Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Okay so I went to my normal workout today and realized that they had moved the free weights to a new room.. Okay so I get on with my squats and so on and then I realize that the room is half the length of the old free weight area. This became more apparent when a handful of other guys were trying to do their lifts in the same area and were having to rotate in a small bit of free floor space.. I looked around, trying to find or make a free area to do my deadlifts but I couldn't find anything.. It seems the gym has added half an hour onto my workouts by moving the weights..

Okay.. I wasn't too happy but I thought "maybe they are going to double up and put some new weights in the old area too".. Nope.. I went to talk the people on the desk and was told "Didn't you read the floor plan? That's what we are doing now.." added with "We're putting some machines in the old place and some lighter dumbbells for "the girls", and anyway the new space is the same width as the old one"..

Yea.. Same width but half the length and when you add in the floor space needed for the squat rack, benches (which take up all the wall space) and several guys trying to do their lifts it's more than a tad bit smaller than the old area...

So what now.. I don't really want to wait around to try and get some floor space in the new area, but then again this is the only gym anywhere near me.. I don't seem to have much choice in the matter.

Welcome to the gym plan of the new millenium, called "Let's Appeal to the Masses While Neglecting Our Bread and Butter Clients." My old gym in Denver went the same way. Little pink and yellow dumbbells appeared and a LOT of money was funneled into the cardio room and yoga classes while the weight room moldered in neglect. Wanna hear the funny part? The ones who usually make these decisions do so from a remote corporate office and they don't even work out, themselves.



Baby Herc

Well the annoying thing is that I don't have much choice, it's the only gym anywhere near me. So I'll either have to wait longer to get some sort of space to use free weights or just drop them altogether and use machines *sigh*

It'll work out, you'll find a way. You'll get very good at switching up the order of your exercises as space becomes available. You can stick ab work and stretching in between stuff. I've got an interchangeable list that I work around whenever somebody's on my machines or has my weights. (Our weight room has several sets of every kind of dumbbell except 25's, of which they only have one. What's up with that? Did somebody smuggle them out in their gym shorts? There's an image....)

Baby Herc

It's a stupid ass idea as well. There are PLENTY of cardio machines and weight machines already, I've never seen them all in use at the same time but the free weights area was always in use. Also, if you put all those benches, the squat rack and so on in there then you can't move something out of the way without blocking something else..

You know it just came too me.. Even if the people makes these decisions don't know jack about gyms, why don't they go and watch a gym at different points of the day, look at what things are used the most and update those things or add more. To my rough count there are 20-30 different machines for cardio (not including the spinning class thing) and I have never seen all of them taken, I've never once seen one whole line of treadmills, bikes, cross trainers or anything taken. The weight machines are used, such as the lat pulldown and so on but how long does that take, five minutes depending on your sets?

Do you know what is always in use.. Free weights, barbells and so on.

I can't comprehend why most gyms have so many cardio machines and only one rack of 5-100 lb dumbbells. It's frustrating considering that young lifters always have to wait/rotate multiple times between the 15 to 25 lb dumbbells - starting up in my hometown gym, it would take me 6 minutes just to do a basic DB set. My gym thankfully has 3 racks of free weights and at least 1/3 of the total floor space is reserved for using those weights - considering it's in a small town, I'm unimaginably grateful.

I feel bad for people who live in tiny apartments and have to rely on gyms. Half of my basement is my exercise room, and it's a continual work in progress. I literally don't know what I'd do without it.

BTW, I have those tiny little pink one pound weights. My mom bought them for me, thinking they'd be useful. I'm not sure what to use them for, maybe decorative paperweights? BTW, I just bought a second 25 lb dumbbell and need to buy two 30s. Even in the endurance exercises of CLX when I have to lighten up dramatically to do a billion reps I've never gone lower than 5-8 lbs.

Luckily my gym is pretty awesome, a corner with two power racks, two hammer strength falt benches/incline/decline. Two smith machines (yuk) & then dumbbell ranging from 8kg-50kg with about 6 benches. Then hammer strength machines & now these ones called technogym.

The owners currently expanding & putting in a strength/conditioning part. So log presses, atlas stones, tyre filling but also cross-fucking-fit gggrrrr.
We also have the usual cardio machines & cable stuff.

I don't mind cardio machines, I use the cross trainer every morning.
I don't mind machines, I don't use them as I prefer free weights..

However, I don't see why free weights should suffer for it. Every time I talk to someone in the room between sets they always tell me that this place is too small..

Back when Soloflex came out and they coined that annoying marketing phrase, "One man, one machine," we came up with our own saying:

"Solosex. One man, one machine, one minute."

Ironically, I used to live out in the country, up the road from the inventor. According to his neighbors, his property lot is sizeable.

Baby Herc

Recently, I've heard of new trend games to play on treadmills and bikes, where you can race your gym neighbors with a graphical display. I am looking for this kind of gym.

If that's what you like then sure. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to race a sprinter or marathon runner.

Hi mythil

That's a real shame how - as Baby Herc said - the "bread and butter" customers are neglected. ..It's interesting to hear about the pink weights appearing...many years ago (when I occasionally tried to take up weight-training) in a couple of gyms, there were separate sections for women and men. So off I would go to the women's section, and work my ass off..dripping sweat..straining my neck muscles to get the last rep in etc...whereas not one other female in the gym broke into a puff let alone a sweat...

...after a couple of weeks the female (trainer/ex-body builder) came up to me and said I think you should go into the mens' section to train in the future, as it's not very motivating for you being amongst these women so I did, and she was right, the guys were all so into their training and the music was better too ...This advice was given to me in more than one gym over the years..

Things are a lot more different today:mixed areas; many women that actually train hard etc. but I still notice how many women just don't break a puff or sweat and you guys are getting squashed into a corner

I don't envy you either, and I am lucky too to have a spare room that is now a gym..

...There's one piece of equipment that I would love to have and that is a leg press...the thought of joining a gym for that one piece of equipment makes my heart sink however, I have seen them on the internet for sale at reasonable prices, that would easily fit into my room... so happy days.. and I'll need to start saving...

Whenever I moved and thus was in the market for a new gym, the first question out of my mouth at the registration desk of any fitness establishment was always, "Do you have a sled?" I only lift in gyms with a large, old-fashioned, incline sled. My legs and back love it: I'm up to twelve plates.

Baby Herc