Funny and stupid things you've seen done in a gym

[John Sapinoso]

What are some of the stupidest/ funniest things you've seen or heard in a gym?

here's one:

I saw a trainer instruct the trainee to do the following all at the same time. A one arm bicep curl, a one arm tricep extension with the other, balance on one foot with the other resting on a medicine ball. all the while not even paying attention to the trainee but instead staring at the mirror.

one thing I heard a trainer say (i think it was the same one):

the best breakfast is a large bowl of cereal, it's low in fat high and in carbs so it'll fuel you throughout the day.

how do these people stay employed???

[Erik Sjolin]

I saw this done in my first year of university (before I discovered this).

These guys were complaining that they couldn't get a wide enough grip on the bench press bar (in their defense, this was a REALLY crappy set up), so they put the collars on the inside of the weights to give them more room.

As if that wasn't dumb enough, they took all the weight off one side first, so the bar fell off, and the empty side clipped one of them in the side of the head.

[Marlon]

I got some seriously bad coaching at the gym i trained at for most of last year. I dont think the coach was ever a gymnast, he may have done some snowboarding or something in the past and he was always stoned whenever i saw him there.

But Anyways; this guy was insistant on people learning to do standing back handsprings without swinging their arms. People he coached had to keep their hands up by there ears and just jump back. He even had me put this padded bent metal bar thing around my neck to hold my arms in place so that i couldnt swing them.

I was also instructed all year long to spot a point near the ceiling when tumbling and never the ground. This wasnt while setting, mind you. This was instruction on where to spot when landing skills...

Edit: so somEone just made a post in another thread hear about the device that coach used to teach back handsprings, its aparently called an open shoulder trainer and intended for use during skills that actually require you to actually keep your shoulders open the entire time, like carthweels, round-offs, front handsprings... And not standing back handsprings.

[Felipe]

In a traditional gym

-doing full squats and try to explain thats the way they should be done

-doing fronts lever pulls and listening the body trainer say to someone "dont do that, he is a gymast"

-people doing quarter pullups and pretending they have shot biceps

-a person with protein shake using a machine with 20 kilos and lamenting he cant increase his performances

-"muscle confusion" principle

-"5x5??? O man youre such a badass but I cant do that, too much for me" and then doing the same 3x10 over and over

-people obsessed with biceps doing it on first

In a gymastics gym

-being wrapped on hands and legs at the earliest stages of back handsprings. I was so scared I will not learn it in the rest of my life

-the old sayin' in the gym for conditioning: do 100 pushups then 100 swings on pbar then 100 hespu ! (this was the only method possibile for conditioning)

-children turn: 30 mins of abs and they are all so tired they cant learn anything properly

-being pushed in stretching at my "old" age in ankward positions

[JL]

Youth boxing

I worked out at a gym that collaborated with a boxing program, and the guy was promoting medicine ball use for reducing stomach fat. Maybe the fat kid who hated getting beat up in school didn't know what was good for him. "Dude, 100 more beatings, and you'll be getting all the chicks."

Regular gym

Some guy telling me and my friends that he can't do pullups because he has too much bulk. This was while some young guy was knocking out sets of 10+. In his defense, 90's fitness scene was idiotic and full of bad information.

[Longshanks]

I once tried out a boxing gym where I had to spar with everyone there on the first day because they heard I was a Thai boxer. I didn't realise until after wards but every one I sparred with had bag gloves on rather than sparring gloves (half as thick). I think I only realized on the last guy who had the cheek to wear 8oz gloves and we were both heavyweights. I was wearing 18oz gloves. Sufficed to say I didn't go back there. Some people just have insufferable egos.

[John Sapinoso]

performance enhancing equipment...like powerbalance wristbands.

[Nicholas Sortino]

http://startingstrength.com/resources/f ... hp?t=14425

[Sternford]

http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/showthread.php?t=14425

Maybe I'm missing something but that just sounded like a guy making fun of people who weren't as strong as he was.

[Edit]The first one. Didn't notice that there were two hundred more pages

[Nicholas Sortino]

Some of the suck, some of them are gold, and a solid 30 pages are completely off-topic.

Granted, half of them would probably put us in there if they saw us, but that's ok, because I really don't care if people don't understand.

[Sternford]

Nevermind the edit, I was reading more and those guys are pretty awful people.

[Eddie Stelling]

Wow, what a D-bag. Someone should post on his stupid blog that a 270x5 for deadlifts is not a lot of weight! And neither is squats at 225! I bet money anyone on this website who has been training gymnastics for a couple of months could deadlift more than that. I hardly ever do it and hit 355 lb last time I tried it and I am 163 lb.

Here is one of my favorites:

Haha!

[yuri marmerstein]

http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/showthread.php?t=14425

haha what a pompous ass. the guy must think he's dave tate or something with his 270 pound deadlift.

of course I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a similar attitude at one point in my life, but I'm glad I'm past that now.

I went to lifetime fitness under a guest pass with my friend last week and I practiced hand balancing, building up quite the fan club.

[Eddie Stelling]

I am still a member of a big corporate gym and sometimes train some gymnastics in there from time to time and get the same stuff. I am not as skilled as you yet yuri and still get the fan club going, so I can only imagine the oohs and aahs you get! How do you do that?? Haha!

