A couple readers have suggested an 11th thing not to do at a gym water fountain: put your mouth over the entire spout like you’re trying to suck the water straight out of the pipe. I guess this is akin to double-dipping your chip; it’s like putting your entire mouth in the bowl. In any event, it’s gross.
Thanks for sharing.
All this talk of barbells sailing through actual gym windows got me thinking about sociologists’ theory of Broken Windows.
Some researchers believe that municipalities can prevent serious crime by addressing problems when they are small: Repair broken windows quickly and vandals are much less likely to break more windows or do further damage. New York City applied this theory on a wide scale in the 1990s, cracking down on turnstile jumpers, public drunkenness, urinators, and the rest. Rates of both petty and serious crime fell.
I wish that gyms would adopt a similar approach to their facilities.
I belong to two gyms with equipment of similar quality. Gym A is well lit, the machines sit atop new carpeting, and management is responsive to comments dropped in the prominently displayed Suggestion Box. As you would imagine, members cooperate when it comes to re-racking weights, sharing equipment, and attractive women aren’t scared away. At Gym B, the carpet is coming apart in patches all over the place. Weight plates load down unoccupied machines. Workouts often include a five minute hunt for matching dumbbells. And of course, the membership roll provides marvelous fodder for this blog.
But here’s the thing: It’s really a bunch of small details that lead to a sustainable business versus a place in decline. If you don’t vacuum the floor enough, if you don’t promptly repair broken equipment, members receive a clear message about how to treat the club. At some point, you might even experience actual crime: equipment that can fit inside a gym bag starts to disappear (barbell collars, cable machine handles, small weight plates). Items left in gym lockers are no longer safe. Pretty soon you’ve got your very own fitness version of the 4-5-6 subway line heading too far north.
The sociologists are right, at least when it comes to gyms. Run the vacuum at least once a day, clean the bathrooms, empty the trash. You might save yourself a bigger headache down the road.
There are a few really astounding gym incidents that I’ve been able only to hear about, rather than witness firsthand. For example, there are variations on the collarless barbell: A guy doing bench presses with three plates on each side pushes up unevenly; the bar tips to one side, all three plates spill off the barbell, the bar seesaws wildly through the air, and the three plates on the other side go crashing to the ground. You’ll also come across the barbell catapult when someone unloads a barbell by first stripping all the plates from just one side.
(The most exciting thing to happen between me and a barbell occurred during a set of upright rows. A woman, distracted by a conversation with her boyfriend, speared herself by walking into the end of my barbell.)
I read somewhere that the reason truth is even stranger than fiction is because fiction is governed by probabilities. Now here’s an incident that I couldn’t have even imagined:
There was this other guy who was benching about 200 pounds. The benches were arranged along a big window that leads out to the carpark … When you lay down, the window is behind your head. So, the guy finishes his final rep, but misses the “hooks” or whatever you call them on his bench. The bar flew crashing through the window and rolled down the carpark.
I believe it was Albert Einstein who said that the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
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I cheer new techniques and machines that target the low back. In fact, I just completed a month of physical therapy for a herniated disk, the consequence of fanatical free weight workouts during my early 20’s.
One good alternative is the basic back extension machine. You sit in the machine, select the weight, and work your spinal erectors by leaning against the back pad. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, today I saw a woman raise the machine’s adjustable back pad so that it lay directly across the top of her spine. By stiffening her neck and pressing back with her head, she managed to push the machine through its normal motion.
Still, no back exercise, done correctly or otherwise, is as dangerous as the good morning. A good morning consists of standing under a heavy barbell and bending forward at the waist, all while keeping your legs straight. This movement has fallen out of favor over time, either as a result of advances in kinesiology or its contribution to long lines at sports medicine clinics. I’ve even been to a gym that crossed out the good morning image on its poster of suggested back exercises.
I occasionally notice women doing this exercise with just a Body Bar, though I imagine the risk of injury at these weights is minimal. I did recently find a serious lifter mocking a gym novice online for not knowing the difference between squats and the good mornings the serious lifter was actually performing.
Well, pal, the joke’s on you. My greatest regret as a trainer is the way I encouraged many clients to add good mornings to their workouts. Though I was only passing on the best information at the time, these folks are probably cursing me from the straps of a traction machine right now.
The deadlift, on the other hand, remains one of the sport’s best overall strength and mass builders – as long as you pay meticulous attention to proper form. Here’s what not to do:
There was a guy at my gym that worked out while his girlfriend did. He would “show off” on deadlift day for her. His idea of a deadlift was to drop to the floor at light speed, smash the plates off the floor, then bounce it up to the start position and call that a rep. He sounded like a grocery cart being pushed down the stairs.
The correct mechanical position for beginning and finishing the deadlift: head up, shoulders higher than butt, and your butt higher than knees. Also, it’s important to feel yourself pushing with your legs rather than lifting with your back. I offer no guarantees, however, only the assurance that I’m passing on the best information available today.
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