Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - 9 Gym Etiquette Mistakes That Make You an A*&hole

Episode Date: September 6, 2017

In this episode, we’re going to have some fun but also address a very real problem: assholes in the gym. You know what I’m talking about. The assholes that smell like shit, that sweat on everything that gawk at women, that superset half of the gym and leave their weights everywhere, and so on. You might be laughing, and yes, these people can be pretty amusing, but they also make for a significantly worse gym experience for us and everyone else, and, in some cases, even drive people away from gyms altogether. And so I wanted to have a few laughs at the expense of these assholes by breaking down the 9 most annoying things that they do, and also share some commonsense advice on how we can all make our gyms a bit more pleasant for all of our fellow gymgoers. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

What up my friends, Mike Matthews here from Us For Life, back with another episode of the podcast. And in this episode, we're going to have some fun, but we're also going to address a very real problem, and that is assholes in the gym. And you know what I'm talking about here. You have the assholes that smell like shit, that sweat on everything, that gawk at women, that superset half of the gym and leave their weights everywhere, and so forth. At this point, you might already be laughing, and yes, these people can be pretty amusing for sure, point you might already be laughing and yes these people can be pretty amusing for sure,

but they also do make for a significantly worse gym experience for us and everyone else and in some cases they even drive people away from the gym altogether. And so I wanted to do something about it. So first we are going to have a few laughs at the expense of these assholes by breaking down the nine most annoying things that they do. And then we are also going to touch on some common sense advice on how all of us can help make our gyms a bit more pleasant for all of our fellow gym goers. Now, before we get into this episode, I'm sorry, but I have to shill for something to pay the bills. No, I'm just kidding. I have to shill for something to pay the bills. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now this book has sold over 200,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of men and women get the bodies they really want eating the types of food that they really love, which is why it has over 700 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. Build your best body ever without having to follow a boring, bland, quote unquote, body building diet. And if you want 125 of my personal favorite recipes for building muscle, losing fat and getting healthy, then you want to pick up the shredded chef today, which you can find on all major online retailers like audible. Yes, there are audio book cookbooks. It is a thing. Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play. All right. So that's it for the advertising. Let's get to the show. Working out is hard, but gym assholes, they just make it so much harder. And every gym has assholes,

harder. And every gym has assholes, smelly assholes, loud assholes, super fucking sweaty assholes, sick assholes. One of my personal pet peeves, gawking assholes, the list goes on and on. And thanks to these assholes, many people and many women in particular are too intimidated to start weightlifting and many others just quit or seriously consider quitting because of them. That said, before we point too many fingers, we should realize that we've probably been assholes ourselves. In fact, who knows, you might be a complete gym asshole without even realizing it because the reality is people with good gym etiquette aren't assholes and people with bad etiquette are. And that's okay though. If you currently have bad gym etiquette, or if you don't even know what bad gym etiquette looks like, I'm going to break it down in this podcast and help

you understand the errors of your ways. No, seriously though, gym etiquette is easy to learn. It's easy to follow. And really what it boils down to is good No, seriously though, gym etiquette is easy to learn. It's easy to follow. And really what it boils down to is good manners, you know, being respectful and treating your fellow gym goers the way that you would like to be treated. So let's get to the nine most egregious gym etiquette mistakes that people make every day. And the first one is smelling like shit. So let me tell you a little story here. Once upon a time, I was in the middle of a heavy set of deadlifts. And after taking a deep breath for another rep, I couldn't help but just stop my set and cry out, what the fuck is that smell?

And I have to tell you, this was no normal stench. This was some other worldly shit. It was like my nostrils were getting raped by Golgothan, which if you don't know what that is, just Google it and you're going to have a good laugh for yourself. So after finishing my set, which of course I powered through, I dropped the weight, I spin around. And honestly, I was expecting to see that someone had like shit themselves doing half squats in the Smith machine behind me or something. No, the Smith machine was empty. I crane my head to the left and there the motherfucker is. There's the culprit. I shit you not. So this person was huge. He's a towering dude, sweaty, overweight, and he was wearing like a singlet and skin tight yoga leggings, which I have, I have no idea what this uniform even was.

And this dude was a good 10 feet away, but still, I mean, I felt like I was being assaulted by his swamp ass. It was so bad that honestly, I was actually kind of impressed. How could someone smell so badly? It was a lot more than just BO. How did this person actually accomplish this? I mean, sewage baths, maybe pet skunk, maybe he washes his clothes with dead fish in the washing machine or something. I mean, all I knew is this kind of stink, it didn't come easily. This guy was like a carefully engineered bio weapon. And you know, the truth is, who knows, he may have been a super sweet guy, but he still was an asshole for making me and everyone else within a probably 25 foot radius, just suffer his noxious cloud of garbage, poop, roadkill vapor.

