Weekend Wrap-Up

Now this is the corner of the room where I get to talk about my weekend. If you're only reading this blog because of my breathtakingly insightful political and cultural commentary, feel free to skip (though I think you might regret not learning about the man behind the mind) [Why don't you fall in love with yourself a little more?--ed.].

This is what happened at the gym on Saturday: First, I was just about to start a battery of lying leg curls when an elderly looking fellow jumped onto the machine, and told me not to worry, he was only doing one set. Nice of him to ask if that was okay. His "one set" then turned out to be about four sets of one-legged curls on each leg with no breaks, and virtually no weight on the machine. And it broke up the intensity I had going. Next, I had to wait about 10 minutes so that a guy could finish up on the leg extension machine; he'd been supersetting with back and chest exercises and more than taking his sweet time doing it. What would possess anybody to work on legs, chest, and back in the same workout? My intensity, on the other hand, was now down the toilet.

Next up for me was squats; the old standby, and surely this would revive my workout. But unfortunately, a group of Teaneck High School baseball players (and self-nominated tough guys) were doing shrugs on my squat rack. Nothing to complain about here; they had the equipment first. But it was the way they did shrugs that caught my attention: not even a semblance of controlled form. The biggest guy, who appeared to be the leader of the group, had the others practically jumping off the ground with the barbell and swinging their necks in a whiplash motion as they went through the shrug. Any thoughts on this? Could that be something a coach taught them to do? And why? It's not as if there aren't plenty of exercises that can build explosiveness through the hips without risking severe spinal injury. Oh, with a total wait of nearly 20 minutes, intensity was now in the sewers. My last exercise was leg presses. On my second to last set of squats, the same older man from my lying leg curl experience plopped himself down on the leg press sled. I had to wait at least 15 minutes for him to go through all his sets of nearly unweighted, one-legged presses, an exercise that doesn't have much capacity for building strength or muscle, but does on the other hand offer a super-high risk of pelvic injury. So, aside from that time in January when I put myself out of commission for three months, this had to be my single worst workout ever.