I’m back in action after a several week hiatus. In case, you’re wondering the tour was hugely successful and a lot of fun the entire time.
Perhaps I’ll tell you more about that later but right now I gotta tell you about a visit to a gym I had in Vancouver. We were staying at a nice hotel and it was attached to a gym. Not one of the small rooms with only a handful pieces of equipment like most hotels have, but a full-on commercial gym.
Now I personally have not set foot in a gym for a long time. So I knew I’d be in for a treat.
I set out to do some heavy exercises. One arm presses with dumbbells, weighted chin-ups, barbell squats and a handful of other exercises.
I was in a squat rack doing doubles and singles in the chin. It was nice to be able to fully hang as the bar was high off the ground. I hung the dumbbell from my feet to do the exercise.
A man came over and asked, “Hey, can I work in with you?”
“Okay,” I replied as I moved the dumbbell out of the area.
Then he said, “Don’t worry about that, I don’t need to get in there.”
I was a little perplexed but I just went back to the dumbbell rack to do my next exercise.
The next time I looked over I had to stop myself from laughing. The man was kneeling on top of a swiss ball and doing a tricep extension with what couldn’t have been more than 20 lbs. He need the squat rack so he could balance himself with his free arm.
The entire gym was full of people who wouldn’t know what productive training was if it was staring them in the face. The funny thing is this guy probably thought he was doing some cutting-edge training (and yes he did more than one set of this exercise!)
There are tons of possible exercises you can do whether they be with dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells or just your bodyweight. You do not have to waste your time with odd-ball exercises. The simplest exercises, the ones that have stood the test of time are usually your best bet.
And if you think this was bad, wait til you hear what my friend saw in the same gym. That story coming at you later this week.
In strength,
Logan Christopher
P.S. If you have commercial gym horror stories, I’d love to hear them so send them in.
Comments
Yeah I have a HORROR TERRIFIYNG story with a local idiotic commercial gym here in my hometown, where it was full of bunny rabbits, psuedo intensity training, pencil necks & armchair experts… I went to the commercial shit gym with my NEW bought 3 INCH THICK Barbell. You probably guess what I was trying to do, I wanted to scare people away with that Thick Bar & see IF there was even ONE REAL MAN amongst those Spineless wimps, yups, pumpers, toners & shapers. There was NOT ONE among them, that’s HOW PAFETIC the commercial gym people are. Anyway when I entered the gym that I haven’t entered since I found out about REALWORLD Functional Strength training & everything that goes along with it 2 years before, I was stopped by one of the “trainers” there & he told me I COULDN’T get in with a Barbell that thick & long… I bought the one from John Woods site oldtimestrongman.com, they’re called: Black Iron Strength Rotating Olympic Thick Bars, 6 feet 6 inches long & 3″ Diameter. So I aksed him: WHY not? And you know what that Yup told me? Because It may SCARE people away & put them out of their “concentration” of their “training”. I had to keep myself from laughing out HARD! Then he told me I could ONLY go into the gym & really train (They were in for a BIG suprise) IF I don’t grunt & don’t do Squats or Deadlifts, seriously man, those 2 PRODUCTIVE exercises are forbidden there.
So AGAIN, I asked why the HELL are those 2 Exercises forbidden in this gym? So the idiot answered this: It’s because they’re BAD for your lower back & knees & & that I was better of using on of their WUSSY Machines to train the SAME muscles but WITHOUT the undue stress placed on the muscles… What a bunch of brainless fools + He told me to IF I still would use the Bar, (even with the “GREAT” advice from him to not use it), That I won’t put TOO much weight on the Bar, because it would be HARD for me to control it & he wanted to sell me one of their fashion protective bunny gloves (to protect my hands from the 3″ Barbell so I wouldn’t get wounds on it & could go on for longer with my training).
Can you believe this BS? I couldn’t either, so I thought fuckkit, I said to him I LIKE to have my hands RIPPED to ribbons, + I LOVE it when It’s DIFFUCULT to control the 3″ Bar. & they looked at me as if I cursed their mother for Skanky ass hoe & punched them right in the face. Him & the other bunnies then looked at me untill I got into the gym & kept an observing eye on me the whole damn time. By the way, the funniest thing that happened after that was when I literally saw people running away & getting as far from me as possible when I walked towards them with my 3″ Barbell.
