So I finally went to a public gym for the first time today after not going to one for years. I workout on a regular basis but I have a very nice home gym set up that I've built in my basement so I use that instead and tend to avoid public gyms like the plague. My buddy loves the public gym and has been bugging me to go with him for weeks even though he knows very well that I have a nice gym at home. So today I said screw it I'll go do my workout with him for once. Man I forgot how funny public gyms are and it further reinforced why I avoid them like the plague. For one, everybody in the gym is absolutely HUGE. Not fat but huge like Schwarzenegger....In their own head. Everybody walks around like they are carrying invisible carpet under their arms or invisible buckets of water in their hands. Everybody can bench 315+lbs. Everybody, doesn't matter if you need 5 of your buddies all joining together to help you it still counts. 315lb bench press bragging rights for everyone. Out of the 5 benches that were in there 4 of them had a group of people "spotting" the guy on the bench. "Thats all you bro its all you!" lol As a powerlifter I tend to migrate towards the squat rack because today is one of the many days that I do squats. Now I know that most people avoid squats the same way I avoid public gyms, like the plague. They avoid them because they hurt the most but are actually the best for you and it's very easily to tell who in the gym does squats and who does not. Not looking at their legs you can easily tell. People who squat have a different looking upper body than the guys who think that 10 variations of arm curls are going to give you Hulk Hogan arms. Anyway, a guy comes up to me and asks if he can work in on the squat rack because the other squat rack was being hogged by a toolbag who was using it to do one of the 10 variations of arm curls in the hopes of achieving Hulk Hogan arms. So I said sure, I was happy to see somebody in the gym actually squatting for once. Now granted I am a strong guy, not to be conceited but years of power lifting will make you stronger than the average gym rat who does a 3 day workout split for the "beach body". This guy didn't look THAT strong but years of training have told me never to judge a book by its cover. I have a 135lb friend who can literally clean and jerk more weight than me. Technique baby. So I move aside and let this guy in the rack. Instead of taking a couple of the plates off he actually adds another 2 plates ON. I'm dumbfounded yet intrigued so I step back and watch this. Is he about to do a 1 rep max? Thats A LOT of weight for somebody his size and again not to judge a book by its cover but this guy doesn't look like he has been lifting weights long at all... He hops in, struggles hard to unrack the weight and nearly buckles just getting it up. Weight is shaking and clinging all over the place. I say "wow man hey be careful..." "I got this bro!"...Alright. Guy goes down about 1 inch, if that, and SCREAMS like he is giving birth. Then racks the weight back up and starts yelling "Boom! Baby! 315 max baby what you got!?" Im like what the hell did I just watch...So I say ok good job man and hop back in the rack because I was about the work out with that weight anyway (I was warming up before) and I put my headphones back on and start repping the weight, doing proper squats. After a set the guy comes back over and taps me on the shoulder and says "Bro you shouldn't go down that far on the squat man thats horrible for your knees you should only go down a little bit like I did thats how you get strong and save your knees". Wtf? So I say thanks but Im ok and put my headphones back on and continue. The guy comes back AGAIN and says "Man Im telling you don't do that, that's why you have those knee braces on now because you are killing your knees and getting no benefit, you just saw me squat as much as you did but my knees are in good shape". So again I say ok thanks and put my headphones back on thinking to myself "these aren't knee braces you idiot they are knee sleeves and you are just well..an idiot lol". Finally done squatting, time to head over to do some deadlifts. I grab the weight bar from the squat rack and setup for my workout. As I bend down and get ready the gym manager comes running over to me as I pick the weight up. He starts talking to me but my headphones are in so I motion for him to pull one of them out. "What the hell? Man I was running over here to tell you not to try and pick that up we had a guy blow his back out a few months ago we had to call 911" Yeah well Im fine obviously seeing how Im sitting here holding it in my hands talking to you...I set it down and he tells me that I can finish that set but then I have to stop because they are prohibited in this gym due to the aforementioned reason. I sigh and say fine and thank him for at least letting me finish up. Time for showers...thank God Ive got to get the hell out of here... And guess who was in the locker room posing in the mirror....Mega squat dude who for some reason just won't leave me alone. Here we go again... "Hey bro you're actually pretty jacked I thought you were a fat dude when you had your shirt on" "Um...thanks I guess" "Yeah no homo, but Im tryna get jacked too what's the secret?" "Lift weights" "You saw me bro I was lifting as much as you in the squat rack but Im not getting bigger what gives?" "You have to do curls man, you need at least 5 different curling exercises per day to get Hulk Hogan arms" "So THAT'S the secret?! I was wondering why my arms weren't growing, Sweet bro thanks!" "haha, my pleasure" I HATE the public gym lol
I highly doubt anybody even noticed I was there. When I go to public gyms (which is very rare mind you) I always just slap in my headphones and do my workout and leave without bothering anybody. Now granted I do laugh in my head at many of the things I see in the gym but I don't go around insulting people or anything. I wasn't even rude to the guy who tried to squat like 3x his body weight and almost died and then kept interrupting me. Well at least not until the end when he just simply wouldn't stop bothering me. As far as I can remember the only time I've ever actually said anything to somebody in a public gym was when I saw a group of teenagers literally try to load up like 350lbs on the bench press and had like 5 people all trying to lift it up for their skinny buddy to bench. I walked over to the guy at the front desk and told him he should probably say something because all of those kids together can barely unrack it and if/when it falls on that kids chest it will probably kill him. Besides that I leave people alone. Thats why I have headphones.
