A lifter tours Planet Fitness
 

I can't remember seeing this one, yet:

Not seen that one before.

I don't think we have PF in Australia, but many gyms are similar. Gyms become like this because of member demands. Let's take the example of a single 4hr shift I did this last Sunday.

"Kyle can you turn the music up? I'm pounding on the treadmill and can't hear it."
"Kyle can you turn the music down? I got off the treadmill and now it's awfully loud."
"Kyle this music is dreadful, so unmotivating. Something more energetic! No don't play that doof-doof music, also it has rude words."

"Kyle what's the best exercise to deal with this?" grabs belly fat.
"The Dinner Table Push-Away." They never get it.

"Kyle we have run out of paper towels, I have to clean the treadmill, all these other people have germs!"
I like that one. While desperately spraying and wiping down the treadmill before you touch its icky handles, have a think about the dumbbells you were just using. When was the last time you cleaned a dumbbell handle? Now think of all the men who've been to the toilet, not washed their hands afterwards, and used that dumbbell. And yet somehow you have not died, Mr OCD.

Member falls down on the treadmill and face-plants, blood everywhere.
"I've broken my nose! I'm going to sue!"
"How did you fall, ma'am?"
"I was running at 18ks, dropped my towel and reached down to pick it up. This treadmill is unsafe, I'm going to sue."
Time to fill in an Incident Report. I leave it up to the Duty Manager.

"Excuse me sir, I strongly recommend you not do that exercise."
"Why?"
"You're doing dumbbell bench press on a swiss ball. You must weigh, what, 80kg?"
"Yeah."
"And you have a pair of 35kg dumbbells. So that's 150kg of force going through that swiss ball. If you put 150kg of weight plates on that ball, what would you expect to happen?"
"It'll burst."
"This is why I strongly recommend you not do this exercise."
"I'll be alright."

And my favourite exchange,
"Kyle can you come and change the channel on the tv in the cardio room?"
"I'm doing a personal training session at the moment, sir, I'll be with you in five minutes."
"Five minutes! My programme will be over then."

By contrast, exactly zero people asked me how to improve their barbell back squat form. Or even how to bench and curl better.

Planet Fitness is the way it is because some customers demanded that it be that way.

To a degree, I agree, Kyle, but there are also Fitness Centres, like the one we have (the only place :() where it's more a case of our equipment will last longer if we don't permit the clientele to throw it about, hence no Oly moves are permitted...but you can snatch a dumbbell :rolleyes:

Frankly, it's not much of a place, the squat rack, if you can call it that, also doubles up as the bench press area as well as the deadlift area, and the rack isn't adjustable which means I can't even make use of it for front squats let alone bench press because it's too high at its set lowest point. Then again, over 75% or considerably more of the Fitness Centre is taken up with machines. But, it's all we have...and strangely, we manage to have strongmen comps here as well...no idea where they train but it certainly isn't on the machines :D

Yeah, I so desperately wish they had bumper plates in my gym. I went for a vacation to India sometime back and went to my old college gym (which I had never used when I was in college, lol). That's a ghetto gym, but in a good way - all they had was squat racks, benching stations, barbells, dumbbells and a bunch of bumper plates. Dropping the bar after presses and cleans was fun :D

Here after the cleans and presses, I try to lower the bar with minimal control and catch it over my quads and then lower it as I would do for deads. Takes quite a bit out of me, but hey, at least this way, the pump in biceps and forearms after cleans and presses is awesome :p


I am in better shape here, since there are 9 power racks. But when school is in session and the gym is crowded, I have to do without the racks and lift on the open floor. I used to do higher rep front squats on those days, by cleaning the weight to my shoulders first. You could give this a try, but then as you put it down, you will need to catch the weight on your quads and then lower it slowly, if you dont want to drop the weights.

The weird thing is the Fitness Centre here has those plastic/vinyl coated plates, not even open metal...not sure how they fare when dropped, I assume they could crack but I dunno. If half of you came to the place, you'd run out of plates way before you managed to overload the barbell :D

I even tried a rack pull...set the barbell in place, obviously on the rack at the lowest (set point of the non-adjustable rack) only to find it was well above my full standing deadlift height...so, not much good there either.

With the cleaning the weight from the floor, I wouldn't mind so much but I figured a gym was so that you had more options not to have to do that...thankfully, I can now do the front squats at home with impromtu adjustable safety bars; giving me more options than the Fitness Centre. :march:

We have similar weights in my current school gym. Never dropped them from a height, but they do pretty well when set down sloppily after heavy deadlift singles. Some of the students here deadlift over 400 lbs, and I see them set down the weight heavily (though not exactly drop them), and so far none of the vinyl encased plates have cracked.

Yeah, I agree - with a gym you should have more options. I guess the average gym goer's idea of options is drastically different from those who train seriously. That's why these fitness centers are able to get away with murder :(

One of the few ads where I thought kicking out the lifter was somewhat appropriate.

Brilliant t-shirt idea, if you actually have some abs to display though :D