And so the etiquette lesson here is very simple. Just don't smell like shit, please. You know, yeah, we all get sweaty when we train and some of us smell a little bit more than others, but can we all just be normal humans and bathe regularly and clean every nook and cranny with soap and then wear clean gym clothes, clean socks, put on deodorant, don't fart on people, you know, the little things. And that leads me to the next mistake, which is smelling like perfumed shit. Now, I'm not sure what's worse. The dude I was just telling you about, people that smell like actual shit or people that douse every square fucking inch of their bodies with Axe body spray. I mean, I've actually experienced this with one guy in particular. It was so bad that it

actually made my eyes and sinuses burn. And I was maybe 10 feet away from the dude and he used to come regularly. It got so bad that I had to ask him, why do you wear so much body spray? And obviously he took a little bit of offense to it, but he didn't even have a good answer. He didn't even realize how utterly disgusting he smelled. Eventually he stopped coming, fortunately. Anyways, so the point here is nobody's going to complain about light fragrance, but please just don't wear so much that you turn a portion of the gym into a gas chamber. The next etiquette mistake here is leaving greasy sweat everywhere. And the point here is our sweat

may not seem gross to us, but it is pretty fucking disgusting to everyone else. To us, sure, it's just water with some ammonia and salt, But to other people, it's, you know, bacteria-infested slime. So the point here is if you sweat a lot when you train, please just don't snail trail all of the equipment. As Douglas Adam tells us in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a towel is the most massively useful thing a clammy fellow can have. So get one, wipe your sweat away after you use each machine and bench and everything will be fine. Moving on to the next point of the list, which is,

are those workout clothes or body paint? Now, if you're offended by the meathead in the singlet banging on about aesthetics, brah, and, you know, taking more selfies than actually training or the girl that somehow squeezed into an outfit comprised of like a few square inches of spandex, I'd say get over it. None of us should really be all that concerned with how other people are living their lives so long as they aren't actively harming other people or actively impeding society on the whole. And let's be honest, we are all in the gym, at least partially for the same reason as the Ziz wannabe or the little prostitute. You know, we want to look good and we like it when people check us out.

Now, that said, I've seen some downright scary things, especially in the gym I used to go to in Florida. There was this one guy that used to come. He was in his mid-60s, and he would freeball in a skin-tight pair of red spandex biking shorts. I mean, I swear, it probably took him five minutes just to get these shorts on. And not just that, but also a matching belly shirt. Yeah, his belly would kind of hang out. And of course, he also sweat a lot and stunk and stared at people. There was another person, a woman that was rather large. And every day she would come wearing a pair of super tight yoga pants. I mean, so tight that it wasn't just

camel toe. It was like a gaping ax wound. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had to. All right. Well, sorry, but not sorry. All right. So there was another person. Let's not forget this other dude. He was a cross-dressing guy and he loved these short baggy running shorts. And apparently he also hated underwear. You can imagine what happened when he laid down on benches. So the point with all of this is I don't think anybody should be able to tell you what you can and can't wear in the gym, but please let's just all have some decency. We're just there to work out. We're not scouting for an orgy. And if tact doesn't easily come to you, then let the old newspaper test guide your clothing selections. And that is, if you were to be featured on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper,

would you wear that outfit you are considering? If your answer is something like hell no, or maybe if I were really fucking drunk, then please just step back from the ledge. then please just step back from the ledge. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleFor Life and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. All right, the next mistake is hoarding a bunch of equipment. Claiming multiple pieces of equipment, you know, benches, weight machines, dumbbells, and so forth, is like parking in two spots or cutting in front of old people in the grocery store because they're just walking too slowly. It's just a dick move. So if some lame wad calls for supersetting nine different machines in the gym, please just don't flip out when people want to work in with you. Think of it as the price to pay for your poor choice of training programming. Moving on, moving on. This is a natural progression from the last one,

and it is not re-racking your weights. Now, if you go to most gyms during peak hours, you're going to feel like you've been transported back to the Nazi occupation of Stalingrad. Dumbbells are going to be strewn around like corpses. Plates are going to be haphazardly piled next to machines. There isn't a single barbell that hasn't been fully stripped. It's like the slobs are just going out of their way to make the place as much of a disorganized shithole as possible. And back in Florida, the same gym where all kinds of interesting things used to happen, I once asked one of these guys why he didn't re-rack his weights. And his answer was, someone gets paid like $10 an hour, so I don't have to.

Yeah, okay. Cool story, bro. Karma has got special plans for people like him. So sure, that's cool. You can leg press 10 plates, but it's not so fucking cool if you leave it for everyone else to unload. So when we're done with dumbbells, let's just all put them back in the right spots. Let's strip our barbells. Let's put plates away. Let's act like big boys and big girls that can clean up our own messes. All right, moving on to offering unsolicited advice happens all the time. Every gym has at least one clueless asshole that just won't stop telling people how to work out.