Oh no, I just meant that you were taking up the equipment where they were trying to do a few arm curls.
lol yeah I guess my wording was a bit on the mean side. I'm just more used to smaller self owned gyms rather than the big chain "public" ones such as Planet Fitness or Golds. The smaller hole in the wall gyms are geared towards different types of people mainly power lifters and whatnot. You can do deadlifts there, you can use chalk (which is banned at a lot of public gyms due to the mess), there are lifting chains scattered around, not a lot of machines or anything just lots of free weights and nothing fancy. One of the unwritten rules of such gyms are "No doing curls in the damn squat rack". That was actually on a sign in the gym I went to back home lol. I guess it didn't really matter since it wasn't like anybody was using the squat rack anyway. It was just one of those things that brought me back to the old days in my old gym and had me thinking "man Billy would kick your ass if you were doing curls in his squat racks" LOL. I'd love to find a gym like that here. Don't think there are any though that I've seen. It's not really profitable I don't think, the whole "power lifting" thing is giving way to the conventional workouts for "looks" so people tend to migrate towards the big gyms with a thousand different machines and stuff.
Thankfully no, I'm pretty sure that me being hammered and being around a bunch of people like him would not be a good combo lol. Unlike most, people tend to get MORE annoying to me when I'm drinking, not less lol
I can relate. Not so much about gyms, since I avoid them due to past experiences, plus my workout is unorthodox and purpose designed, and the meat heads would be all over me about it, but I run into this sort of thing all the time in martial art gyms. The type I love the most are guys who've been training for a fraction of the time I have, yet feel obligated to give me instruction. Recent example - I dropped into a gym other than my own and was partnered up with a white belt during a Judo session. We were practicing a throw which requires your partner to do the throw properly in order for you to land correctly. In fact, my first significant injury from Judo was a result of this exact thing, a partner doing it wrong. This white belt was making it difficult for me to land properly, so I started briefly posting on my hand before hitting the ground, just long enough to position myself, then rolling out of the throw. Once he realized I was doing this, he hopped up to his feet, eyes bugging out of his head, pointed his damn finger at my face and said "Do not do that... DO NOT!" Technically yes, you don't fall with your arm extended, it can cause serious injury, but he didn't consider for a second the my prior technique, worn gi, denotes that I'm well aware of that, and it was his actions requiring me to do that. Instead of wasting breath, I just said "OH!!! Oh, OK!". From there I just started jumping into the throw, ensuring that I was able to land right.
Heres another thing that sort of annoys me about the whole weightlifting and getting in shape thing. There is just so much BS information out there that it overwhelms people. Now granted I have been at this for decades but that doesn't mean I am an expert by any means, but I do know a bit about what Im talking about. Many people do tend to flock to the "bigger" guys in the gym and ask for the secret to getting bigger or ask them what supplements they are taking or ask to follow their workout plans. And no the secret isn't steroids. You can't tell if somebody is on steroids just by looking at them in spite of what people think. 1. Stop eating like that... Pick up any fitness magazine, read any fitness article or any weight loss article or read any fitness forum and you will see thousands of people claiming the secret to weight loss (or weight gain) is some variation of a whacked out diet. I always browse weight lifting forums and I see the most hilarious posts of people's so called diets. For example. Breakfast 1/2 cup cottage cheese 1 slice of 100% whole wheat bread 12g flack seed oil spread on toast 1tbsp all natural peanut butter 1 whole egg, 4 egg whites scrambled (no oil in the pan! no non stick spray!) 200g steamed kale leaves on a plate 500ml of water Wtf? Who eats like that? Who the hell wakes up and measures out flak seed oil and spreads it on bread? How do you even measure peanut butter? Do you stick one of those measuring spoon things in the jar and scoop it out with a knife? Do you just eat the stuff out of the jar? Same with the cottage cheese? Kale leaves? Who eats a plate of kale leaves? That right there is why so many people fail miserably when it comes to dieting and exercise. Normal people don't eat like that. I'm not saying that's a "bad" breakfast, it's actually a really good one its just not a logical one. The majority of people are going to give up eating a plate of kale leaves for breakfast LONG BEFORE they see ANY results from eating a plate of kale leaves for breakfast. And they will say screw this and quit. Why? Because for one that breakfast is gross, and two people have real lives. When reading fitness articles people tend to get overwhelmed when the diets and they think to themselves "How do people do that all day? Don't they have jobs?" Here's the secret, NO they don't. THAT is their job. All of these diets seem to forget that regular human beings don't have time to sit around and cook grilled tilapia and asparagus meals 6 times a day. So people look at them and they just give up because its literally not feasible to do it. You don't have time. People used to come