I got in the gym yesterday and it wasn't looking good from the get-go. I finished warming up and there was someone on the bench I wanted, and then someone using the barbell I wanted. I was literally only wanting to use those two things. I sort of mooched around trying to not look weird while I waited on the first thing to be free. The lad lifting the barbell was lifting 132.5Kg which is already a big weight, but he was in his teens and probably 65Kg himself. Oh but his technique - the sort of thing you can clearly get away with when you're young - I would have snapped in half!
I got on the bench and worked my way up, did 1 on my previous 1 rep max and felt like I could get the next notch. Put another 5 on it and had a chap spot me (standing over ready to help if I get stuck under the bar). First rep was fine, second one wasn't moving so he had to help me get it racked. That's why I asked for a spot!
By this point someone had picked up the barbell and I was like god damn it. Then he puts it into the landmine thing, and just has like a 15 minutes chat with people round him while basically doing nothing. I was devastated - just wanted to do deadlift and I was getting blocked by a chatty kathy! I decided I could at least try out Romanian Deadlift with dumbells. Plenty of them, and I found a wee spot somewhere to try it out. I did like 4 sets of 10, working my way up to a decent weight where I did struggle to finish the 10. That seemed like the perfect time to stop and I was about to leave. And LO, the barbell guy had finished (turns out his actual exercise took about 5 minutes after 15 minutes pissing about not doing anything - and the thing he was doing he could have just done on a bloody cable row or something but I digress).
So I got on the barbell, (there's a TLDR about not finding the right plates but I'll spare you), thinking I've probably caned myself on the RDL and this won't go anywhere big. Maybe the RDL has really fired up the rear legs because I was finding the bigger weights just coming up nicely. So I did my top weight from last week, then put +5kg on and did that too. At that point I was well chuffed.
There were these teens on the bags just doing appalling boxing and I was for offering one of them a couple of tips and he was like 'I've been doing MMA for years so yeah'. I just said 'ah yeah then you'll know everything, good man'. Kind readers, he didn't know everything! I mean it's not like I know everything myself but yanno I do actually teach it. Conversely last time I was in, there was a woman hitting the bag and she was bloody brilliant. Footwork, angles, every punch in the book with either hand, I would have been asking her to teach me quite honestly! It was actually a brilliant backdrop as Anna and I were doing some lifting nearby, to hear someone absolutely murdering the punchbag. Love it.
This has been my TED talk on one trip to the gym.
It took less time to write than that guy took pissing about with the landmine attachment and chatting.