You know, he watched this one YouTube video this one time, and now he's on a mission to inform the great unwashed. And if you make eye contact, he's going to come in hot. You know, your back is too far forward when you squat, you're bringing the bar down too far on your bench press. You're resting too much in between sets. Why are you lifting so heavy, bro? Muscles don't know weight, bro. They only know tension. Yep. Yep. Yep. I mean, you don't come to his office and knock the cocks out of his mouth. So why won't he just leave you alone? Well, you don't have to get rude and argumentative if that is not your style. There are a few simple non-confrontational ways of making people like him go away. For example, hey, I appreciate the help, but I'm just following

what my coach or my trainer has laid out for me. Thanks for the tips, but I'd like to just do my workouts. I know you're just trying to help, but I'd really appreciate it if you just let me do my workouts. And it's also worth reviewing here a few simple rules of etiquette to observe. The first one is don't give workout advice to strangers unless they actually ask for your help. I mean, the only time when I personally break this rule is if someone's doing something that I think or know is likely to result in injury. For example, I've seen people do very, very cringy deadlifts. I mean, some of the worst you could ever want to see with quite a bit of weight on the bar, you know, no depth at the bottom, fully rounded back throughout heavy arching in the lockout position. And so when I see something like that,

I will politely let the person know that, you know, I wouldn't usually say anything, but if they continue doing what they're doing, they are going to get hurt and disc injuries can be really nasty. And sometimes people are cool with it and they actually appreciate it. And sometimes they don't. So the next little rule here is when someone's headphones are in, just don't disturb them for any reason. Headphones in means do not disturb. And with women, it means please, for the love of Jesus, just don't fucking bother me. Remember that most of us are not in the gym to talk and socialize. We're tight on time and we really just don't want to be distracted from our workouts. Okie dokie. So the next gym etiquette mistake that makes you an

asshole is oogling at women. So if we could read people's minds, I swear the gym would be a horrible, horrible experience. Once a girl starts squatting, I mean, it would just be mayhem. All hell would break loose. And look, I understand. Sure. Hot women are hot and men, we are programmed to admire that. But many guys, they don't know that that's all that's ever going to happen. They can stare all they want, but the girls are not going to have sex with them ever. You know, Oh, she made eye contact yet. No, no, no. That was a fucking mistake that she immediately regretted. That's why her headphones are in. That's why her eyes are down and her lips are whispering. Please, please just don't fucking

come bother me. Don't talk to me. I don't care. Similarly, neon yellow fucking alpha stringers are not going to get anyone laid. Nobody believes the bullshit stories about how you're stocking cash and partying with celebrities. Encyclopedic knowledge of Superbowl statistics is just a waste of good brain matter. So to all you lecherous men out there, just know this staring and dreaming about, Oh, what you would do to her. It just makes her really uncomfortable. So please stop. And if you're thinking, Oh, if she doesn't want attention, why is she dressed like a whore? Well, I mean, if you ask me, wearing tight workout

clothing doesn't really qualify as dressing like a whore. In fact, you can try this for yourself. Why don't you squat in a pair of leggings and you'll actually see why many women do it. It feels really nice. I have to admit. And let's not forget that women are biologically programmed to bring life and beauty into the world. So, you know, most do like to feel cute and attractive. Us men, you know, we're programmed to rape and pillage. So by default, we're kind of the assholes here. The rule is simple.

Just save the girl gawking for your incognito browsing sessions at work. If a woman wants to get to know you, she is going to say something to you. And otherwise she really just wants to be left alone. Next on the list, fucking naked in the bathroom. Why? Dear God, why? When I walk into the men's locker room in my gym, I follow a very strict protocol. It looks like this. I move as quickly as possible, no chatting, no selfies, really the less time I spend there, the less of a chance I'm going to see things that can't be unseen. I look at the tops of heads and I try really my best to just block out my peripheral vision. And if I hear a blow dryer going, I avoid the source at all costs, wherever that noise is coming from,

that's where I'm not going. And it's not like I'm prude, but I'm just really not a fan of shriveled, hairy, old dicks and nutsacks everywhere. Or guys that are doing hamstring stretches naked. Or guys that are blow drying their balls. Yes, that happens all the time. Or guys that are fumigating the entire fucking room with some cheap body spray. You know, please, can't we just wear towels in the locking room? Can't we groom ourselves at home? Can't we save the cologne bath for the car? So those are the nine gym etiquette mistakes that make you an asshole. And in closing, I just want to say, why can't the gym be like any other social gathering of civilized people? And while Gandhi said that, you know, we should be the change we want to see. So here's how we can do our parts. We can smell clean. We can clean up our sweat.

We can wear normal person clothes. We can re-rack our weights. We don't have to lay claim to entire sections of the gym. And we don't have to tell people what they should or shouldn't be doing in the gym. We don't have to try to stare women into having sex with us. And we can wear a towel in the bathroom. legionathletics.com, L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com, because I've published over a million words of free articles on the blogs on those websites on all types of things related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. New articles go up every week on both sites as well. So if you like what you read, then definitely hop on my mailing list and you will be notified when new stuff goes live. My email subscribers also get exclusive deals on my products and services and other goodies.

So there's that too. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I will see you in the next one. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like. Specifically, my 100% natural fat loss supplement, Phoenix. It has sold over 100,000 bottles in the last several years, and it helps you lose fat faster in three ways. One, it increases your metabolic rate. Two, it amplifies the power of fat-burning chemicals produced by your body. And three, it increases the feeling of fullness from food.

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