A big piece of gym etiquette that seems obvious to me, but apparently not to others, is “Don’t hog equipment.”

The background story on this occurred during peak time after work had let out. There’s an area of the gym I go to that has a row of bench press racks paralleling a row of squat racks and then another row of deadlift mats beyond that.

This is where “that guy” comes into the picture. I’ll call him Gus. Gus decides to set up on a weight bench, a squat rack, and a deadlift mat all in line with each other. He does a set on the bench, another on the squat rack, and then rounds it out with some deadlifts before going back to the beginning.

The whole time he’s fending people off from “his” weights. Rushing from one station to another when he sees someone approaching a seemingly untaken station, saying things like “hey I’m using that” or “hey I’m on that!” Reminder that this is during the busiest time of the day so he’s already committed his first offense against gym etiquette.

I noticed this ridiculousness after a little while while I’m doing my business on a nearby weight bench. Not only is he preventing other people from getting lifts in, but there’s another tragedy that he’s causing for himself. I’ll see some people take up numerous pieces of equipment or weights when they’re working the same muscle groups, but he’s not even doing that here. Think about it. He’s doing chest, legs, and back.

Now if he was doing power lifting with a few reps only in each set, I could see maaaybe that he’s trying to do his anaerobic maxes and challenging himself. Still something not okay to do during peak hours. However, I watch him and he’s doing reps of 10-16 for each set, which is hypertrophic lifting. However, by the time it takes him to get through all three stations and start again for another bench set, a good six minutes at least have gone by since he was taking roughly two minute tests in between each station/set.

I won’t get into the definition of hypertrophic lifting right now, but basically he’s defeating his own goals by allowing his muscles to catch their breath and then some, preventing more muscle fibers from having to be recruited in order to carry out the further reps.

So the moral of this story dear gym acolytes, is don’t hog up numerous pieces of equipment and make sure you use equipment the way you’re supposed to for the lifting you’re attempting to perform. Otherwise you just look the fool, you irritate the local gym wildlife, and you hold yourself back from progress.