Hmm...this means you don't need to crank the volume up as much too right?

I'm asking mainly cause I have (not too awful) tinnitus (ringing ears), and I've been afraid to use ipods for fear of making it worse. It happened with a discman 6-7 years ago and I really don't want to risk anything. That being said I love music and would love to use an ipod while working out.

yeah you can listen to the volume at a really low level and it still sounds good. It takes a bit of time to get used to them since they go way farther inside of your ear than cheapo earphones, but they come with three different types/sizes of ear pieces so you can pick whichever one fits you best.

LOL, yeah, not using squat machines, but almost all of the time I see someone using them, it's some 100 lb chick with almost no weight on the machine.

awesome, will need to check those out.

Always funny when one of the boneheads loads up 100+kg and does 1/10th squats in the smith. Then you look at the other bb zombies standing around admiring him for lifting so much weight.

I've only read about 1/3 of this thread, so has anyone mentioned the ridic behavior of couples who workout together at the gym?

Granted, most seem to be reasonable, and just workout together and chit chat or whatever. However, some substantial portion are just all up on each other right in the middle of the weight room. Frequently I'll witness these couples holding each other, kissing and whispering sweet nothings in between sets.

My hypothesis is that insecure guys get freaked because suddenly his girl is surrounded by tons of in shape dudes (many in better shape than the bf) wearing tank tops and checking out his chick, so his reaction is to latch on closely to the gf.

Anyone else experience this?

I have never seen a couple at the gym.

I used to work out with a friend that was a pretty good looking girl, it was interesting seeing things from the girls side b/c I started to feel the eyes on/around us all the time, which I'm positive made her uncomfortable.

I see couples a decent amount of the time, how two people can be all over each other when they're nasty/tired/sweaty and in front of 10 other people is beyond me.

I saw a video like that once.

if you re having dating someone, im pretty sure you ve had their sweat all over you before, unless you re doing something wrong. the public part would be a problem for me though

well usually at that stage in the relationship you're past the part of being all over each other in public

Saw something fairly outrageous today.

Two 300+ black men working out today, well one working the other had a clipboard.

While I am squatting one guy gets down on all fours btw the squat racks and proceeds to do some neck exercises.

First, the guy standing pushes the other guy on the back of the head while he tries to raise his head for a count of ten.

The guy is grunting on each rep.

Second exercise, he moves to the left leg and pushes his head against the guy's knee while the guy pushes back.

Third exercise, the other leg.

Finally, the guy standing makes a fist and turns his hand sideways so his thumb and index finger are facing the ceiling. The guy on all fours puts his chin in the guys hand and pushes down while the guy pushes up. Grunting all the time.

I still haven't decided how awesome this whole thing was, but my intial feeling is I witnessed something spectacular.

LOL

Please bring camera next time!

sounds similar to neck stretches we used to do before football games in high school. Dunno how effective they were, always thought they were pretty gay myself.

Standard stability training for the neck, nothing weird about it imo. I'm sure they also do wrestler bridges, etc. The guy is probably a lineman, and may be rehabbing a neck injury.

ya these guys were mid 30s at best.

Had a very tilt inducing trip to the gym today.

This is my first post of this kind.

First I pull in and see the whole parking lot is full. Bad sign. I guess everyone ate like **** during the weekend and they are all feeling bad about not going to the gym last week, so they came today, Monday. I'll see most of them again next Monday.

Then I roll up to the squat racks. First squat rack: there's a guy doing curls. ****. Second squat rack: ANOTHER GUY DOING CURLS. ****.

I'm about to pull the "would you mind doing your curls elsewhere?" line and then I realize there's a TRAINER from the gym working with them. ASDHFAHSDF

My only other option is the power rack which is pushed so far up to the wall it is nearly impossible to get under the bar to do my squats. And I'm not using a smith machine, obviously.

