E P
May 31, 2018 15:26
NOT FOR OLYMPIC LIFTERS
tl;dr
Arbitrary noise policy subject to the whims of a given staff member and possibly including how much they like you and whether you've challenged their ego.
(See bottom for facility remarks)
I was stopped during deadlifts on rubber floor mats by a member of the staff who told me that I was dropping weights "too much". By "dropping weights" I mean maintaining grip on the bar but allowing it to descend mostly on its own force but preventing any bounce.
I asked him what he meant by "too much", asking if he was concerned I was going to hurt the equipment, whether he thought I was going to hurt myself, whether he believed I would damage the floors.
He attempted four arguments:
1) He said that it wasn't proper form.
I asked if he'd done a lot of research in this vein and if he'd like to walk me through his findings to which he had no response except to try and insist again that he was right.
2) He told me that he thought the weights were too heavy for me. They weren't but regardless that's my business; I signed a waiver after all.
3) He said it was making too much noise.
I said I wasn't aware of an express noise policy and I had, just 5 minutes earlier, witnessed a man who yelled 3 times over the course of 2 minutes as though he were attacking a viking hoard and that no one said anything to him. It'd been loud enough for the half a dozen people nearest him to jolt and look at each other in surprise.
I asked him if his noise policy extended to all noise or just my noise particularly. He said it was "too much".
4) He said that I should be using the rubber bumper plates rather than the metal ones.
I said I was happy to switch them and did so. He then watched me do 5 more reps with rubber plates and said again it was "too much".
At this point he settled on the "too much noise" argument. I told him that I wasn't going to change my form and that if it was a problem then he would have to ask me to leave.
He continued saying "too much noise" until I pressed him again that I wasn't going to change my form and that he would ask me to leave. Finally he decided that I should go.
I should mention that I did not re-rack my weights upon being kicked out of the gym. He asked me "aren't you going to re-rack your weights" to which I said "You just kicked me out of the gym."
I received a refund and during the process I mentioned that there was not, to my recollection, any noise policy in their contract that made sense of my being asked to leave. I can't claim to remember the contract in perfect detail but he *agreed* that our situation didn't seem to be covered by the contract.
He also said "I hope there are no hard feelings". To which I replied "do you mean to tell me that I shouldn't believe that I'm being singled out specifically" and he said "yes". To which I replied, and still believe, "I'm not sure that I haven't been"
I'd been going to this gym 1-2 times a week for ~6 weeks. I deadlifted with the same form every time. No other gym goers ever seemed bothered by it and I was never close to the loudest person there by a long shot.
My personal belief is that, since he was standing very near to where I was deadlifting, that he had a knee jerk reaction to what I was doing. He then said something to me and when I attempted to get clarity on the actual cause of his concern he squirmed until he found something he thought he could use against me and then, when I didn't agree to simply comply, he felt backed into a corner and took the only exit that saved him any face in front of the onlookers when I insisted that I wouldn't be changing my form which was to remove me.
Some notes on the gym generally:
Generally adequate and clean but not an especially good place for Olympic lifters even excusing their arbitrary noise policies.
There are only 3 racks and 3 places to deadlift, the plates are spread all over the place and are all different shapes and sizes, and I was only ever to find 3 places where I had enough room to jump rope and never comfortably. There's just way too much stuff.