Not sure if my doing this proves it to be legit.

Seriously, though, I get a lot out of it. I follow bent over rows with this and it's been working out great. I'd encourage anyone who benches for high volume to give this a try once in a while to help keep things balanced.

He deserves it!

Anyone willing to look this foolish for their training deserves encouragement. In my case, I put one of those blue mats on the floor and put my feet up on a stability ball. Not many bros are looking to work in, to say the least. Their loss IMO.

The Wikipedia article has a good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_...hain_exercises

Per the article, upper body closed chain exercises include push-ups and their derivatives, pull-ups or chin-ups, and dips, which concentrate on a co-contraction of the triceps, biceps, deltoids, pectorals, lats, abdominals and lower back for stabilization in various ratios depending upon angle and leverage. For lower body, closed chain exercises include squats, deadlifts, lunges, power cleans. These concentrate on a co-contraction of the quadriceps, hamstrings, hip flexors, soleus, and gastrocnemius muscles. The joints of movement include the knee, hip, and ankle.

I'm guessing the core workout the stability ball provides radically changes how 'hard' it is. good addition.

I do them as well at times. Feet up on a bench usually.

I workout at a YMCA, and am doing one of the Sheiko routines which today opened up with 10 sets of squats. Hooray. The only other squat rack in the gym was occupied by a girl who only squats/front squats/power cleans and deadlifts when she is in there. She told us today she's training for a powerlifting competition. This was cool enough by itself. But as we got toward our last set of squats, one of the Y trainers came over to ask us how much longer we had because there was a guy who was complaining that we had been in the rack for 30 minutes.... we only had 1 set left, so told him we'd be done soon. The trainer goes, "Don't worry about it... I know you guys are real serious in your training, see you all in here on the regular. I'm not about to try to force you guys out doing real squats so this guy can come in here and do quarter squats for 10 minutes, take your time." I got a good laugh out of that... we also told him that he doesn't have to be afraid to come up to and talk to us, we'd even let a quarter squatter work in in between sets and he said, "well, you guys are big guys.... I think he's a little intimidated."

+1 for the good guys he also lets us "get away" with chalk in the weight room even though it's technically not allowed.

Although, his perception of big guys is a little skewed... I'm about 6'1 180 though my training partner is 6'2 230. If G4S came in there, he might just **** himself.

New Zealand bros have to be the absolute worst, I wish I would have worked out more in American gyms so I could compare. I don't know if barbell shoulder shrugs are a good exercise or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were done twice as often in squat racks as actual squatting here. It's also weird that the one decent bro exercise, bench press, doesn't even seem to be that widely done as I've never had to wait for one of the 3 benches. I've yet to see anyone else OHP or power clean and I very rarely see anyone else DL. OTOH, random machines and the dumbbell area are constantly packed.

this sounds like any American globo-gym, except for the no bench thing. Normally you see at least a couple guys with horribly rounded shoulders and terrible posture drop-setting bench press.

Just awesome. I wish more stuff like this happened.

... is there more to that story with the girl?

Translation: is she hot & did you bone her yet? Pics?

Ironically the guy who used to work the morning shift in their weight room and give me **** for the chalk got fired for saying something inappropriate to female clients. Karma

I was going to say she's married and I'm engaged but that doesn't really answer the question, now does it.....

She's very average. Apparently lost like 100lbs at some point, but all the squatting makes it look like her ass/thighs have not lost any weight (granted, they are probably just muscular). But from the top up she looks like she weighs about 110 @ 5'4ish and the bottom half looks like she would be about 165-175.

But obviously very cool to have a girl in their hogging up a squat rack and actually squatting in it, as well.

True. It actually makes a lot of sense there as well, given that I have to put my feet up on something anyway.

It was also fun making a functional exercise with a Smith machine, a stability ball, and a floor mat.

I've always just called these body rows and do them fairly frequently. Although I put my feet up on a box, I've never tried using a stability ball; will have to give that a go next time. In order to keep the reps from getting out of control I like to put a weighted vest on, although I'm not sure how common these are in other gyms.

What is the purpose of the mat?

Wrap the mat around the bar to improve grip strength of course.

Cool. I'm not alone.

It's nothing related to the exercise movement. It's just cleanliness (beats lying on the gym floor). The mats are generally right next to the stability balls, so no reason not to grab one.

Not a bad idea. I may have to bring in some scissors next time and make my own Fat Gripz out of those.

Saw 3 diff people doing those today alone. 1 even did them on the power rack (the only power rack GRRRRR)

TE has started a movement

I'm thinking about jerry-rigging something at home to do them now. Perfect at home exercise.

Sounds like the girl at the Y I used to go to who squatted more than me. She would do heavy ATF singles w/ meh form and help from a spotter, but it was really hot & she was probably a 7 although potentially jailbait. yea no pics so it didn't happen. Here cleans were legit although for some reason I would never see her doing anything else.

There's something about strong HS-college aged girls in my area, I believe they have won every state lifting title since 2004.

One of the other girls who trained there was like 125lbs hitting 195 in the bench 185 clean & jerks no sweat. She wasn't hot, but stronggg

Went to gym today. Place was packed. Everything was pretty normal, chicks going crazy on cardio, couple black guys doing preacher curls while speaking loudly and endlessly, bunch of skinny white guys walking around aimlessly.

And then I saw a guy doing kipping pullups in the middle of a crowd of people. Nothing screams dork like a scrawny guy doing kipping pullups. Couple of fat chicks were actually doing dumbbell shoulder presses nearby and even they were laughing at him.

What's wrong with someone who cannot yet do pullups improving via kipping pullups?

I hope he keeps doing them until he progresses to regular pullups and disregards the bros who'd relegate him to lat pulldowns.

I didn't know people who went over to the kip side ever returned.

Gym was packed today from all of the NYR folks. I waited a bit to use the cage and just as the previous guy finished another dude came in and asked to work in squats. Yeah, cool, no problem.

He puts 135, does a set. I do the same weight for 5. He asks to put another 25. Good, that's my next warmup set, but he goes first and does his set. I tell him to leave the weight on. This goes on until the weight gets to my work set for the day (275) and he starts it off for 3 reps (it's his last set). All this time I can't help but imagine that it looks like I'm "competing" with this guy. He HBBSing ATG.

After my first work set I sit beside the cage and he comes up to me and asks, "were those previous weights your warmups?" "Yeah." The conversation goes to programming and goals. Guy was a basketball player. He said he didn't want to get too big, but train for strength. I told him if he wanted to train for strength, 3-5 is a good rep range. I suggested SS and explain the basic idea to him. I told him this stuff is on the internet, if he's interested in learning more.

I wouldn't count this as a lightside conversion, because he wasn't obviously a typical gym bro, but +1 for the good guys, nonetheless.

I'd better clarify that I've never kipped. :-)

a lot of very in shape and strong people at my gym deadlift, bench, OHP, pullups, military press, various dumbbell exercises, rows and shoulder shrugs, but they rarely squat or do any oly lifts.

how bro'ish do you classify these people as ?

Sounds like they get a pass.