Solicited and unsolicited gym advice

Preparing for an iron man means that I have been spending quite a lot of time (for me) at the gym. I am definitely more used to exercising outside, so it’s been quite an adjustment. Based on advice from a friend, I have a personal trainer, who develops workout plans for me and once a week, we meet at the gym for some strength training.

Obviously, I want advice from Diana. Based on past experience, there are three risks in coming up with your own workouts: pushing too hard, not pushing hard enough or bad form. Some people may dismiss pushing yourself too hard as a real risk, but it happens. The best example I can think of for this is actually from many years ago from running, not weight lifting. I decided I wanted to do long runs and on my first attempt, I ran far away from home. I ran out of steam, since I wasn’t in good enough shape for runs that long and I considered calling for help. I managed to walk home eventually, but it was really awful. So: if you are planning your workouts, make sure you are not starting too steep. Usually it’s easier to know what you can do if you are further along in your training. I don’t think that not pushing hard enough needs much explanation. We all think ‘this is as much as I can do’ and quit. When you have a good trainer, they will push you to do a little more when appropriate (or a lot more if you tend to go really easy on yourself). Bad form is probably the worst offender on this list. Youtube tutorials won’t tell you that you let your knee drift to the side or you are overextending your shoulder and it will hurt. The latter one is a true story – Diana gave me an at-home workout and I apparently kept overextending my shoulder. It’s a good thing she was able to show me how to fix it, and, with help of ice packs, I recovered quickly. At a risk of sounding like a broken record: solicited professional advice is great. Seek it – it’s worth the money.

Then there is unsolicited professional advice. I go frequently to my neighborhood pool and one of the swim team coaches pointed out to me an issue with my form. He suggested how to fix the way I was holding and moving my head. It was great and helped limit neck pain bad form was creating. It also limited the drag. I am grateful for that and happy to listen.

And then there is unsolicited idiot advice… It can come from variety of people and with various motivations. Some of it is so blatantly bad that we can easily spot it and ignore it. Unfortunately, some comes from people we trust and it can lead to injuries. I have heard advice leading to bad form or trying to do too much. The one that’s my pet peeve is ‘gym dudes’ who think they know everything and dole out bad advice. It’s not always easy to spot and they are frequently buff, so they may be misleading. As a rule of thumb, I don’t listen to people who can’t back up their claims with some sort of credentials, at least a ‘personal trainer’ shirt. Although many personal trainers appear not to be licensed, so I am not even sure how much to trust some of those guys. Diana is most certainly licensed and has a Masters degree in the field. I trust her blindly. If she tells me to do something, I will do it (although I do speak up if something doesn’t feel right, as one should – your trainer is not you and can’t read your mind).

Here is the story that inspired this post: I was at the gym with Diana a couple of days ago, doing my arms workout. Side note: I am happy to say that I have been making great progress and even using significantly larger weights is less challenging than lower weights when I started. It was a bit chilly, so Diana was wearing a sweatshirt over her work shirt. I just got off a bit of a warm up and I was drinking some water. Some ‘gym dude’ decided to tell me that I should stop drinking water, so I would be lighter and could do more pull-ups. First of all: it’s training, not competition – I am trying to build strength, so making it easier is not really the point. Second: I already had somebody telling me what to do, so I was clearly taken care of (I was also standing next to Diana’s picture on the board showing all the trainers😆). And the third one was the really funny: his form was awful and he was really struggling with his workout. Quality over quantity, please… 

Leave a Reply