I see a lot of terrible workout articles online – either way too obvious, painfully sexist, or just inaccurate. Once in a while a good one finds its way onto the internet though. Today the Huffington Post put out this one, titled 7 Exercises Fitness Experts Wish You Would Stop Doing. I’ve actually been told to do some of these things by coaches/trainers in my lifetime, so it’s interesting to see the sound logic behind not doing them. I won’t repeat them here – just go read the article and then stop doing those stupid things. I’ve been guilty of most of them at some point, and more recently have been guilty of #7, doing squats in the Smith machine. I would like to point out that I have absolutely never done #5 (curls in the squat rack). Do people actually do that?
I’m also proud to say that I did my back/biceps workout today without committing any of these workout offenses. When I do abs there’s always a risk of doing #1 (crunches), but luckily I rarely do abs. Just because I don’t do ineffective or obnoxious workout practices on that particular list, doesn’t mean I’m the perfect gym member. I do plenty of things that I would probably be irritated by or look down on if someone else was doing. Which brings me to:
Top 5 Stupid Things I Did in the Gym Today:
1. The recumbent bike: I’ve never done this in the gym before, but my legs were wiped out from a workout yesterday so I gave it a try. I feel like any exercise that has newspapers scattered around the machine for, isn’t a real exercise. It looks more like a place for a 70 year old man to have his morning coffee. That being said, I enjoyed it and watched Flip or Flop while I did it for 18 minutes.
2. Eating in the locker room: I did this today. I bought a protein bar at the gym and didn’t know where to eat it. Is it weird to buy a protein bar and then immediately eat it right in front of the cash register? Because it was either that, go stand in the middle of the gym to eat, or the locker room. Or I guess I could have gone and stood outside to eat. The locker room felt like a gross place to eat but I thought that less people would see me eating in a gym that way. Gyms are awkward places to eat.
3. Lifting more than I should: I have a tendency to always try to lift my max (not like my one rep PR, just the most weight I’ve ever done 10 reps with). Maybe one time I was able to do this effectively, but the rest of the time I just want to look like a badass by grabbing 80 lb. dumbbells to do bicep curls. Turns out I shouldn’t do this because everyone else is too busy checking themselves out in the mirror. Which leads me to…
4. Checking myself out in the mirror: I can’t help it. But I still laugh when I see other people obviously doing it.
5. Standing in the middle of the gym staring at my phone: This one embarrasses me. But I use a workout app on my phone that tells me what exercises/machines to use. A lot of other people do this too, but I’m so sick of everyone staring on their phone all the time. Apparently that’s not enough to get me off my phone yet.
I also need my phone in the gym to take pictures of funny warning signs. For some reason most signs warning me of death/crippling injury = hilarious to me.
Make sure you let me know all the stupid things you do in the gym sometime, so I can laugh at you too.
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