New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. This is the moment when many people resolve to exercise more and eat less or healthier. These are also the days when gyms must make a large portion of their revenue from new registrations of people they won’t see after a month, but from whom they will still receive membership fees throughout the year.
In many gyms, current members hold their breath, awaiting the expected influx. I myself train at a gym where crowding has been a frequent complaint in recent months. Over the past weekend, many were already saying they absolutely wouldn’t train on Monday evenings. The Christmas break is over, Monday evenings have traditionally been busy, and the expectation is that you’ll have to virtually draw numbers for each piece of equipment. I’ll take my chances tonight, hoping that with a flexible attitude, I’ll still manage to get some training in.
Such peak times are something gym owners can’t (and don’t want to) avoid. In fact, as an owner, you naturally welcome a full gym. As long as it’s so busy that members can hardly move around, you can afford to lose those few members who cancel their subscriptions because of it. “Better that than an empty gym,” the owner will reason. As members, we have to ensure that it remains a livable (or “trainable”) gym.
Social Behavior Prevents a Lot of Irritations
Especially during busy times, you’re more likely to get annoyed with others. Firstly, because there are simply more people to annoy you, increasing the likelihood of disturbance. When you’re cramped together due to limited space, you’ll find the same disturbances even more bothersome. Just like you wouldn’t be bothered by the guy with loud music in his headphones until he sits next to you on a crowded bus, subjecting you to an hour of music that’s the opposite of your taste and would be equally annoying even if you weren’t in such close proximity.
Just like in the rest of life, you prevent annoyances in the gym by being considerate of each other. Just as there are those guys with loud music in the bus, there are always people in the gym who completely disregard others. For those who do this knowingly, I have no hope of teaching them manners. However, there’s also a large group who are simply unaware of causing annoyance. For that group, I thought it would be useful to compile a simple list of Do’s & Dont’s in the gym. Time for a bit of etiquette.
By the way, I’m mainly addressing unwritten rules here. Matters like putting weights back, using a towel, not wearing outdoor shoes, etc., I leave to the gym’s rules, which members should (hopefully) be made aware of.
(In random order:)
Don’t Occupy Space or Equipment Unnecessarily!
- For instance, don’t sit with your knees against the dumbbell rack unnecessarily, making everyone wait until you’re done with your exercise to access it. Don’t drape your towel over the dumbbells and don’t use the rack as a cup holder or footrest.
- Speaking of towels: Isn’t it annoying when people on vacation put a towel on the pool loungers at 5:00 am, then go back to sleep until 2:00 pm? It’s just as irritating in the gym. If you’re not using a machine or bench, don’t leave your towel there to “reserve” it. While you might have a good reason for using multiple machines in succession, like a superset, triset, giant set, or circuit, you need to realize when it’s acceptable to occupy multiple machines and when it’s too crowded in the gym for that.
- Don’t do dumbbell curls (a biceps exercise), for example, in the squat rack. Some exercises, like squats, can only be done in one or a few spots in the gym. Don’t occupy these spots with exercises you could do anywhere else in the gym.
No Talking During Exercise Execution
Although everyone goes to the gym to achieve certain athletic results, the social aspect is very important for many. And let’s admit it, the conversations in between sets can make a gym visit a lot more enjoyable. If you want to avoid these two clashing, you need to know when to talk to someone, but also for how long.
- Above all, don’t talk when someone is performing their exercise!! Some think they can talk to you while you’re doing your exercise. Normal social behavior, however, dictates that you respond when someone talks to you. If you talk to me while I’m exercising, you’re forcing me to either be antisocial and continue focusing on my breathing and exercise while training or neglect my breathing and therefore the exercise because I feel socially obligated to respond to you.
- Keep conversations short during rest periods. Most people rest between exercises for one to two minutes, traditionally for strength training, this is 90 seconds. Keep your chats short enough for the rest period so the other person doesn’t have to say, “Now shut up so I can continue!”.
Give Enough Space for Exercise Execution and Don’t Get in the Way
- If someone is doing an exercise and you need to be nearby, it’s your responsibility not to get in each other’s way. For example, if someone is squatting, don’t expect them to move aside for you. It’s up to you to wait until they’re finished. Firstly, so they can fully concentrate on their exercise, but also for safety reasons.