I then decide to wait and observe what the trainer is telling them. He's having them do curls not based on reps, but based on time. Time? WTF? This is certainly new to me. Both guys are doing like 60 lbs worth of curls as fast as they can as the trainer counts down from 30 seconds on his stopwatch. One guy clearly hits failure with about 10 seconds left, but the trainer pushes him to finish it anyways. This is probably the closest I've ever come to seeing someone tear a muscle IRL. They then drop their bars (because they are exhausted and hit failure long ago) and 2 more guys come in and the trainer has them do curls as fast as possible in 30 seconds.

Uhh, ok.

Finally they clear out and I get to my squats. This moderately overweight kid, probably 16-17 years old rolls up at the newly vacated squat rack next to me. He starts doing deadlifts. His form is awful. Not just bad, awful. I've never said anything to anyone at the gym before (as I am sure I have form problems too!), but I almost did to him. If he keeps doing deadlifts like that he is absolutely 100 % going to hurt himself in like a month. His back is fully rounded every time. He's not even making an attempt. However, I decide not to say anything. I probably should have.

He then racks up the bar for squats with about 135 lbs total. I'm very interested to see his squat form. He loads the bar on his shoulder, backs up, goes to squat, stops like 1/15th of the way down, re-racks the bar and then walks away to another machine. He never even did one rep and he never unracked any of his weights.

He then goes over to the leg press machine and loads, I **** you not, FIVE 45lb plates on both sides, so 450 lbs total + whatever the sled weighs. He does like 3 reps on it, then gets up and goes to another machine, again not unracking. I watch him move from machine to machine, piling massive amounts of weights on them, doing like 2-3 reps and then moving on.

On top of all of that, I was in a bad mood when I got to the gym, haha.

EDT imo...probably not, but it could be...

Yeah I'll admit that maybe there is some training technique that uses time that I am not aware of (I'm really a total n00b, which is why I don't make posts like this too often), which is why I reacted to that more with confusion than anything else, but these guys doing the exercise really seemed like their arms were about to fall off.

I was just kind of annoyed with them overall for using up the squat racks, haha. I blame you guys for instilling that in me.

totally understandable...trainer deserves a kick in the nuts for using 65lbs and curling in the squat rack...

This is so totally standard...

When I got to the gym last night there was a PT standing in front of his client (to spot obv), in the squat rack. On the bar he had one 5kg, then one 2.5kg then one 5kg.... Couldn't quite work out whether he had gone 7.5kg on either side, then added 5kg for the next set or whether he had gone 5kg, 7.5kg then 12.5kg for sets.

It doesn't even rage me any more... I'm more surprised if I don't see ******ed sh*t going on when I go to the gym.

fwiw, a massive bar with little 5kg discs on either end always rofls me.

Got into a conversation with a trainer today whom I have conversed with numerous times, as to why he always used Smith machine for squats when clearly free weights are better....His excuse was he wanted to isolate the legs more, I then brought up working stabilizer and secondary muscles and he said it stills uses those muscles...I simply so oh sarcastically and walked away

I actually read an article the other day that said not only are smith machine squats ineffective, but they are also DANGEROUS.

From webmd:

5. Squats on the Smith machine. This is a squat you do standing at a machine that has a barbell on a sliding track. The barbell rests on your shoulders, behind your head.

In a true squat -- done as you hold a barbell at your shoulders -- the bar doesn't go straight up and down as it does with the Smith machine, Warpeha says: "Looking from the side, the bar has some sway."

"On the machine, the bar doesn't give, so it forces the body into disadvantageous biomechanical positions," he says. People also tend to put their feet further in front of their bodies when doing squats on the machine, which adds to the problem.

Considering that today's adult population is wrought with knee and back problems, says Danberg, the last thing you want to do is an exercise that might aggravate weakness and injury.

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercis...tive-exercises

meh, there's a little sway only because people aren't perfect squatters. Ideally, the bar goes straight up and down.

The part that I think is dangerous is due to the fact 5 degrees of freedom (i may be counting wrong my mechanics days are well behind me) are removed by the machine leaving only 1, not only is bad form rampant, but bad form with weights they likely shouldn't be lifting.

Sounds like a gym zombie. Stab him with a sharp wooden object before he spreads his disease.