what was tthe dumbest thing anyone ever advised you to do in the gym?
to use a swiss ball
Two times a day, six day a week. Back when I was 15, the “biggest” guy in the gym agreed to help train me. He had me working out for 2 hours before school and then another 2-3 hours following school. To compound matters, it was one of those go till you puke routines. We did this six days a week! The only reason there was even a day off was because our gym closed on sun. Luckily, I smartened up after a few weeks of this.
oh yeah i one time followed the cybergenics progam and then there was the time i was told by my football coach in hs high reps low weight would cut me out like a bodybuilder “because dose guyz ain’t all dat strong”
How about from a skinny guy with a beer gut telling you gotta use creatine while working out because “thats when the muscles open up” and that the creatine has to be taken in powder form because “the water disolves it” !?! What the @#$% was this clown thinking ?
Yesterday I did the new dumbest possible workout mistake, and it wasn’t even in the gym…
you know those “home gym” pullup bars that use leverage to hook over the door-frame? Well, if you are ever using one, DO NOT ATTEMPT EXPLOSIVE STERNUM CHINS. I went up fast and slammed my sternum into the bar. Unfortunately the only thing keeping the bar jammed in the doorframe is the levered resistance of you pulling down. In slamming myself into the bar and applying 30+ pounds of force in the vertical direction, the bar saw that i really did not need its help anymore. after the whole thing dis-engaged I fell seven feet (now remember, at the top of a sternum chin your whole body is parallel to the floor) and landed flat on my upper back (talk about next day rhomboid soreness). To make matters worse an oil painting and the entire contents of a shelf then tumbled onto me. As I lay in the doorway, unable to breath and still clutching onto that friggin crap devices handles, I thought: “what would Joe Weider call this?” i finaly settled on “Super Anti-Gravity Speed-Release Drop-Set Shock Principle.” Only to be used sparingly by advanced bodybuilders to break plateaus or shoulder blades.
Relying on cardio to get lean. What a crock!
Matt - Sorry to laugh at your misfortune but that was great. I’m having to bite my lip right now to keep from busting up at work. Oh well, live and learn.
How bout the time when my highschool football coach told me I was benching wrong because I was taking too long to lower the weight and I wasn’t “giving it a little bounce” off the chest in the bottom position. He correctly concluded that if I dropped the weight on my chest and bounced the mother from the chest to about the halfway point of the rep that I could put another fifty pounds on the bar.
The most amusing conversations I have had have involved drug use and what people in my gym believe regaring steroids and supplements. One of the more amusing ones recently was a guy who was certain that a no carb diet would kill you. When I suggested to him I have actually read studies that showed no ill effects from a full year of ketogenic dieting he just looked dumbfounded and walked away. No doubt thinking to himself what a moron I am. After all he was a tad bigger than I so he MUST know it all.
Yesterday i was doing DB bench press and I needed a spot. So I just asked the closest kid next to me. He was about 19 and you can tell he thought he was big time. Anyway after my set he told me I need to arch my back more and even lift my butt off the bench. I laughed and said yeah ill do that if I want back surgery. Then he said to trust him because he was a “powerlifter” and not a “bodybuilder”. Then he proceded to ask me for a spot on the bench where he performed 195 for 2 reps and i had to help him with the second one. His tempo on those sets was 000. HAHA
One time I walked into the gym and noticed these two guys doing 1/16th squats with 315. They were hollering and yelling at each other. All they were doing was barely bending there knee and then locking it back out. Anyway. It was squat day for me and my partner so we loaded up the bar on the squat rack beside them and warmed up. Then i did a set of 365 for 8 reps using a 402 tempo. So one of these idiots came over to me and told me that I was doing them all wrong. That I was going to hurt myself because I was using to much weight, going to slow and going too deep. That all of that combined caused you to strain too much. STRAIN TOO MUCH!!!. What!!? Well I would hate to strain any when I workout. Anyway, He went on to inform me that I was gonna make no progress doing them like that. What an idiot.
No one did this to me but I really hate it when someone (usually a women) puts one foot in the botton handle of the cable cross over machine and does a leg crossover. It’s done with zero intensity and i believe it’s for “burning” the fat off the inside thigh.
I had a trainer once who had me doing a ton of depth jumps. He also had me do them with added weight. The trainer who had me doing this trains Pro Golfer Greg Normon. His name is Pete Dratovitch. It was just plain overkill. I just didn’t know it at the time. Thanks Pete for the patella femoral pain in my knees. It’s only taken three yrs. to get rid of it!!!
matt…that was hilarious…im howling just trying to imagine that one…that one deserves an award
“Precision sculpting.” I once trained for a week with a former pro bodybuilder while on vacation in L.A. This guy was actually a big name in the early 70’s. He told me that you could isolate a specific area by having someone put a finger on the area while you did an exercise. Example: Have someone put a finger on your inner pecs while you bench and it concentrates the work on the inner pec. He believed this somehow concentrated muscle contraction and mental focus on the area. Looking back, I think it was just his way of touching a teenage boy!
Poliquin’s 1 day arm cure program–LOL
I train at a health oriented gym and most of the crowd are moms and dads trying one last time to lose 5 pounds when they should actually lose 100. They first get a full tour of the gym and obviously the salesman focuses on the daily 60 minutes of plain fun they will have while riding a bicycle and reading the paper at the same time. When they finally join the club, the university certified trainer makes them a 1952 style workout (3 sets of every exercice they know, exclusively on machines), and lots of aerobics. They also strongly reccommend the use of creatine because it helps recover from the intense training, and also whey protein because it helps build muscle (at 1 scoop a day). They also have that almost magical fat burner (phen free from EAS) which melts the fat away. Those supps are from EAS and are sold at the full retail price. After 2 months of no results, moms and pops (with a non-refundable 1 year membership) give up to make room for another batch of suckers who want to burn the calories from their processed carbs addiction.
One of those certified trainer (he has a university degree remember) told me that if I really want to grow muscles, I should train 15-20 hours a week and eat 6 grams of protein / lbs of body weight a day. And not any protein, ISOLATE whey only because other kinds of whey are useless. I told him that a guy my weight (165 lbs) should then consume a whole jar everyday, to which he answered… yeah, so? he also prescribed a super slow (10-0-10) bench press exercice with 100 reps to a newbie, which lasts 30 minutes!
It’s funny when a 20% BF lady gets advice from a 35% BF trainer on how to lose weight. It’s also funny when the same trainer tells me that my diet (anabolic diet) is wrong and I won’t get results even if I’m 10% BF!
I want to thank every personnal trainers all over the world for all the funny stories they provide!
Just another dumbass high school football coach telling me that weightlifting was bad. Guy was such an idiot. Glad you finally wised up and stepped down, Purnell, albeit not so gracefully.