During my workout today, I went to the pectoral fly machines. One of them had a towel draped around it, a notebook, and a big gallon jug of water next to it, but naturally, no actual person on the machine. The other one was occupied by a black guy wearing a t-shirt with the Easter candy Peeps on it. Fine, I can roll with the punches, and so I moved on to other things:
- 3 sets of 25 abdominal crunches
- 2 sets of 12 reps triceps extensions
- 2 sets of 15 reps hip adduction
- 2 sets of 15 reps hip abduction
This took me about 15 minutes to accomplish. Afterward, I went back to the pectoral fly machines, and thankfully Walgreens moved his store off of machine, leaving it finally vacant for me to use. However, Mr. Where My Peeps At shirt guy, was still on his pectoral fly machine. It doesn’t really matter how much time he was on prior to the first time I saw him, but the fact that he was spending anywhere close to an entire 30-minute stretch of time, on one machine, doing the exact same lift over and over again, is absolutely absurd.
And it’s not like he was alternating between pectoral fly and rear deltoids, since this machine was designed to be able to exercise both; he was just doing sets of pectoral fly, over and over and over again. In fact, by the time I finished my three sets of fly, and three sets of deltoids, he was still sitting there, on yet another five minute rest in between sets of fly.
It’s not like I’m trying to sound like the curlbro-meathead that clearly knows everything about working out (clearly, that’s not the case), but I can definitively say that what this bonehead is doing is completely and utterly wrong, pointless, and probably detrimental. He was lifting a little bit more weight than I was, but he was doing such fast and un-extended reps, that it wasn’t doing him any good. Furthermore, too much rest simply isn’t good, and in the time I took to do six sets, he accomplished just two of his own. The fact that he had no definition in his chest, and his arms were pretty flimsy leads me to believe that one, he has no clue what he’s doing, and two, has a primary focus on getting a defined chest and torso.
This scene from Maniac Mansion succinctly describes the mentality guys like Where My Peeps At have when it comes to working out. They seem to believe that every machine is the Hunk-O-Matic, and by using it repeatedly and exclusively, they can instantaneously turn that muscle group into rock hard muscles.