up to me in the gym all the time, much like the annoying guy in the OP, and ask me what secrets there were out there. Here's the main thing I tell people, stop eating like a hamster and eat real food. Here's what I eat for breakfast. (How much of what I eat is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol I've consumed the night before, or, how hungry I am) Eggs (the whole thing, why? because taking the yolk out to get egg whites is stupid) Bacon or sausage (measured by...how much I want) hashbrowns (measured by...when I decide to stop pouring the bag) orange juice coffee (measured by how many K cups I put in the machine) If I woke up late and have to run to work I'll get the blender and make a protein shake Protein powder (measured by how many scoops I put in there) A banana peanut butter (measured by whatever the hell size the spoon I used is, and it's Jiffy from the freakin normal store) milk (measured by when I stop pouring it in the damn blender) But but you aren't getting the proper nutrients from that and you didn't have enough servings of vegetables and flak seed oil and fish juice and blah blah. Take a multivitamin and be quiet. The shake I make tastes good, thats why I make it. My shake is good 1/2 cup spinach 2tbsp flak seed oil 1 apple 1 spoon all natural peanut butter 12 kale leaves fish oil bull semen extract water ^^^That shake is gross, nobody is going to drink something like that. People need to have realistic goals, you aren't a pro bodybuilder, you don't have the time to eat like they do, you don't train the way they do, you aren't going to look like they do by eating boiled chicken breasts and broccoli all day. And 9 times out of 10 if you try you are going to give up long before you even see your arms getting bigger. So what is the magic secret? Go to one of those websites that tells you how many calories you need to sustain your bodyweight. It's easy, you put your weight in, gender, and age, and it tells you how many calories you need to sustain your body weight. Write that number down and.......eat less food than that. Want to gain weight? Eat MORE food than that. It really IS that simple. Diets fail because fitness magazines and sponsors make billions of dollars a year pumping out BS information to the masses. You don't have to eat like a gerbil to lose weight or "get cut". You want a Domino's pizza? Then order a pizza, just don't eat the whole thing. Want a burger? Go get a burger. All you have to do is make sure you don't eat more calories than your body actually needs. A guy even did an experiment to prove a point. He ate nothing but convenience store junk food for a month and lost like 10lbs. Why? Because it doesn't matter if you are eating snicker bars or steamed kale leaves as long as you don't eat MORE than you NEED. The fitness guru's quickly tried to silence that guy because his little experiment was getting in the way of their loads of crap information. So to all those who go in the gym and see the "big" guys and wonder what the secret is coupled with the information I just said. Those guys have been lifting weights for years. They didn't magically go from looking like Justin Bieber to looking like The Rock in a year. It takes time. They've been doing it for awhile. There is a limit to how fast you can actually grow muscles. You can stick to one of those whacked out diets to the tee and lift weights perfectly and you still aren't going to go from looking like "you" to looking like "them" in any reasonable amount of time. It doesn't work like that. Rant off LOL
I can't even bring myself to use supplements and multivitamins on a regular basis, let alone maintain such crazy diets. I just try to eat more healthy than not, moderation with the harmful stuff (or at least what's considered harmful presently), drink more water than other beverages (beer excluded), etc.
So what do you tell people who have diabetes? Where are they supposed to get the 6 more hours necessary every day to test their blood, correlate it with food and then prepare the plate of Kahl that is the ONLY thing they should eat? Oh, and how will they get the 50 to 60 percent more money they will need, as most everything for diabetics costs that much more. And don't say you just shouldn't get diabetes, because if you have the breakfast you said it's wonder you don't have it now.
x2 I eat "relatively" healthy but you'll never see me measuring out food on a scale or NOT going out to eat with my friends because "itll screw up my diet". I've seen guys go out to the bar and order that nasty 55 calorie Budweiser beer and restrict themselves to 2 because "they are on a cutting diet". Really guy? You're at the bar with your friends, have a beer and relax. I don't care if I'm "bulking up" "cutting" or "maintaining" my weight, if I go to the bar Im drinking, if I go to a steak house Im ordering a NY strip and mac n cheese and enjoying all of the 1200 or whatever calories that come with it. And I'm still, as the kids today put it, more "jacked" than the majority of the people in the gym. So "jacked" that I get mistaken for being fat with my shirt on lol What scares people about dieting is that they think "dieting" means eating like a gerbil. No, dieting simply means not eating as many calories as you are used to. You can literally eat dominos pizza for a month and lose just as much weight as the sucker who thought they had to eat boiled asparagus and chicken breasts. Main difference is that you are way more likely to actually succeed in your diet because you will stick with it over the other person who will more than likely get sick of eating boiled broccoli after about day number 2.
