bad form
 

Awhile back, two young studly guys at the gym my DH and I go to were competing against each other to see who could dead-lift the most weight.

One guy, who was wearing WHITE pants, strained so hard trying to lift the weights that he pooped himself -- ended up with a big brown stain all over his backside! :o

LOL now I am going to be very self-conscious when I go to the gym. I am really new to the gym and I am the one that sits and stares at the picture on the machine for 10 minutes before I 'understand' how to use it. I wish people would approach me and let me know if I am doing things wrong :o

Guys, please don't be discouraged from using the gym because of these observations.

A gym is like an open classroom -- it's a place where people are always learning things. They're all at different stages. It's kind of like those self-directed learning modules that we used to get in school. Or else you hire a tutor to help you. Or you enroll in classes. Or you use it kind of like a library.

So being a beginner & not having it all down absolutely correctly is nothing shameful. At all. It's encouraged. Everyone has to begin somewhere. Everyone in the gym, no matter how advanced, began at some point knowing nothing or very little.

What we're appalled by is downright disruptive or rude behavior. (The gym isn't the only place where we don't want to see some guy's junk lying on the vinyl bench where we're going to be sitting in the next 15 minutes.) These are idiots we're talking about, not ignorant people still learning. There's a heckuva difference between the two. The ignorant learn. The idiots -- well, you know about the Darwin Awards, right?

The guy whom Ennay is talking about is not only an idiot, he's a dangerous idiot. He apparently has no training credentials, no idea of correct form & is in fact teaching people do things in downright bad form, which could result in their injury. He's doing the equivalent of committing fraud by setting himself up as an authority when he hasn't got a clue. That's so different from someone bumbling along, learning on their own, just getting in their own way, working on the learning curve.