The Early Morning Gym Crowd vs the Everybody Else Crowd

Late blog post...

It was my turn today to bring the boys to their summer pre-school class today and with the free time I had and with Grandma taking care of the little one - was able to put in a late morning workout at the gym.

I'm a morning guy...I work day shifts, I sleep at night. I'm a morning guy. Now I am one that doesn't believe that working out early in the morning is the best time to workout but it's what works for me and the best time that allows me to really have that time to myself to train without worrying about other things as the day progresses. It's always the first thing I do when I get up (most of the time). It's habit but because of time restraints and schedules, I don't mind doing them late in the morning or early evening for the most part. If at work, I'll even do it on my lunch break when pressed for time.

Now, I normally don't look around my gym to see what's going on but coming in this morning there were three ladies near the vicinity I was working out at and was very impressed with their routines. Saw some hardcore supersetting of upper and lower body and it was very rhytmic and systematic. There were no wasted minutes and the rest periods were just about right. Couldn't help but notice that they had really good form throughout and seemed like they knew what they were doing which was impressive to say the least. Anyway, it seemed like a good 30 minute workout but what shocked me was after such a great workout which I thought was finished - they proceeded on and went to the incline bench and started doing incline barbell presses with no plates supersetted with bench dips. Hey, it's all good and all that but I didn't quite understand the logic of wanting to do this superset when they obviously looked fatigued out as it was.

Working on my military presses at this point in time - I saw a trainer just zoom right past me. Looking at the mirror, I saw one of the girls just barely getting the bar off her chest (I swear - obviously she was preventing if from falling on her for about 5 seconds. Looked like she was force repping here but with no spotter?). Great thing the trainer, who was busy with a client (who apparently had his client do db curls on a BOSU at this time) - had the awareness to run over there in the nic of time. What surprised me was the other 2 girls at this point were chattering with their backs turned and forgot about poor girl #3. I was so impressed with these girls but after seeing this...Mmm...not good.

A couple yards away, there was Mr. Beefcake doing DB Flat bench presses with probably over 100 lb Db's. Who could not have noticed this guy's presence? This guy was ego lifter extraordinaire exhibit A to the highest power. I would see this guy at each of his last repof each set just literally throw the DB's on the floor with total disregard of the safety of himself and other patrons at the gym. I saw him throw DB's almost 3 feet away and rolling even further away from him. What's concerning about it is he looks around all over the place, then bends over to pick them up - with one hand! The back, Big Guy...the back.


Now the guy right behind me. Now again, all this happened within a span of 10 minutes which really surprises me because I never see this with the morning crowd I've been accustomed seeing every morning I work out. Totally different beast here..it's scary. Anyway, this guy was pressing about 105 lbs on the incline BB press bench. No spotter in sight - I see from the mirror the barbell slowly tilting to one side, his arms now shaking here, quickly falling back down to his chest - so I drop my DB's and I help the poor guy re-rack the weight back. I asked him if he was alright and if he needed a spot to let me know - he smiled, said "thank you so much.". Whew. This was another accident waiting to happen. What's equally weird about this is, he takes the weight off of one side and leaves the other plate on the other side and walks away and then goes to the flat bench? I don't get that either.

Bottomline, we all go to the gym to do one thing - better our health, to better our lives. We may see strange things going on in the gym..but respect them regardless. There's no perfect, cookie cutter program for all. Not all goals are the same as others but respect the uniqueness of each individual. What worked for some may not work for all. Always lend a hand when needed and as much as I saw alot of motivation from them I still reserve some respect for them altogether for their desire to really push the ticket: but always know your limits and always practice safety. There's nothing wrong with wanting to better themselves via working out...but always practice safety.

Anyway, took a nap in the afternoon, got up at 5pm - ran 2 miles on the treadmill and some pick up volleyball to end the day. Fun game today...but I'm beat.