What the gym taketh, in terms of energy, sweat and stamina, the gym also occasionally giveth, in terms of gains all-important brog content.
Back in January, I posted the story of this guy who added plates onto the chest fly machine, despite the fact that the machine could have matched/exceeded his desired weight limit without the need of plates. I deduced (accused) that the guy was not only just dumb, but arbitrarily adding weight to make him appear more hardcore than he really was.
Today, I got photo evidence.
I also got a good look at the guy who did this himself, and to no surprise, he fit the mold of someone who wants to look fierce and menacing; BeatsTM headphones, compression sleeves, high socks to hide the fact that he obviously has small calves, and lifting gloves. For machine lifting. All while breathing like he were breathing fire like Smaug.
Seriously, I was doing lat pulls, across from this guy, and my eyes lit up when I saw him lumbering over to the chest fly machine, carrying a bunch of plates from the nearby smith machine. I knew that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to possibly photograph this idiocy this time, considering it had been nearly three months passed.
So I deliberately did two sets of hip adductor stretches, just so I could be in an optimal position to take this picture.
The best part is that I could now make a more accurate assessment of his weight, instead of making educated guesses back in January. Which is to say that now that I can study the set up, I can see that he’s lifting way less weight than I thought he was back when I first noticed him.
So with the 45s impaled onto 90 lbs., and another 25 lb. plate arbitrarily placed on top of everything, the total rack weight is 205 lbs. The machine maxes out at 290 lbs. with standard plates only. The best part is that there’s an approximate pin location for 205 lbs., but instead, this guy went through this elaborate set up to make it look like he were lifting like 2,000 lbs. or something.
The moral of this whole story is that it’s vastly more important to look like you’re a fire-breathing gym beast, sent from the depths of Hades to lift barbell plates affixed to machines, than to actually be a gym beast that’s capable of actually doing chest fly at a weight greater than 205 lbs.
