I went to the gym, episode III: The Lady Gym
I was on my own for yesterday's gym visit, so decided this was the perfect opportunity to investigate the Lady Gym. It was indeed, a Lady Gym for Ladylike Ladies, although not as badly as I anticipated.
It wasn't actually pink. That said, it was red and white, which is only one unfortunate paint-mixing accident away from pink. There were a lot of cardio machines - several of each of bikes, treadmills, rowing machines and steppers. Only one elliptical though, and oddly enough a rather better one than the ones in the man gym. I climbed aboard.
Onto the weight machines. The Lady Gym didn't have all the machines that the Man Gym has, but since I don't use all of them, the only one that I was actually missing was the leg press. The other benefit of the lady gym is that nobody else was actually using the weight machines so I could do them in whatever order I chose rather than when they became free.
While on the lat pulldown machine I noticed that there was a barbell and some weights lying neglected in the corner. I considered doing my deadlifts in here instead of the free weight room. But when I looked closer, there were only a few 5kg weights and smaller ones, so I decided to go with the free weights for that.
Other things available in the Lady Gym were a selection of ab rollers, plus floor mats to use them on, gym balls, and little shiny silver dumbbells - a marked contrast to the manly black iron dumbbells in the Man Gym. There were also a few machines I hadn't seen in the Man Gym - some kind of ab machine, a torso rotation thing, some baffling device for the glutes, and a couple of thigh abductor machines. I declined to have a go on any of them. Rather bafflingly, there was also a pec deck, but Marc pointed out that people might think it makes your boobs bigger.
As to what other women do in the lady gym, I saw people use the treadmills and the bikes, and a lot of variations on the theme of crunches (seriously, people actually use ab rollers?), plus one woman with a dumbell in each hand leaning from side to side.
As I left the Lady Gym, two women were being shown around for the first time. I kind of wanted to stick around to show them that people do actually use the weights, but I had an appointment with the leg press machine in the Man Gym.
Regular readers may recall I had some trouble with this machine last time. This time I had an entirely different sort of trouble. The pin is quite stiff on this one, and while it went easily enough into the 110kg hole, it would not go into the 120kg hole. Lacking Marc's strength to ram the thing in, I was stuck at 110kg, which was very annoying. Still, I did my presses and moved on to the free weight room.
I decided to start with deadlifts this time, and rather than try to find an unoccupied olympic bar, I decided to use one of the pre-set barbells. I couldn't find a 30kg one though. I did find a 25 - and here I found a problem. I'm perfectly capable of deadlifting a 30kg bar, possibly even a 35kg. What I can't do is get the damned things off the barbell rack. Even with the 25kg bar, someone had to help me when the end of the bar got stuck on the rack.
Next time I'll get Marc to help if he's there, or else stick with the olympic bar.
On to squats, and once again I seem to be the only person who uses the squat rack. I reset the safety bars to an appropriate height, and then attempted to get the bar onto the rack. Damnit, not again! The day I can get that 20kg bar to shoulder height will be a good one. Fortunately someone helped me out again. I did a few with just the bar, then started upping the weight. I got up to 25kg with no trouble so I'll try 30kg next time.
Then I wanted to bench press, but while I was squatting, the benches had rather filled up. I did a few dumbell and barbell exercises while I waited, and at last one was free. Unfortunately the person before me had been bench pressing 100kg and hadn't unloaded the bar. Fortunately, he had two 20kg plates on each end and not one 40kg plate, so I was able to unload it. More fortunately, someone spotted that even the 20kg plates were a struggle for me and unloaded the other end for me so I was finally able to do my bench press with the empty bar.
I don't think Fitocracy has 'unloading someone else's plates' as an exercise yet...
So that was the Lady Gym, plus going solo in the Man Gym. And it was pretty awesome. While it's nice to have Marc there so I don't have to worry about getting the bar onto the squat rack or unloading big plates, it's also nice to know that the denizens of the free weight room are kind enough to help me out when I need it.
It wasn't actually pink. That said, it was red and white, which is only one unfortunate paint-mixing accident away from pink. There were a lot of cardio machines - several of each of bikes, treadmills, rowing machines and steppers. Only one elliptical though, and oddly enough a rather better one than the ones in the man gym. I climbed aboard.
Onto the weight machines. The Lady Gym didn't have all the machines that the Man Gym has, but since I don't use all of them, the only one that I was actually missing was the leg press. The other benefit of the lady gym is that nobody else was actually using the weight machines so I could do them in whatever order I chose rather than when they became free.
While on the lat pulldown machine I noticed that there was a barbell and some weights lying neglected in the corner. I considered doing my deadlifts in here instead of the free weight room. But when I looked closer, there were only a few 5kg weights and smaller ones, so I decided to go with the free weights for that.
Other things available in the Lady Gym were a selection of ab rollers, plus floor mats to use them on, gym balls, and little shiny silver dumbbells - a marked contrast to the manly black iron dumbbells in the Man Gym. There were also a few machines I hadn't seen in the Man Gym - some kind of ab machine, a torso rotation thing, some baffling device for the glutes, and a couple of thigh abductor machines. I declined to have a go on any of them. Rather bafflingly, there was also a pec deck, but Marc pointed out that people might think it makes your boobs bigger.
As to what other women do in the lady gym, I saw people use the treadmills and the bikes, and a lot of variations on the theme of crunches (seriously, people actually use ab rollers?), plus one woman with a dumbell in each hand leaning from side to side.
As I left the Lady Gym, two women were being shown around for the first time. I kind of wanted to stick around to show them that people do actually use the weights, but I had an appointment with the leg press machine in the Man Gym.
Regular readers may recall I had some trouble with this machine last time. This time I had an entirely different sort of trouble. The pin is quite stiff on this one, and while it went easily enough into the 110kg hole, it would not go into the 120kg hole. Lacking Marc's strength to ram the thing in, I was stuck at 110kg, which was very annoying. Still, I did my presses and moved on to the free weight room.
I decided to start with deadlifts this time, and rather than try to find an unoccupied olympic bar, I decided to use one of the pre-set barbells. I couldn't find a 30kg one though. I did find a 25 - and here I found a problem. I'm perfectly capable of deadlifting a 30kg bar, possibly even a 35kg. What I can't do is get the damned things off the barbell rack. Even with the 25kg bar, someone had to help me when the end of the bar got stuck on the rack.
Next time I'll get Marc to help if he's there, or else stick with the olympic bar.
On to squats, and once again I seem to be the only person who uses the squat rack. I reset the safety bars to an appropriate height, and then attempted to get the bar onto the rack. Damnit, not again! The day I can get that 20kg bar to shoulder height will be a good one. Fortunately someone helped me out again. I did a few with just the bar, then started upping the weight. I got up to 25kg with no trouble so I'll try 30kg next time.
Then I wanted to bench press, but while I was squatting, the benches had rather filled up. I did a few dumbell and barbell exercises while I waited, and at last one was free. Unfortunately the person before me had been bench pressing 100kg and hadn't unloaded the bar. Fortunately, he had two 20kg plates on each end and not one 40kg plate, so I was able to unload it. More fortunately, someone spotted that even the 20kg plates were a struggle for me and unloaded the other end for me so I was finally able to do my bench press with the empty bar.
I don't think Fitocracy has 'unloading someone else's plates' as an exercise yet...
So that was the Lady Gym, plus going solo in the Man Gym. And it was pretty awesome. While it's nice to have Marc there so I don't have to worry about getting the bar onto the squat rack or unloading big plates, it's also nice to know that the denizens of the free weight room are kind enough to help me out when I need it.