Those with health issues should of course pay more close attention to their diets. I'm not talking about them, my "rant" was more directed towards the kids who always come up to people in the gym and ask them how they got so big. Or the fitness "experts" who give out information that IS GOOD but almost impractical to actually apply. The main reason why people refuse to even try to diet is because they think dieting means eating nasty food. They read those articles and flat out say "yeah screw that Im not eating that all day Ill just be overweight". But the reality is that you dont HAVE to eat like that to lose weight. You'd be amazed at how many people's eye get big when I tell them that I'm not on some crazy diet (or steroids). There is a huge misconception that people who are "in shape" eat those whacked out diets all day. Some people actually do eat like that, but its not necessary to be THAT stringent in your diet. And as far as what I eat for breakfast, it's really not as bad as it looks. Plus I'm a "bigger" guy so I eat more than a normal person does. You need a certain amount of calories in your diet for the energy required to lift heavy weights. But my breakfast actually breaks down into about 500 calories (maybe around 650 if we include the coffee) which is about the same as the "super healthy" breakfast that I used as an example and much better tasting and less calories than most stuff people eat.
Is there some sort of formula to calculate how many calories you should consume which takes into consideration your mass and activity level? Stupid question I guess, considering the variation in metabolisms.
There is a calories burned formula that takes into account one's age, weight and heart rate variables. This will give you an idea of how much you use in the course of exercising for a sustained period of time. [(Age x 0.2017) — (Weight x 0.09036) + (Heart Rate x 0.6309) — 55.0969] x Time / 4.184 = Calories burned The source of the formula: Prediction of energy expenditure from heart rate monitoring during submaximal exercise. Publication: Journal of Sports Sciences Publication Date: 01-MAR-05 For example. let's say I workout for 20 minutes and get my heart rate up to 140 bpm, on average, in the process. 50 year old male x 0.2017 = 10.085 (Age) 211 lbs. x 0.09036 = 19.066 (Weight) 140 bpm x 0.6309 = 93.373 (Heart rate) Plug in those numbers into the formula. 10.085 - 19.066 + 93.373 - 55.0969 = 29.2951 29.2951 x 20 minutes = 585.902 585.902 / 4.184 = 140.034 calories burned
Thank you sir (I know... you work for a living!), good find. I'm always surprised at the amount of work it takes to burn so few calories. Goes to show how much is required by the body just to maintain it's normal functions, otherwise we'd all be plus sized.
Unfortunately I am plus sized. I consume more calories than I can burn off. It is very true how seemingly little a good 20 minute run, actually uses. 140 calories is about 1/2 of a Snickers bar.
Yeah, it's crazy. 20mins of running is a lot of friggin work, your body would lead you to believe so anyways, so you'd expect more energy to be required. I don't do much running myself nowadays, use to be a bit fanatical about it. I'm more into mountain biking. Easier on the joints, more fun, plus you can get your cardio and burn calories.
In the eyes of many people it really is easier to lose weight by just consuming less calories rather than exercising. Now I am by absolutely no means telling people not to exercise, but if weight loss is their main goal then simply eating 500 less calories a day than required will cause you to lose weight. Exercising is very important for overall health but if pure weight loss is the goal then it really isn't "required". People still should do it though of course. Many people do get shocked when they realize just how little calories strenuous activity actually burns. That is another reason why many people simply give up on trying to lose weight because it seems overwhelming. To many folks it's much easier to just eat less food rather than eating whatever they want and trying to "burn it off". Like you said, going for a nice 1 mile jog around the block is pretty strenuous to many people and they think that they are doing great things until they realize that they only burned about 150 calories which is half of a snicker bar. That would demotivate people pretty quickly because they feel like they just killed themselves on a run and got very little benefit from it as far as weight loss is concerned. It's much easier to just not eat a whole snickers bar rather than eating one and trying to run 2 miles to burn it off. Like the old saying goes "Your abs are made in the kitchen not in the gym". For abs to show you need to get around 10% bodyfat or less. That is something that can be done without ever lacing up a pair of running shoes in your life and if you follow a compound weight lifting routine it can be achieved without ever laying on your back and doing crunches or situps.
