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Exercising etiquette: The do’s and don’ts of the gym

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15 November 2017

By Kieran

Perhaps you want to make friends, perhaps you want to command respect, perhaps you just don’t want to end up as the punch-line on some 15-year-old’s group chat. Whatever your desire, those of us fruitlessly grasping for self-improvement in the strip-lit temples of vanity we call gymnasiums must always be on the look out for these calisthenic faux-pas’.

  • Being the gym snake

Ever been gripped by panic when you hear what can only be an Indian King Cobra hissing right behind your squat rack… just for it to turn out to be some rugby 2nd team player whose ego’s lifting a bench press his arms can’t carry? We get it. You’re challenging yourself. That doesn’t mean we all want to listen to your exertion oozing out like you’re an incompetent clown’s balloon animal. Worse still are the grunters. You’re scooping a barbell, not serving a deuce against Federer. Shut up.

  • Leaving your equipment

You may well be training for Ninja Warrior UK. The rest of us, however, didn’t expect to have to navigate an elaborate obstacle course of discarded dumbbells, benches and weight-plates on our way to a reluctant 20 minutes on the cross-trainer. If you took it out, put it back. If it applies to lego, it certainly applies to kettlebells.

  • Wearing inappropriate clothing

Quite aside from your ludicrous ‘gym shark’, ‘gainz’ or ‘sun’s out, dignity’s out’ t-shirts, there’s a certain breed of gentleman that chooses to don vests so insubstantial they essentially amount to a Tesco carrier-bag with a hole for the legs. Put your nipples away.

  • Powder room

I know it’s exciting to have your very own bodybuilder lifting chalk, but if you could confine it to just your hands and not the benches, seats and (transitively) the seat of my pants, well that would be swell.

 

 

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