Welcome to Gymtime Stories: Part IX of a CCXIII part series.

Part IX: Go Down Some Weight, Will Ya?

I hate it when I see a guy get under the bar at the bench press after piling on clearly too much weight for his frame. For example, I see a 150 lb guy slap on two 45s on each side, I’m thinking ‘Really? Your eyes are way bigger than your chest’. Or when an old man puts on….well…..anything. Old people can’t bench anything.

Anyway, part of you is asking why why should I care? I mean it is their muscles that are going to get the brunt of all of this. But au contraire mon frere, this does affect me.

First off, if I happen to be standing next to a guy doing this, I may have the unlucky task of ‘spotting’ thrust upon me. It is true that whenever I see someone going for a ‘maxing out’ moment, I try to steer clear on the scene. But every so often you get caught. So great, I have now got mashed in the web of this guy’s workout with a responsibility I simply do not want to have. Sometimes they even expect you to like motivate them during their shitty lift. Like ‘c’mon now’ or ‘you can do it’, or whatever. I don’t know what to say to this man! I know nothing about his lifting abilities other than the fact that he probably can’t lift this without me doing 30% of the work.

Secondly, even if you avoid the spot, you are probably going to hear loud grunts in the background. Yeah, that would be him, trying to lift waaaay too much and making a lot of noise (not) doing it. So in an otherwise quiet and somber gym, you hear Charles Atlas over there trying to move the world.

Finally, when you see this whole charade of ‘I can lift this…really I can’ about to occur without a spot, you still have to pay some attention or else that guy may in fact die. Now granted, I am none too fond of this guy, but I don’t want him to die, being crushed by the bar or anything. Other than death doesn’t seem like a fair punishment to a miscalculation of strength, the spectacle would be too much to bear. Crushed skull, brain parts splattered everywhere, blood seeping inside the creases of the bench. Not only do I not want to see this, I don’t want to use that bench later with a piece of brain lying next to my face.

Anyway, any trainer worth heir salt says don’t overdo it. Sure, I lift too much at times and strain things, but at least I have an idea of my limits. Just take some weight off, do what you can do, and stop thinking you are He-Man.