I just moved to a new uni, and I’m looking for a place to train. I’m at a fancy campus so there are a number of different facilities to choose from. I sent an e-mail to one of the sports staff asking which location had better free weights and where I could practice Olympic lifts. This is the reply I received (emphasis is mine):
[i]Hi,
You can use either the X Athletic Center or Y Gymnasium for your weight training, but there is no olympic lifting allowed at either location. Space is tight at both facilities too, since we are in the city and don’t have a lot of room to expand.
Good luck,
Wendy[/i]
I can’t believe it, a 1st class university that doesn’t allow Olympic lifting. I’ve been hunting online to find out where the football players train (for their sake, I hope they’re allowed to do O lifts!), but I think they have their own private facility that’s not open to the rest of the uni population.
[quote]trainerjim wrote:
I know the people who run the MIT centers, I can ask them where in the Boston area students olympic lift?
Jim[/quote]
Thanks Jim, that would be great. I’ve looked online but can’t find anything. I’m not a big O lift nerd (yet) so I probably don’t know the right sites to look for this.
It would be great if I could find someplace nearby that actually trained O lifts. If they don’t mind teaching the old people (I’m not a student anymore), I’d love to get some proper training and learn the proper techniques.
If you’re at a fancy private university, the frats/dorms/houses/whatevers will often have their own private gyms. Those tend to be unsupervised, so if you can find one of them, you’ll be set.
That said, they tend not to have the best equipment, but they will all have the basic barbell/weights. No bumper plates, but hey, at least you can do the Olympic lifts!
Quit asking for permission to shit like this and just go in and do it. Avoid times when it’s crowded. Bring a funk towel to wipe the chalk off the floor and bar. If they tell you to stop. Be pleasant and aplogetic, then do it some more. I trained O-lifts like this at a unversity health spa (this splace wasn’t a gym). For the most part, nobody gave me shit. Occasionally, somebody in charge would- but never the work-study kids.
I agree with the last posts. Don’t ask permission. Just do your thing and chances are people won’t notice you.
Work study students are a double-edged sword. Very few of them know anything about lifting (you can usually tell the ones that do by looking at them) so they are unable to do things such as spot people correctly, give feedback on form, or recognize when someone is lifting unsafely.
On the other hand, they probably won’t notice that what you are doing is not permitted (that is if they even know what you are doing in the first place) and would probably be too embarassed by their lack of knowledge to say anything.
During the regular work hours you are more likely to run into a director/assistant that might call you on it. Know the faces of those people and don’t do it in front of them.
And do not drop the weights or make loud noise and you should be golden.
Here’s IMHO a great idea - start the University of Wherever Olympic Lifting Club and register it with whatever office is in charge of student groups. With a little legwork, you should be able to get access to the athlete’s gym, collect some minimal dues to bring in a coach once in a while, and have something nice to throw on a resume and bring up during an interview.
first try doing O-lifts anyway. At my gym I do o-lifts sometimes and if they do happen to tell me to stop, I pretend I didnt know the rules and wait for them to go to where they cant see me again
I think one of the major reasons why gyms ban these types of lifting is the fact that a few ruin it for the rest of us.
Take for example the 24 hour fitness where I lift. I had been doing olympic lifting for a number of years without warning until one day the manager saw me and told me it was no longer allowed. I went out of state for a number of months and when I returned it turns out, some idiot was “trying” to do snatches and ended up going backwards and dropping the weights on some poor guy who was doing leg presses. Not only that, the same guy and his buddies would do power cleans and then slam the weights down on the ground during peak gym hours (3-4pm).
Don’t you hate those that ruin it for the majority? People please use common sense and have some respect for others.
don’t even think about going to the pussy golds gym in saugus. no heavy bars and they just took out all dumbells that weighed over 80 pounds. golds gym without 100 pound dumbells? thats no golds thats curves.
I’m out of town this week, and still haven’t signed up for any gyms. I’ll do that when I get back next week…boy am I dying to get back under the bar.
I might drop you guys who offered contacts a PM. The problem is I don’t have a car, so anything too remote is probably out of the question unless there’s convenient public transport nearby.
Regarding the idea of starting a weightlifting club, I don’t think that’s possible as I’m not a student. And to be honest, I don’t have the time to do it; I work many more hours now than when I was a student!
