Dufisthenics

So as much as I disliked having to return to Planet Fitness after Retro Fitness closed their doors for a second time, for the most part it has been serving it’s purpose.  The gym underwent a light renovation in the last year, it’s kept relatively clean, and it has enough equipment that I can at least maintain my fitness level for the most part. On the downside it has a greater than normal percentage of really annoying gym patrons, the staff  turns over on what seems to be a weekly basis, and the fact they don’t have any barbell equipment is ridiculous.  I also found it puzzling why the vast majority of the staff this gym hires are severely obese.  Maybe that is so they appear to be “judgement free”.

You may notice I did not mention one of the most idiotic things that Planet Fitness is associated with, the Lunk Alarm.  The Lunk Alarm is designed to deter “lunk behavior” such as grunting, dropping weights or “judging” (whatever that means)  Basically if an employee sees an abuse taking place they can hit a button which triggers the blue light in conjunction with an ear blasting siren.  It is utterly ridiculous and dangerous, as I will expand on further below.

So anyway, one of the few positives since I returned to Planet Fitness was the Lunk Alarm has remained silent.  I figured at the very least, they realized how terrible of a device this thing is and it was either disconnected or turned off.  Well that all ended today.

As I was in the back corner the alarm fired off for a second or two.  I hadn’t heard it in so long that I at first thought it was a fire alarm.  When I realized it was the lunk alarm I was puzzled because I did not hear any grunting or weight dropping preceding it.  Well a few moments later it went off again, again very briefly and again with no obvious reason.  Ok now I was officially annoyed.  If it went off again I quickly constructed my speech I was going to present at the front counter.

I would first find out which employee hit the alarm button.  I would then ask why.  Regardless of the reason given, provided it was intentional, I would ask this person if management instructs them to not address any forbidden behavior directly with the offending gym patron.  If they say yes, I would ask the logic of impacting every other member in the gym because staff was too afraid or too lazy to address the issue personally.

I would finish my speech by asking the staff member if they would ever consider standing next to a person doing a heavy bench press with an air horn and then fire it off in the middle of the max effort portion of the lift?  Of course you wouldn’t, but that is basically what they are doing anytime that alarm is triggered.  If someone is doing an overhead or over chest lift that requires them to utilize almost all of their strength, a blast from that horn could break that concentration and easily cause injury to someone.  It is absolutely moronic behavior.  I was going to finish the speech with “If I ever hear the Lunk Alarm set off again I will be cancelling my membership immediately and contacting the owner of the gym (whom I kind of know) and let him know why”

Luckily for the front desk, the alarm did not go off a third time.  I noticed that today there was yet another new (50 pound overweight) face behind the desk when I checked in.  If I were to guess she was testing out her “power” to influence others, negatively.  If it happens again I have the speech in my back pocket, ready to go.

I do hopefully have some light at the end of the tunnel.  Supposedly they are turning a building on the government campus into a gym for county employees.  I am crossing my fingers it isn’t a shitty hotel style gym but rather having the basics I need for my fitness regimen.  I don’t need a lot,a pull up bar, free weights, and a few cardio machines would do just fine.  The day I get to leave Planet Fitness for good will be a glorious one indeed.

So before I talk about the obvious changes you see here let’s review today’s silly gym experience.

So I was back in the corner getting loose when an older guy that was definitely not in typical gym attire walked back.  He was wearing dress shorts, a floral print button down shirt and docksiders with no socks.  I would guess he was somewhere in his 60’s based on his gray, widow peaked hair line.

So he starts walking over to one of the smith machines and starts bringing back 45 pound plates, two at a time.  This struck me as odd as the leg sled already had five or six 45 pounders on either side of it’s built in rack.  Why in the world would this guys be bringing over other plates?  So he loads on the transplanted plates first and does some sets.  When I saw  the sled moving out of the corner of my eye I assumed he was doing calf presses/extensions as the sled was moving a very short distance, not more than 8 inches.  When I looked closer I realized those were his leg press “reps”.  He was barely bending his knees.

So he continued with this foolishness, adding one plate to each side and doing baby reps.  As the weight increased he decided to throw some of the floor mats across the back plate for additional padding.  He went all the way to seven plates on each side but again the distance he moved the sled was next to nothing.  I am pretty sure if I used similar ROM I could approach 900 pounds plus using his technique.

This is not something new, I have seen others pull the same gag.  They somehow think that slapping on tons of weight and moving it even a little bit is some sort of feat of strength, worthy of admiration by others.  To me, it just makes you look like a chump.  That feeling was amplified when I saw that when the old man was done, he didn’t bother to return the plates he took from the Smith machine and he left his auxiliary mats on the back pad for others to deal with.  Dumb asses come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages.

Ok so anyway, obviously things look different around here and the reason is the content is going to be different.  When I started this blog it was in support of my Dufisthenics YouTube channel which at the time was almost exclusively nothing but calisthenics and fitness videos.  Well over the last 5 years the content of my channel has shifted quite a bit but I have never reflected that here, until now.

From here forward this site will not have daily workout regurgitation as obviously that isn’t the most interesting content.  I will still drop some gym/fitness content in here but I also am going to be adding articles that are connected to my YouTube channel content.  So don’t be surprised when 3d printing stories, car repair woes, or EUC content gets published in here as well.

I had stopped posting my daily workouts weeks ago as I came to the realization it was just effort that would be better spent elsewhere.

Everything changes, eventually…..