- Even worse is recklessly bumping into someone while they’re exercising. In some cases, this may only cause a minor disruption, but in others, it could disrupt someone’s balance, leading to accidents. I experienced this while squatting with heavy weight. As I tried to stand up from a bent position, I bumped into someone who was passing behind me for the third time instead of walking around. This made it very difficult for me to maintain balance, and I barely managed to avoid dropping the barbell on their feet. If you accidentally bump into someone, at least offer your apology, but try to prevent it from happening in the first place.
By the way, both in the photo alongside make a mistake. The man shouldn’t stand so close to the dumbbell rack that others can’t access it without bothering him. The lady makes the mistake of disturbing him by entering his Range of Motion, the path in which he performs his exercise.
Don’t Occupy Equipment or Other Training Components for Too Long
- As a basketball player, I always got annoyed when we couldn’t use a basketball court because it was being used for soccer. If you want CrossFit and Calisthenics to remain popular, don’t spend an hour doing muscle-ups (pull-ups and dips in one movement) on the only spot where you can do pull-ups. Traditionally, gyms are not designed for strength exercises to be performed for half an hour or longer. Others just want to do a certain number of sets and reps and be done in ten minutes at most. This is something of recent times, but I hear more and more people getting annoyed with the “circus performers” in the gym. I myself get annoyed after waiting for half an hour only to hear that someone expects to be on the same machine for another half hour. If that’s your plan, go to a CrossFit box or a playground with climbing bars and have at it.
- The same goes for hogging a machine while discussing the cliffhanger of a soap opera for fifteen minutes. Whatever you want to waste your time on is up to you, but don’t make someone else wait for it.
- If you were foolish enough to bring your phone inside, disrupting your training, don’t make it someone else’s problem by occupying a machine while making calls or texting.
Loiterers? Go Hang Out on the Street
Although your parents are probably glad you’re off the streets, no one in the gym is happy if the same loitering behavior continues there. In a survey I conducted about experiences in a certain gym, complaints about young people kept coming up. Doing exercises one by one with a group of four, taking an hour, and the above point applies here too (don’t occupy equipment unnecessarily for too long). Meanwhile, texting, Instagramming, tweeting, and taking selfies while not returning dumbbells to the rack. No wonder this group doesn’t make themselves popular in gyms.
A few weeks ago, after training, I found a boy no older than 15 in the locker room who thought it was a good idea to smoke there, looking around with an expression that said, “Look how cool I am!” Strangely enough, I was the only one who said something by asking him to throw out the cigarette and himself immediately.
Locking Plates on Bars Where They Can’t Fall Off
Okay, this is a minor annoyance in the category: “Doesn’t effectively cause much trouble, but I simply don’t understand why people do it”.
If you’re using a barbell, for example, for squats, you might be afraid that the bar will eventually tilt and the plates will fall off. There are clamps for keeping the plates in place for this purpose.
However, if you have a machine where plates can be placed and this machine has a horizontal or other bar where plates can’t fall off, what’s the point of putting a clamp on it? Consider the Smith Machine where the barbell always remains horizontal. This is just a waste of time for you and the person who comes after you and has to remove them.
If Your Name Isn’t Ronnie Coleman, Don’t Throw Weights Like Ronnie
In DVDs of 8-time Mr. Olympia, Ronnie Coleman, you often see him just throwing the dumbbells or barbells in the corner after a set. This is also often seen in gyms. Weights being slammed down with the sole purpose of letting everyone hear how heavy the weight being trained with was.
If you’re not Ronnie Coleman, bringing hundreds of visitors to a gym, and you’re also not the owner of the gym, you can just calmly put down the weights. Believe me, you’re not impressing anyone with the weights you throw. Not even when you shout terms like “Yeah Buddy!!” or “Light weight, baby!” during your exercise. Just like driving around with blaring music in your car: You might think you’re really cool, but bystanders are thinking, “What a jerk!”.
Not a Definitive List
I could go on like this for a while, and I don’t rule out the possibility of a second part at some point. If you can think of anything else that keeps annoying you each time, let me know and add them in your response!
For now, it seems enough to attempt to prevent the necessary frustrations and make a good start to a sporty year.
