My BodyBlog

I wrote about Bad Form Guy at my gym just after the new year started.  I’m happy to report that he’s become a regular but not so happy to report that I still cringe when I watch him do many exercises.  Even when his form is ok he uses too much weight and doesn’t complete the full range of motion.  I am surprised that he has not injured himself (to my knowledge anyway).  He is at the gym most times I’m there, so we say hello and he’s asked me some questions about how I workout.  Since I know him better I am a little bolder about suggesting improvements in his form, but I don’t bug him too much.  A couple of weeks ago he was lying on a bench trying to do skull crushers and his arms were moving back and forth but his elbows were locked.  That was doing nothing for his triceps, so after his set I showed him how to do it.  I think he got it.  He’s also told me he comes to the gym and just works out at random - he goes to whatever area is free and does whatever exercise comes to his mind.  I’ve explained to him about how good I find split training but he doesn’t seem to want to try anything except the random approach.

Sunday evening he was watching me deadlift, and when I started to unload the plates he came over to ask me how much I lifted.  He said he’s never tried deadlifting before.  I had the weight unloaded down to 315 when he did it - he reached down and picked up the bar - his form was wrong of course, he arched his back and didn’t use his legs at all.  He held it for a second then put it down and said ‘that was heavy’.  I said ‘you’ve got to be really careful how you do that, it’s easy to hurt your back if your form is not right.’  He said ‘I guess it’s better to start off light and work your way up.’  I said ‘Yeah, that’s what I did.’

You’d think after being around a lot of experienced lifters for 5 months he’d copy what others are doing better…but maybe he just doesn’t see any problem. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.