I thought I'd seen some bad squats before (and I'm certainly not claiming mine are perfect), but today was a new level of gym ******ation. tl;dr but it's pretty failtacular:

Noobish looking guy approaches the squat rack. He proceeds to wrap three small towels around the bar side by side, so he has a roughly four foot wide area of the bar all nice and padded. At this point, he looks rather confused. He bends forward and gets under the bar and picks it up. He has it resting on the highest vertebrae on his back in what looks like a crazily uncomfortable position (just imagine how much worse without the towels!). I guess he decided it was too light, because he set it back down.

He went over and found 25s and put one 25 on each side.

He then went back to the rack and this time approached the bar, facing the wrong way. I **** you not. He faces the wrong way and gets the bar out with the same weird bar placement. He's looking rather unsure of himself and at this point, I'm considering stepping in and offering unsolicited advice for the first time in my gym-going career. He squats roughly 6 inches and then stands up bolt upright, and decides he's had enough (A+ decision imo).

Because he's facing the wrong way he has to do that by guessing roughly where the rack is, and then arching backwards in a desperate attempt to maybe catch the hooks and prevent a wreck. Think of it as something like a good morning but in the opposite direction. And much worse.

Somehow, he manages to rack the bar without disaster to himself and walks away. I continue workout but 2 minutes later (after getting a drink) he's back and contemplating taking another run at the squat rack. I'm seriously debating intervening now, as he unracks the bar once more facing the wrong direction. Before I can get up though, another kindly gym-goer has gone over to him and said:

"My man, Your supposed to do squats facing the rack, that makes it easier to get the bar out and to put it back."

Confused and slightly embarrassed, our hero than attempts to turn 180 degrees, following this kind soul's instructions. I'm sure none of you will be shocked to learn that he hasn't considered his proximity to the rack and when he turns one end of the loaded bar smacks into the rack. This scares the **** out of out would-be squatter, but again, somehow there is no wreck (probably because the bar only has 25s on it).

Now scared, bashful, embarrassed, and confused, our squatting friend is completely deer-in-headlights, frozen on the spot. Good samaritan walks over to him and easily plucks the bar off his back, waits with it at his waist while the squatter gets out of the rack, curls it, and racks it. He then proceeds to provide some helpful pointers as to the finer points of squatting, at which point the entire ordeal got a great deal less entertaining and I stopped watching.

All throughout the entire process I was thinking about this thread so I just had to post it. I was telling a friend that I would absolutely pay significant money to be standing next to Mark Rippetoe while this was going on and watch his reaction. I'm sure anyone whose spent significant time in a gym has seen some awful squats, but surely nothing as bad as that?

lol poor dude

That is the only time I have given unsolicited advice about somebody's squats. I should have said something this time these 2 bitches came in and started doing thrusters with a weight they could barely hang on to, then had the rack pins set so high they had to tiptoe to rack it. I was sitting to one side of the rack and the bitch almost lost it right on my face trying to rack it. Bitches.

I feel bad for that guy

i thought when he was doing the 180 that the 25s were going to centrifugal force themselves off of the bar and there would be more havoc.

best squat story i've read so far stakman, A+++ would read again

lol stakmans story is th emost mundane in this thread. putting padding on the bar to do squats is hardly a crime. and how can you squat "the wrong way" since it's symetrical. just recently i was squatting "the wrong way" so i wouldn't get distracted seeing my beautiful face in the mirror.


yesterday i saw some guy squatting 150 pounds with his legs together (think feet pointing forward and touching, knees touching). looked like a pretty interesting exercise.

Pussy pad is one thing (although obviously grounds for mocking), three small towels = lololol.

Bruiiiiisssssssseeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The MIT gym contains the by far the widest range of gym intelligence out of any gym I've been to. Next time I go I'm going to take my camera and try to capture something awesome, like someone squatting 365 ATG right next to someone else doing smith machine speed curls.

i just as soon spit in rips face as take advice from that btch. also big lol at "smith machine speed curls"... take a lesson from what is funny and novel stakriman

why do you even post here with that attitude

Every time I read these squat stories, I fear the day that I move out from our home gym and have to do my pathetic "my legs don't bend" squats in a real gym. Oh the scorn I will suffer from random Rip followers.

lololol @ stakman

what an awesome story. i read it in class and it was so hard not to lol.

poor guy. what was he like 12-years-old?

However pathetic your squats may be, they're probably still 10 times better than the average gymgoer's, so I wouldn't be too concerned.

wtf bruiser?

anyway, great story and I can relate to what the guy was feeling kinda. I've felt clueless in the gym many times in my life

I was just in the gym locker room putting gel in my hair and grooming myself after taking a post-swim shower.

Some guy came in, saw me and gave me a look that said "sup douche."

Did I just commit a bro-like act? Preening one's hair in the gym locker room?

you think he was laughing inside? or was it just a standard bro nod?

Honestly now that I think about how he was dressed he was probably recognizing me as a... fellow... bro... ****. ****.

SON OF A BITCH

It's a university gym, so he was early twenties like everyone else. It was pretty obvious from the way he was acting that it was the very first time he had ever been in a weight room. In retrospect, I should have helped him instead of LOLing at him from across the room.

Everyone was a noob once, and I give him props for actually going to the weightroom and trying to train (and squats instead of curls!). It was just so so funny I had to share.

Bruiser,

Of course the way you are facing while performing the actual squats doesn't matter. Facing a way from the squat rack obviously makes it more difficult and dangerous to rack and unrack the bar. I don't see how this could even be debatable. Trying to blindly guess where the hooks might be to catch a bar that is really ****ing heavy is, well, not advisable.

lol hair gel

what makes rip a bitch bruiser?

stak,

True. Fwiw, the first time I squatted in a rack, I stepped outside it (rendering it useless), but faced the right way. Oh, I also asked for a spot when I got to the heavy work set.

The squatters at WFAC don't squat in the rack either.

To defend squatting "backwards" in the rack, I think it makes sense to do it when the rack is ******edly close to a mirror.