed wide open to show off his pain, and face tipped up to the ceiling and all while he prayed for deliverance under this terrible load.canadianlbs wrote: »beardy guy and his chiropractor who won't even work on his neck because beardy-guys' traps are so huge that his bones can't be reached. no word of a lie, and the lapdog crowed 'dude!' like it was a mental orgasm just hearing the tale.canadianlbs wrote: »while his groupie stood by with his hands on his hips and loudly watched and admired and yapped about how he wanted to learn to do that as well.
@Canadian -- You really do have the best freaking descriptions ever. These three are my favorite from this particular vignette. I can't lie -- I kind of live for your gym stories.
Mostly normal folks at my gym tonight. My friend Marco was there and had me video him doing 315 lbs. deadlifts, sans belt. His form was insanely perfect. Ridiculous.
But there was this one dude, who looked a little like this, with bigger muscles and fewer tattoos, but similar faces / expressions:
And he was doing some kind of superset with whatever machine and wide armed pullups. But he didn't walk from one area to the other, he STALKED. I've never seen anyone walk with so much purpose in the gym, even on the treadmills. He looked angry the whole time, and did those "shake the arms back and forth, shoulders up and down rapidly" stretches before doing his pullups. I honest to goodness think he might have been on something -- and I'm not talking a pre-workout.
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Is long bar row the same as a T bar row? I had to google what aT bar row was a while back because when I still belonged to Planet Fitness they had signs around proclaiming that T bar rows were forbidden.
Does PF just think of random exercises to ban? First it was deadlifts, then squats, now T-bar rows... why those three?0 -
guess it either digs holes in the floor, or holes in the egos of those looking on.0
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Yeah I think t bar rows without a "landmine" basically a fancy weighted holder really mess up the walls. That one actually makes sense to ban.0
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My gym has a machine for it with the bar on a hinge so I didn't think about the floor issue. Point taken!
@canadianlbs thanks for the bro story, it was great!0 -
So... I may just not be used to the whole gym thing yet... and you guys may see this all the time... but a maneuver that I thought was reserved for youtube "gym fail" type videos... apparently people actually walk backwards on the dang treadmills... and i dont mean mosey... this was brisk walking/running... I have a hard enough time going forward on the darn things.0
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@hanlonsk people do that and it makes me nervous because I can't walk let alone run backwards. They used to make us do it in track practice and I'd fall dramatically every time.
I think it was earlier in this thread where I posted about people speed walking sideways/doing the grapevine on the treadmill facing you and it's super awkward. I still owe @crabada a picture of me doing the mirror next time that happens to me.0 -
MissHolidayGolightly wrote: »@hanlonsk people do that and it makes me nervous because I can't walk let alone run backwards. They used to make us do it in track practice and I'd fall dramatically every time.
I think it was earlier in this thread where I posted about people speed walking sideways/doing the grapevine on the treadmill facing you and it's super awkward. I still owe @crabada a picture of me doing the mirror next time that happens to me.
Yes. Yes, you do!
And now a video of you "falling dramatically" while running backwards has been added to list of things you owe me. Preferably while wearing a little black dress, pearls, and drinking milk from a champagne goblet, because this is how I'm picturing it in my head. Please and thank you.0