[Razz]

Even in my sports science study, people are still like "wooooooowwwwwwwwwww" whenever I do even simple stuff

[Nicholas Sortino]

There is some really funny stuff in that thread, but those guys are a little narrow minded when it comes to strength. Of course some of them are still beginners and weak, but it is a very effective program for that demographic.

If you read into, it is mostly people laughing at all the fools following silly magazine workouts that never get you anywhere, or terrible personal trainers having people do ridiculous exercises to target "t3h c0re" and other silly things like standing on one leg on a bosu ball curling and pressing pink dumbbells... Body builder routines are also often suspect, since most of them fail to develop and real or useful strength, especially when used by people who aren't strong to begin with.

Also, he is called out for making fun of people with his rather low squat and deadlift. But in reality, it really doesn't hurt anyone to laugh at stupid shit on the internet. My 3x5squat is still pathetically weak, but I will still laugh when people stack tons of weight on a bar and barely move a few inches and call it a rep.

[Razz]

There's a danish site where we have a similar thread. Most hilarious thing I've ever read, just stories ranging from quarter squats, to bosu ball workouts, to watching tv in the gym and doing NOTHING else and my favorite stories: the unavoidable squat farts

EDIT:

Mentioning squat farts I have several times let out a big one during training, one time during ring swings where my coach thought it was a joint cracking and he was like "it's hard right?!" and several times during trampoline and also when trying to stick landings.

One funny story aswell from a gymnastics display we did back when I was still doing minitramp/tumbling style gymnastics. One guy basically loses his pants midair and completely !@#$% up the whole jump trying to put his pants back on while not landing on his head..maybe shouldve been there

[Sternford]

There is some really funny stuff in that thread, but those guys are a little narrow minded when it comes to strength. Of course some of them are still beginners and weak, but it is a very effective program for that demographic.

If you read into, it is mostly people laughing at all the fools following silly magazine workouts that never get you anywhere, or terrible personal trainers having people do ridiculous exercises to target "t3h c0re" and other silly things like standing on one leg on a bosu ball curling and pressing pink dumbbells... Body builder routines are also often suspect, since most of them fail to develop and real or useful strength, especially when used by people who aren't strong to begin with.

Also, he is called out for making fun of people with his rather low squat and deadlift. But in reality, it really doesn't hurt anyone to laugh at stupid shit on the internet. My 3x5squat is still pathetically weak, but I will still laugh when people stack tons of weight on a bar and barely move a few inches and call it a rep.

Oh yeah, I just meant with the rampant sexism and such

[John Sapinoso]

Moved to a new condo this week and decided to check out the gym. While there I as usual look for the best spot to hang my rings. They have no squat rack, but a nice cable machine that works just fine. As I'm hanging them up, a fat lady who could be somebody's grandma asks if I'm using the space. I say "Yes I am, but I can share" so I move my rings to the side a few feet. She whips out a thera band and a medicine ball and tells someone to come over, apparently, the fat grandma is the trainer.

Her first exercise: she loops the thera band over the top grabs it with one hand and does a split lunge stance then for 20+ reps does quarter knee bend while simultaneously doing some sort of arm twitch that vaguely resembles a tricep extension. I'm witnessing this through the mirror, since I'm facing the other direction doing my FL FSP warm up, and I can see my face get bright red. I normally have great focus but really? come on...

Second exercise: after 1 set of about 20 of those and I think only done on one side, she has the trainee straddle the medicine ball between her crotch and grab each end of the thera band with one hand (and emphasizing straight wrists as absolutely critical on the form :oops: ) and do calf raises while simultaneously doing something that i'm ashamed to say bore some resemblance to cross pulls, but more like twitches in the 30-35 degree angle range. I decided to face the other direction on my back levers but apparently there are windows there too.

Third exercise: after 1 set of those for about 30 seconds she moved her thera band to the chest press machine and did the first exercise that I actually recognized as useful. Some shoulder stability circles with the band. But of course she had to go and bastardize it by having trainee put one foot on a medicine ball and emphasize both feet pointing forward as CRITICAL form :roll: . I also heard a comment something like "Yep, I can give you exercises even without equipment, give me a water bottle and I'll show you how to get fit" as my nose lost the battle of holding in a laugh and my eyes glanced at her muffin top bulge hanging over her under armour pants. I finish up with planches and decide to take my workout elsewhere.

[Erik Sjolin]

[Bryce Warren]

Lol at that video, I've experienced a few things like that in my gym, gets a bit irritating when you're trying to concentrate, but usually too funny to not pay attention. The gym I'm at is a typical steroid junkie sort of place, so generally I see people using cellphones, reading papers, and watching tv the whole time they workout xD Not to mention watching people almost pass out (actually happening on one occasion, guy was lifting way too much for his limit on a press machine, collapsed in pain and out comes the ambulance) just by lifting too much weight with bad form trying to out lift each other lol. Quite a few people try to act real bad ass in the gym as well, but thankfully I'm usually down in the basement with the padded floors, lots of space, and a nice pipe to do levers, pull-ups, etc on. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't be there.

[Nicholas Sortino]

Pretty funny. I also found all the people doing half reps on the bench press equally as funny.

I rarely go to the gym since I have my garage, but I do, it is mostly just the typical BS of 3 different kinds of bench press and 1,000,000 reps of different curl variations. Gotta get the brocepts and chesticles brah!

Also, squatting in the smith machine? Really?

[Zac Rhyne]

Descent.

[Christian Sørlie]

-AuIURhCoAA

[Longshanks]

-AuIURhCoAA

LMAO!!!!