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If
you've ever been to a gym on a regular basis,
you've no doubt witnessed some pretty bad exercise
form at work. In
a previous story, I told you about "Dave,"
the guy who got shot out of the pec deck.
But
this story isn't about Dave - it's about a lady
I'll refer to as "Phyllis" (though a
better name might have been "Hurricane Phyllis").
It was a cold, winter morning when I witnessed
this lady's horrendous workout at a big name gym
in Chicago and I'll never forget it.
I was
sitting on the stationary bike, doing a warm-up
when she walked in, stuffed into a pink spandex
outfit 3 sizes too small, wearing glittery high
heels and marinating in perfume.
She
walked directly over to the treadmill and started
it up. I had never seen anybody walk on the treadmill
in high heels before so I figured this would be
worth watching. I was not to be disappointed.
"Phyllis"
was doing fine for the first minute so I went
back to reading my magazine. Then I heard this
huge "THUMP! Thumpthumpthumpitythumpthump..."
I turned and looked and there she was, crawling
on her hands and knees as fast as she could, desperately
trying to slap the shut-off button every couple
of steps!
I jumped
off the bike and ran over and hit the shut-off
button. She stopped but the treadmill, of course,
kept going, rolling her right off the back end
and flipping her over on her back. She flopped
around like a big, pink, overturned and confused
turtle for a minute. It was really, REALLY hard
not to laugh. "Phyllis" was fine. She
thanked me and walked off, like this had happened
a million times before.
And
this was only the warm-up...
I got
back on the bike. I had a feeling this lady was
going to be a lot more entertaining than reading.
She
hobbled over to the pulldown machine, sat down
then pulled the pin out and threw it on the floor.
Not looking to bulk up, evidently. She took a
grip on the bar wider than even a double-jointed
orangutan could manage safely then started pull
down behind her neck.
Now,
this exercise is not good for your shoulders to
begin with but she didn't stop the bar at just
her neck. She continued pulling the bar down behind
her back until the bar was all the way down at
her waist! I had never seen anything like it.
She had turned the exercise into a wide-grip,
behind-the-back pushdown. It was like she was
trying to scratch her entire back with the bar.
It was a good thing she had hardly any weight
on the machine.
Ten
useless reps later, she was done. My rotator cuff
was aching just watching it. But instead of standing
up with the bar and setting the one measly plate
down gently, she just let it go and let that single
plate crash down like a thunder clap. The bar
whipped around and smacked her in the side of
the head. Luckily for her, it seemed she had so
much hair spray on that the bar just kind of bounced
off - no damage done.
Without
a backward glance at the weight pin still lying
in the middle of the floor, she walked over to
the free weights. At this point, I just knew "Phyllis"
and free weights were not going to be a good combination
- kind of like filling a child up with sugar,
overstimulating them with games and cake, blindfolding
them, spinning them around, giving them a hard
club then telling them to swing at a cardboard
animal filled with candy hanging at crotch level.
Definitely not a good combination.
She
picked up the lightest dumbells on the rack (I
think one of them may have actually been a plastic
novelty pen shaped like a dumbell and not actually
even a real dumbell).
She
stepped back and started doing dumbell lateral
raises. Let me tell you, an albatross had nothing
on this lady. She was flapping her arms so big,
if she'd have had feathers, she would've been
halfway to Mexico by the time she finished her
set.
But
alas, her grip must have been failing (and it
was a good thing she was standing close to a cement
wall and not a person) because the next thing
I knew, she lost her grip on one of the dumbells.
It flew out of her hand and smashed into the wall
with a huge CLANG then fell to the floor with
and even bigger CLANG! She set the other dumbell
down and walked away, not looking the slightest
bit embarrassed.
I thought
I had seen everything. WRONG! The best was yet
to come and she had only been in the gym 10 minutes.
She
walked over to the adduction machine (the one
that works the inner thighs), sat down and began
doing reps. She must have done at least 20 sets
of that single exercise over the next 30 minutes.
Not a particularly good way to do this exercise
but not dangerous in and of itself. It seemed
to me like the party was over. Wrong again.
Somebody
had evidently put it in this lady's head (though
it was equally surprising that it didn't come
directly out the other side) that doing squats
would be a good thing for her. She went over to
the squat rack (the open one, not the enclosed
power rack - that, of course, would have been
way too safe) and set herself under the bar.
Now,
even before doing 30 minutes of adductions, I
doubt this lady would have been very stable on
this exercise. She took one step back with just
the bar on her back then took another step, and
another and another and another. She had totally
lost her balance and was falling backward with
every step!
Before
anybody could react, she was stuttering out of
the squat rack and falling backwards towards a
rack of dumbells. She crashed into the rack, lost
her grip on the bar and dropped it behind the
dumbell rack with a huge SMASH!
Then
she stood up, checked her hair in the mirror,
pulled spandex out of her unmentionables, and
hobbled out the door. I looked over at the weight
room supervisor, who was snickering quietly.
"Does
she do that all the time?" I asked.
"No."
he replied, leaning back in his chair. "Sometimes
she has a bad day..."
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