[PhilS]

I am curious about a phenomenon that I have been seeing with increasing frequency at my local fitness club. It is a nice club in a well-to-do area. In the weight room, a growing number of people do not re-rack their weights (also known as "stripping the bar") after they are done with a piece of equipment. On some occasions, guys will leave two 45 lb. plates on each side of a barbell, which is a real problem for many of the women you use the gym and have to heft 180 lbs. or more off of the barbell before they can do their set. Even leaving on smaller weights is just rude to the next person, who has to take off the weights and then put on his or her own weights of choice.

I can't figure out why people do this. Do they not know the etiquette? But how much brains or knowledge of gym etiquette do you really need to figure out that this is not polite? It's similar to eating at a fast food place like McDonald's on a crowded day and leaving your trash behind while people are waiting for a table. Do people not give a rat's behind about anybody else anymore? Or is there some reasonable explanation or something I'm missing?

Sometimes I see this conduct from high school kids, and I think an appropriate assumption might be that they just don't know any better -- or perhaps they've got nothing but girls on their mind (we've all been there). But I sometimes see this from guys in the 30 to 50 age bracket, and it boggles my mind that people would act this way. Anybody here have an explanation for this type of conduct that would make me believe that common etiquette and courtesy is not about to completely disappear from our society?

 

[crazyfrenchman27]

They do where I go.

-Matt

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazyfrenchman27 They do where I go.

Do they make an announcement at your gym or have signs, or do people just do it anyway?

 

[Ingo]

I used to be a member at Pure Fitness. They really kept a tight ship it seemed when it came to things of this nature. If a trainer/employee saw something like this, they would jump all over it. Also, if they saw that you weren't wiping your sweat off the equiptment or if they noticed that you weren't carrying a towell they would get after you.

 

[TenaciousO]

At just about every gym I've used, members don't re-rack. It's just how things are. The one exception was a Gold's Gym that I used this past summer. No one said anything about re-racking weights, but everyone did it. It just depends on a particular gym's culture.

Added: Actually, now that I've thought about it some more, there's always been a silent "partial" re-racking rule - one plate on each end of a barbell. I think it's because that's the starting point for a lot of members.

 

[wax4213]

Things are pretty good at my gym, only on a couple of occasions have I seen any weights laying on the ground. It really helps everyone out to re-rack them. It can even become a safety issue, depending on where they are.

 

[nibiyabi]

People at my gym almost never re-rack the weights, and when they do, they put them in all the wrong places. One time I spent ten minutes fixing the entire thing out of pure frustration, and the very next day it was just as bad as it was before.

Flipping morons.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ingo Also, if they saw that you weren't wiping your sweat off the equiptment or if they noticed that you weren't carrying a towell they would get after you.

This is another one. About every other visit, I come across a bench that has a substantial amount of sweat on it that the previous user did not wipe off. IMO, this almost deserves the death penatly. Absolutely disgusting, and the pinnacle of rudeness.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nibiyabi People at my gym almost never re-rack the weights, and when they do, they put them in all the wrong places. One time I spent ten minutes fixing the entire thing out of pure frustration, and the very next day it was just as bad as it was before.

Yes, I like this one too, and it is also a fairly frequent occurrence. The racks have numbers on them. "10" is for the 10 lb. plates. "25" for the 25 lb. plates etc. And the racks are set up so if you don't put the right weights on the right spot, you end up blocking the space for one of the other weights. How much brains does it take to put your 25 lb. weight on the "25"? This one doesn't deserve the death penalty, but people who are so stupid or careless that they can't put the right weight on the right rack should not be allowed to vote.

 

[Genetic]

http://www.nautilus.com/media/produc...9830504216.jpg

Problems solved....

Amicalement

 

[kramer5150]

Mention it to the management, it can be a serious safety hazard. Maybe they can post signs. IMHO its ettiquette to leave things clean, and tidy. When you borrow something, return it in better condition than when you started. But, that's how I was raised.

There are probably a lot of noobs there that are not familiar with sports ettiquite. Its like kicking/rolling the ball to someone in tennis, or in basketball not checking on an inbounds play.

Garrett

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Genetic http://www.nautilus.com/media/produc...9830504216.jpg Problems solved....

Not a big fan of the universal gym. It really is no comparison to a well-stocked weight room.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kramer5150 Mention it to the management, it can be a serious safety hazard. Maybe they can post signs. IMHO its ettiquette to leave things clean, and tidy.

They used to make an announcement every half hour or so reminding people to re-rack. I was told, however, that "corporate" decided that this was "annoying" to folks, so they stopped doing it. (Like at the zoo they might decide that it is annoying to keep reminding people to stop feeding the animals so they should stop doing it and let all the animals get sick. But at least people won't be "annoyed."

)

Anyway, since I am an attorney, I pointed out to the management of the club that they were possibly exposing themselves to liability if certain frail members were to injure themselves stripping bars that were laden with weights left by others. They said that they would look into it and that their staff typically rotates through the weight room and strips bars (an event which I have never seen in my 12 years at this gym). Since I complained about 5 months ago, it has only gotten worse. The idea of signs, though, is a pretty good one and I think I will mention that to them.

 

[elrod-tom]

A very good question, and I wish that I knew the answer.

I work out at a very well equipped gym (Olympic weights, smith machines, up to 100# dumbbells, real health-club quality treadmills, eliptical machines and stair masters) provided at my workplace by my employer. If there was ANYWHERE that one might consider cleaning up after onesself, you might think it would be there. After all, if it gets bad enough, the employer could just decide to turn this not insignificant space into a cube farm.

But no...and some folks are just plain brazen about it.

A while back, I was doing heavy benches while these other two guys worked out. They were doing lots of heavy lifts, including 45#x4 on one of the cable pully machines. They finished working out, and with someone else IN THE WEIGHTROOM they walked out, leaving over 400# of weights unracked and dumbbells strewn all over the place. There's just no excuse for that other than pure laziness.

I would have gotten up and run after them, but I was in the middle of 200#+ bench presses and wasn't in a position to spring up and chase them down. I even posted about it on our internal web site, but they still pulled the same garbage. I told one of them that the next time I see 180# of weights racked on the cable pully that I would report both of them to our facilities people. Maybe a stretch of finding some other gym to mess up will straighten them out.

I was thinking that I'd post a reminder to others:

Your mother doesn't work (out) here...clean up after yourself.

 

[PhilS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by elrod-tom I was thinking that I'd post a reminder to others: Your mother doesn't work (out) here...clean up after yourself.

That's a good one. I may make up a few of my own signs like that and put up them in the weight room when no one is looking.