Why The Hell Are They Metric?

     Nothing earth-shattering tonight, just another deadlift Monday. In case you were wondering why the weights are a little odd, blame the rest of the world. We've been deadlifting at the back of the weight room and that's where all the bumper plates are. In case you didn't know, because I didn't know, the bumper plates are metric. They're marked with the large numbers being KG and then the little numbers are the LBS. The reason for this is because bumpers are mostly used in Olympic weightlifting. Olympic weightlifting is governed by the IWF (International Weightlifting Federation) and they mandate that everything be measured in KG. It's actually easier to do math when everything is based on 10, but as Americans, we like to be difficult so we use LBS.

 Here's what got done tonight:

••••••••••

DEADLIFTS:

(110lb x10) 2x

(154lb x6) 4x

MACHINE ROWS:

(80lb x10) 4x

STRAIGHT ARM PULLDOWN:

(35lb x8) 4x

LAT PULLDOWN:

(85lb x8) 2x

(70lb x10) 2x

FACE PULLS:

(30lb x15) 4x

HYPEREXTENSIONS:

Body Weight x10

(10lb x10) 2x

••••••••••

     Seeing as how I don't have too much to say on a personal note, let's talk about some of the bullshit I see daily on social media, shall we? FB reels have seemingly become quite the thing. Short videos that are meant to grab your attention and keep you locked in a continuous scroll. I've been getting more gym related ones, thank you algorithm, and while some of them actually have some valuable content, more and more of them are pure trash. 

     I'm not an influencer. I don't want to be. I have shit that I do and I share it through this medium. I think I have about 9 people that read this blog and that's fine with me. But there is a metric shit ton (keeping with the metric theme) of people who are desperate to influence people and present themselves as experts at this that and the other. They're the ones putting out videos telling people to stop doing it this way and do it my way instead. I'm not talking about legit instructional videos showing you proper form for a basic movement. Let me give you a for instance. 

     There's some dude, I won't mention his name (even if I did remember it), that jumps around cussing and swearing, smacking parts of his body as he tells people to "fucking unlearn it". He has some good points, but on one of his squat videos, he tells people to take a certain stance to do squats. That's it. One stance, no deviations. Fucking unlearn it. What? There's all sorts of squats and to tell people that you should take one certain position and use that is insane. Front Squat, Low Bar, High Bar, Sumo - they're all slightly different. There is no one set stance for those. My guy, you're going to get someone hurt. 

     The other types of reels that are making the rounds are insulting and arrogant. They're the ones that make fun of certain types of people, usually people new to the gym. I saw one today in which some hoodie-wearing guy was having to wait while some chick benched 65lbs. He was obviously a jacked bad-ass as evidenced by the hoodie and hunched-back seated position (insert massive eye-roll) and he was so put out, having to wait to do his record breaking sets while this woman did her 65lb sets. How dare she?

     I hate this attitude. Everyone in the gym started out benching pussy weight; everyone. Some people go to the gym to get animal strong and to move massive weights. Some people go to the gym to rehab and can't move but 5lbs. Everyone of them belongs there. I hate bullies; whether they're in real life or online. 

     Social media has made a lot of people think that they're experts when they're nothing more than a jackass with a phone and access to millions of people that just don't know better. Do your research. Watch videos from real experts that have been in this business for a lengthy amount of time and who've had success. If you have a trainer that says their way is the only way - drop them like a dirty dumbbell. And if anyone tries to bully you while you're in the gym, go grab literally anyone else in there to give you some back up. I guarantee you, most people in the gym don't want asshats like that around. 

     That's my rant for tonight. ✌