FUNNY, Brooks Kubik was right, those chrome & fern croud really made me laugh that day, I couldn’t keep my laugh down, So I cracked up & laughed very hard when I saw how those bunny rabbits acted when they saw the Large, Thick Mass of Iron.
I had to try this out since I first read Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik, I’m pretty sure you are familiar with that Book, So No furhter discussion needed about that, Ok back to the main story. Since I had scared all of those chrome & fern bunnies away & there was no one who wanted to be in that particulair area, Since I was standing in the middle of the largest area there, On purpose of course, I enjoyed the scared bunny rabbits who were running for cover the minute they saw my walking into the area.
Not even 1 or 2 peoples who wanted to KNOW WHY I was training with such a Long & Thick Barbell, NOTHING, NO interests or curiousity.
So when the people did they’re complains to the “gymtrainers”. I again had to leave the gym, but then I told them I would pick a quit spot somewhere in a COURAGE corner (As Pavel says), & train there ALL by myself like a REAL DINOSAUR, they didn’t understand anything from what I was saying, NOT the COURAGE corner & NOT from the REAL DINOSAUR.
But that mattered to me NOT.
I had them where I wanted them. Paying EVEN MORE attention to what I was up to. So what followed even made me laugh HARDER then ALL of the above mentioned things combined together.
This is exactly what happened afterwards. I thought FUCK IT, I’m going to do HEAVY Deadlifts, BUT there were NO Weights of wich I could combine together heavier then 50KG, something like 100 Pounds, maybe a little more, STILL a BABY weight in the Deadlift for a TRUE DINOSAUR. So since I KNEW I was going to get KICKED OUT of the commercial BUNNY RABBIT gym, I put on the MOST amount of weight on the 3″ Bar.
BUT there were NO Heavy Barbell plates lying around there, The heaviest that was lying around there was 10KG, something like 20lbs… NOW THAT’S CHrome & Fern Land weight, So I had to find the MOST 10KG Barbell plates that I could find.
The only problem was they’re were NO MORE then 8 of them in total, So that was together 80KG, something like 160lbs. or a more, dunno exactly how much LBS. that is. And Since I had MASTERED that weight a Long time ago. So as I expected, the weights lying around in that commercial BS gym were not HEAVY enough to become a REAL CHALLENGE. But still I thought, FUCK IT I’m going to lift that Baby weight anyway, Cause to those Bunnies that weight is from another dimenison or something. And the moment the baby weight hit the floor after I lifted it up & back down, I was Suprised at how FAST I was kicked out. It didn’t took them more then half a minute or so to kick me out… since the RED LIGHT alarm went off the moment put the weight down back on the floor, The funny thing is that the alarm detected that SOMEONE was doing Deadlifts.
And for those Chrome & Fern commercial gyms thats a BIG NO-NO. They really took this shit so seriously that I felt like I had done a serious crime or something. They told me to NOT COME BACK EVER AGAIN in their “SERIOUS” gym, wich was for people who were ONLY interested in “REAL TRAINING”.
They really thought that what I was doing, was just fucking around & not really training… can you believe this BS? I can now. Since reading Dinosaur Training MANY MANY times over, I really understand what Brooks says about those babyweight pumpers in commercial gyms. So I got kicked out & they warned me that IF I came to knock on their door ever again OR will come NEAR the gym ever again, they will call the police immidiatly. They were really ANGRY at me! Funny shit!
So It was all to the good that evening! Awww good memories. I laughed all the way back home. WHERE the REAL workout yet had to get started in the garage & backyard! Yeah I know, but THAT’S how DEEP the world of “strength training” has sunk… still even though I laughed HARD back then & had a good time, I think it’s a BIG SHAME to the History of Strength Training. Yeah Long story ha. But that one I had to get of my chest & share on this site. Just to let you know your not alone in this world with this kind of FUNNY Horror gym stories.
Sheize I made a BIG mistake in the story, I said that there were NO Weights of wich I could combine together heavier then 50KG, something like 100 Pounds… BUT what I wanted to say was 80KG, & 160 pounds. Wich I did Beneath it, BUT again I forgot to delete the mistake I had put in the story, Just so you know…
Peace