I wish I could transplant the famed metro flex and plonk it down 5 kms from my house, better still give me the power freaks of Columbus at Westside. Hey I'd settle for Dave Tate as a neighbor. Alas it's not to be. The closest gym I love is a 5 hour flight to my great coach Damon Hayhow and his fantastic facility in Brisbane. Therefore while I am fortunate to live in a magnificent clean beautiful city on the West Coast of Australia with beaches and weather that make LA pale by comparison I do despair at the complete lack of decent gyms focused on strength.
Those of you who follow my rants know that my needs are modest. Give me a decent power-rack, heavy duty bench and most importantly an uncluttered dead lift platform and I will gladly shell our my hard earned dollars for a membership. Throw in a rubber plates (for cleans), reverse hyper machine and let me use chalk...hell I will sign up for life. This dearth of training facilities has led me to become an expert at identifying truly abysmal facilities (note my early post on joining a new gym). Therefore I submit to you the 5 ways you can tell that your current gym is shit!:
1. There are more cable crossover machines than squat racks:
Preoccupation with cable crossovers is a sure sign that your gym is a haven for douche bags. I wish I had a dollar for how many times I see guys wander in to grind out endless sets of crossovers. Generally the only chance they have of triggering muscle soreness is when they are craning their neck to watch themselves in the mirror.
2. No one lifts more than 2 wheels on compound lifts:
Getting strong and huge requires hoisting decent weight. Now you don’t have to squat like Dave Tate (check out Dave squatting below) but you have to shift some heavy iron if you want to grow! At my gym few guys rarely lift above 110kg in the bench and even fewer deadlift or squat with decent weight (very sad I know)
3. Preoccupation with Isolation Exercises:
Yesterday I worked a 10 hour day, followed this with a 2 hour flight home then sucked it up for my deadlift workout. I won’t mention that the mercury was still hovering at 35 degrees (Celsius) with humidity that would make metro flex feel cold. Ok ok I’ll stop whining now but my point is that regardless of the circumstances you still have to hoist the weight if you want the results. So as I sat between sets in a moist puddle of my own sweat I glance up to see 3 young guys obsessing over 1 arm cable tricep pulldowns . Each of these kids would be lucky to break 70kgs but here they were complaining how they needed more mass. Hell I managed to complete my deadlift workout and get to the chin bar while these clowns were still grinding out ridiculous sets for their triceps. I can’t stress enough how important it is for newbies looking to grow to forget isolation exercises and get their ass squatting and deadlifting!
4. 60%+ of the floor space is dedicated to cardio equipment: How disappointing, think how man EliteFTS college power racks you could fit in the space currently wasted with those ridiculous elliptical rowers, steppers etc. In my gym I regularly see one poor lass every day as she spends approx 1.5 hours on the cardio equipment. She is rail thin and its quite sad to watch her blithely waste an hour or so of her life to (in the word of my old coach) burn the equivalent of one Tim Tam biscuit or a small potato. Jesus for the sum total of 3 hours for the entire week I could transfer her physique just getting her skinny ass under a squat rack.
5. Your Staff are Dicks!: Too many horror stories surround trainers at many gyms. Here is a sample of trainer behaviour from the gym I train at.
a) spending time on the mobile phone while training clients
b) regurgitating rubbish theories that sound like they came from 1980's Weider magazine articles
c) focusing more on their clients ass than their squat technique
d) promoting routines based on (in no particular order) bicep curls, hack squats, leg extensions and...yup you guessed it cable cross overs
If you have any 2 out of these five then congratulations like me you train at a Shite gym!!
Ps you might wonder why i still train where I do given the obvious limitations of the gym. Well 3 reasons, its close, it is the only gym nearby with a power rack and finally all the stupid shit that occurs there provides me an endless source of material for this blog!
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