On another note, something else I noticed today. After a set of squats I head over to the water fountain to find a line 4 deep with one person refilling a water bottle and 3 others waiting to refill their bottles.

north jersey and south jersey might as well be different states they're so different.

but anyways no more reason to hijack the thread

I think the guy behind me at the fountain about died when I told him to go ahead of me when I was refilling last time.

-d

Nice. I generally just take sips durings workouts and walking over to the fountains gives me something to do between sets. It was just something funny to see all those people lined up with water bottles.

your guys complaints are minor in comparison to the things i see here at my two bolivian gyms, one for rich people and the other for teenagers. the stuff that happens here would possibly drive you guys to suicide.

question... if i see someone doing squats or power cleans, and i am 90% sure they are doing it very wrong, but i am no expert in it myself... what is my play?

You stfu and stay far away.

I wasn't aware that you could actually make your spine into a perfect 90° angle, but I saw a guy do it last night. Guy was maybe 6'6, probably a solid 225. His short buddy loads up 315 on deadlift and churns out about 8 reps with pretty good form. Tall guy steps up and proceeds to set up with good form, then lurch upward through his mid-back, causing a sickening curvature at the l/t convergence. At the top of the rep, he straightens out completely.

I didn't say a thing, and his buddy didn't seem to care.

At least 90% of people in the gym i see squating, including myself when i look in the mirror for a good amount of time are doing it wrong.
Mainly depth 1/4 and 1/2 squating it or knees too close together at my gym and they try to leg press it.
I've never seen anyone power clean or do any form of hang clean, snatch or whatever at my gym. I think most UK gyms suck in that regard. Bumper plates and enough space to do actually do said exercises seem to be very far down the list of priorities.

If someone was brutalising an exercise like struggling with a bench press alone while it was perched over his windpipe i'd say something, if he was just cutting off depth i'd say nothing. I do this with all exercises i saw someone doing something wrong. I once had a guy come up to me when i was squating saying i was going too low and was screwing my knees. I just thanked him and chatted away for a few mins about squating with him.

i don't mean a depth question. i see people squatting and pushing their knees foward far past their toes. which from what i hear leads to injuries a lot.

i guess on the power clean it doesn't matter as much cause i odn't think they will injure themselves.

The knees-over-toes thing depends greatly on body proportion, and shouldn't be used as anything but an indicator of other form issues. It's possible to do a perfect squat with your knees well over your toes.

I imagine the average idiot would injure themselves on a clean before a squat.

imo.

Yeah, you're an idiot still. Same as yesterday.

I don't know how bad the knees too far forward thing is. It's bad form in some type of squats, standard in others (olympic style front squat), i think!!! I'm defo no expert on squat form tho.

If your point was you knew someone was doing something that was going to injure them at some point would you say anything. I'm not sure tbh, if i was i'd phrase it very carefully.
If it was a semiunusual lift that gets done like a powerclean or snatch (unusual at my gyms) i'd probably say something as it would be pretty easy to strike up a conversation and it'd be different than trying to tell some huge dude benching that his form sucks.

Tough topic because an average gymgoer will have allsorts of stuff from mens magazines, his huge friend whose an expert and a load of other sources floating about, and a random in the gym will hardly come high up in the list i'd imagine.

I'm 100% sure you should keep your mouth shut no matter what. If they want to learn it properly, they will.

People very seldom appreciate being given advice in the gym so why do it? "so they don't injure themselves"... they wont.

The culture is different in Bolivia. Brusier should definitely spread his wealth of knowledge while in the gym and please report the success of the venture back here.

Guarantee these are the same people who do nothing but bounce around on ellipticals/bikes.

+1, my curiosity about bolivian gymtards has been roused. Let's hear it bruiser.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to give advice that I suspect has zero impact on your decision-making, particularly when telling you the opposite would provide me more entertainment... But your "play" is to say nothing. And by nothing, I mean nothing. I'm afraid I've been ambiguous, so I'll try to put it another way, say nothing.

I remember when I was 19 and decided it was a good idea after jogging for an hour on the treadmill to try and break my max bench press. I loaded up the bar with 100kg (220pounds) and sure enough proceeded to get stuck under it. I had stupidly used collars and didn't even have the energy to roll it off. There was only one dude in the whole upstairs weights section he was quite big but with some needlessly short shorts and after lying there for about 5 mins decided much to my dismay I would need assistance. I yelled out and he came over and practicly tea bagged me in the face lifting it off.
A valuable lesson learned that day.

has shemp been drinking? If so, I support this development.

based on what do you think your advice will have no impact on my actions?

The fact that you have listened to exactly 0 of the advice that has been offered. Including "Ask yo' trainer".

In our gym, the amount of speed bag work is directly correlated to the amount of girls there at the time. More girls = more guys working the speed bag "well hello ladies, you like?"

When the new year rolled around there was a big sign up near the front desk, next to the 50" plasmas they are always giving away for referring members, "Knock out stress in the new year... Hit the heavy bag..." Took me 2 days to find the heavy bag tucked away in a corner of the cardio room. I never got around to using it and it's not there anymore.

Good eye. I was a few beers deep last night.

I may have thought that telling you my advice would have zero impact increased the likelihood that it had nonzero impact. I may have thought it provided a point of entry for the post. I may have liked the sound of it.

and what, thremp, is that based on? are you spying on my workouts to see what i am and am not doing? have i said on here "i didn't follow that advice," or "i am not going to follow that advice"?

shemp your response made gave me a good geniune smile and laugh

ah actually i misread it as "telling you my advice would have zero impact increased the likelihood that it had zero impact"-- in my opinion reads better that way. still though thanks.