Glad I just seen this thread, here we go:
There is a guy in my gym who is 30 years old, I only know that because I have had to ID him when I was working at a bar a few months ago. Yesterday he starts telling me and some others about how his gym was in the 1970's and how everyone there was dead lifting at least 800lbs. So I called the guy out and said, " so you were deadlifting 800 when you were a toddler?" He gave me a **** Off and walked away with his tail between his legs.
We also have the guy who wears his weight belt for every set, along with his Nike football gloves and lifting straps. Usually he does the infamous rocking curl , but only if the squat racks open for him. Yesterday he decides to get some bench presses in, little to my surprise hes going down literally about 3 inches. After a few sets with 25lb plates on each side he decides to jump up to a 35 on each side. Thats right 115lbs , 52.16 kilo's, 8.2 stones...You get the point, a very big bench for a 6'1 200lb guy.....He unrack's the weight, lowers to his normal depth and does a rep or two pretty easy. I turn around for a second and when I look back he has the bar on his chest with his eyes closed. I literally thought he was dead. I started heading over to see if the guy was breathing when I noticed he is trying to roll the bar down his body to get it off of him. Me and another guy grabbed a side a pick it off, he thanked us and then flexed in the mirror.
Next we have the over weight x-female bodybuilder. She openly admits to juicing during her competing days when she looked kind of looked like she worked out but those days are long gone. She puts every client of her's into a routine that would make Arnold himself think it was overtraining. They start off with smith machine quarter squats, then rounded back rows, rounded back deadlifts, rocking curls on the cable machine, etc. So I am just keeping to myself and doing some chain floor press when she decides its a good idea to come over and grab one of my chains off of the bar. The chains are my own personal ones that I lug in and out of the place whenever I need to use them. She then tells me to bring the chains in next Saturday so she could use them. I asked well what are you training that day? She replies nothing, I have a photo shoot and I need them as a prop. Needless to say that's not going to happen and I hope to God she doesn't try to sell me a calendar of her.
Next we move to the countless amount of personal trainers at my gym who ask me how to do certain exercises and what muscles they work. One of them seen my using baby powder on my shins when deadlifting one day and also seen that I had chalk on my hands. A week later I come in and he has a big container of baby powder with him and he is having a group of young athlete's he babysits, i mean trains, putting it on there hands. I told him that the chalk and baby powder serve two completely opposite purposes and he replies with, " No wonder everyone's grip seemed worse today."
Finally among everything else that happens at my gym here is the thing that kills me the most. The trainer who has two professional Hockey players as clients yet trains them so that they will have huge biceps and be really good at tricep kick backs. These guys usually work out at the same time as me in the morning and I have never seen them do:
Any hip or leg exercises
Any grip or forearm work
Any explosive lifts.
The daily routine consist of smith machine shrugs, biceps, pull ups ( in which they never go to a dead hang and can only get 12 in a row, as a professional athlete) bench press, and of course tricep kick backs. So one day I was talking to the trainer outside of the gym at a bar and I asked why never does any leg training or forearm training with his two hockey players, his reply was that its not functional for their sport. Now I can understand during the season not killing their legs because they are on the ice a lot, but in the off season they are only hitting the ice once or twice a week for light conditioning.