While at the gym I saw a guy doing chest fly on a machine. I mean, there’s a joke in that itself because machines are for people who don’t lift, but hear me out on this one.
Crucified on the stack of weights of 15 lb. increments were two 45 lb. plates. Adding a plate onto the pin isn’t necessarily an uncommon practice, as I’ve seen plenty of people at the gym do it when certain machines for whatever reason lacked the “add +5” mini plates, or if they were such beasts that the maximum weight were not enough, and they insisted on adding ten more pounds instead of graduating to y’know, free weights.
But to add two plates, much less plates the weight of 45 lbs. apiece, that’s a first for me. But here’s also where the story begins to get a little funny, at least to me, and hopefully you reading this.
45 lb. plates are fairly large objects, in terms of not just weight, but also diameter. Given the configuration of this chest fly machine that our subject was using, it would be impossible to add a plate(s) to the pin while it was at its maximum weight, because when maxed out, the pin is maybe four inches off the floor, while the radius of a 45 is much larger than that.
Determined individuals would settle for the weight where the pin’s location would be usable for adding weight to the pin, add the weight there, and hope the new total weight exceeded the maximum weight of the machine’s default capacity.
Our subject was not that determined. Naturally.
Based on the pin location of the identical machine next to the chest fly machine that our subject was using, the two 45s were pinned to the weights starting at 175 lbs. So, doing a little bit of basic math here:
175 + 45 + 45 = 265 lbs.
Our subject was doing chest fly at 265 lbs. And I use the term “doing” loosely, because I didn’t actually see him do a single rep, but amazingly had the courtesy to actually put his 45s back, otherwise I would have totally taken a picture of his set up after he had left.
Here’s the kicker to this whole story: Sans added weight, the maximum weight of this particular chest fly machine is 290 lbs. Our subject arbitrarily added weight for absolutely no logical reason at all.
Maybe he wanted to look like he was a beast, by adding plates, instead of moving the pin into a higher weight? To a machine (lol).
Maybe he was hell bent on lifting 265 lbs. on the dot, and not 275 or 290? I mean, I once knew a Geoff in high school weight training that could lift 185 like it was nothing, but tacking an additional 5 lbs. onto it made him fail like he were being asked to pull the Titanic.
Or maybe it’s just that the guy is just plain dumb?
It’s probably just that the guy just plain dumb. I mean, who are we kidding here?
