Overloadus Idioticus

Yeah, thought that title would catch your attention :D

Last week I got this link in:

http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/02/08/6-species-youll-encounter-in...

Kinda funny (guess which gym-animal I am, lol)

When I was at the gym Tuesday, I did see an Overloadus Idioticus and had to laugh to myself, thinking of that post.

There was this little guy (1m70 or so +/- 5'8), relatively puny to boot, putting the pin in the lower block of the lat pulldown. I had to watch (seeming not to of course). No grunting, and he did pull the whole stack, but NOT training his lats! Biceps, at best!

I ignored him and went on with my own Db rows till I was ready to do a pulldown myself, but he was still hogging the machine :( this time he'd added more weight in the shape of the largest weight plate in the gym, and "pulled" it with the same lame "form". No way to work in with him that way, besides, with my 7MM 2-minute last bout, it wouldn't have worked (and the gym doesn't have a T-Bar rower) so I gave up, sorry to say, and left.

The "form"?

ROFL !!!

Or maybe I should have cried rather than laughed. But it was the classic "ego-load". The only way he was able to move the stack+plate, was to throw his entire weight into it. His upper body was at a 45 degree backward angle from the seat, and he was basically doing bicep curls. His lats were not involved (or so little that it didn't matter).

I felt like stopping him and asking him to halve the load (just the stack, forget the plate), take the proper seated position, lower his shoulders, push his sternum up, squeeze the shoulder blades together as if trying to hold a pencil between them, and pull straight down to his chest in a rapid, explosive movement, releasing s-l-o-w-l-y.

However, he was the type who would not have listened anyway, and would have taken the advise the wrong way, so I just laughed to myself, irritated that he kept the machine for over 10 minutes to himself, and walked out.