There’s something people say to me all the time when they see other people working out.
“Can you believe what he’s doing…?”
More often than not, I hadn’t even noticed.
Because even though I spend at least 40 hours per week in a public gym, I don’t really take much notice of what anybody else is doing.
There are only 3 times I really care what anybody else is doing in terms of training.
1 – If they’re my client.
If someone is paying me to help them get stronger, I don’t just notice…
I watch their movement like an eagle watches a rabbit.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to correct and nitpick every little thing they do because, very honestly, a lot of the little details just don’t matter as much as you think they do.
Not to mention the important details are often the things most people overlook.
Yet you can be damn sure I’m paying attention to almost every single rep so I can say something in case they miss one of the things on the short list of stuff that actually matters.
That’s the whole reason they pay me to watch them train.
2 – If someone is doing something so insane that they’re 100% going to hurt themselves.
And while people do a lot of crazy stuff in the gym, I can honestly say this has only happened a couple times in the past 5 years.
It’s also never really been movement-related.
Sure, I see people squat and deadlift with mediocre form all the time, but it’s usually some teenage kid trying to impress his friends and he always ends up okay.
The truly dangerous things are often more overlooked.
Like resting your hand underneath a moving weight plate.
Or unloading a barbell unevenly so it flips out of a rack.
Or doing box jumps below an overhanging ceiling.
Most of us are a lot less fragile than we like to think and as a result, the gym tends to be pretty safe.
I’ve had exponentially more people get hurt on an easy run than have gotten hurt while lifting weights.
3 – I see something new.
This happens pretty rarely these days and it’s even rarer when I see something new that I find worthwhile.
But if you’re doing something I’ve never seen before, I’m gonna take note.
Yet that doesn’t mean I’m going to judge you.
Because I have no idea why you’re doing it.
I see all sorts of crazy shit in the gym and you know what?
About 50% of the time it’s a specific exercise prescribed by a PT to fix a very specific problem for that person.
The other 50% of the time it’s something by some popular influencer that the person will stop doing after two sessions when they realize it’s not worth the hassle.
And about 1 in 500 times (maybe less) it’s something new that I actually adopt into my repertoire.
And I honestly can’t tell you the last time I judged someone for how they were choosing to exercise in the gym.
I can also tell you with pretty good confidence that nobody whose opinion is actually worth anything is going to judge you for your training regimen.
That doesn’t mean that some people won’t…
It just means that the people who are going to be judgmental don’t have worthwhile opinions.
And yet all the time I talk to people who are worried about training in the gym because they’re concerned about what other people are going to think.
Well… fuck ’em.
If they’re judging you, they probably aren’t good enough at training for their opinion to matter.
And if they do happen to be good enough at training, they’re not a good enough person for their opinion to matter.
Go train.
Make progress.
Chase goals.
And if you aren’t quite sure what you should be doing in the gym to make the most of your time, go ahead and schedule some time on my calendar.
I’d be happy to chat with you about how you can get more out of your lifting session.
CLICK HERE to book some time on my calendar.