The Magician
This blog isn’t about a magician it’s about a guy that works out at our gym - by the way, Caleb wanted me to let you know that it’s not you, Chad. If you want a story about a magician you’re out of luck.
You may be wondering why we can him the magician; well, when I was in high school we had a substitute teacher who I thought looked like a magician - he was tall, skinny, and had these pants that I must have seen on a magician at some point in my life. Anyway, the guy at the gym resembles the sub, therefore, his nickname is the magician.
Back to the story, we have a lot of characters that go to our gym but the magician takes the cake. The magician always starts out his workout in the lifting section of the gym. He comes and claims a machine as his home base. He sets up him base, typically the bench press, with a bunch of weight and leave his towel there for at least 45 minutes. Once he does one set on his home base, he continue to do one set on each machine in his rotation, probably 5 or 6 machines, before he cycles back to the bench press.
The magician also has the absolute worst form ever. One of the best examples is the bench press. Once he’s all set, which takes at least 3 or 4 minutes, when he’s finally ready to lift the bar for his first rep, he’ll arch his back, and presses the bar up but only about half way.
His treadmill form sucks, too. He sets the treadmill to between 7 and 8 MPH and then runs the entire time with his arms resting on the rails of the treadmill.
Caleb overheard him talking the other day, he’s also a really big hick.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Hmmm - I guess I should rethink my gym habits - like my towel on home-base technique. Although I do try to have good form.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:44 pm
There was an awesome guy at the crane gym when I used to lift after work. His name was Tony. He was huge. He told us that he had just started back with the army and had been lifting in his basement for the last 5 years. He said he had a new outlook on life and that he had an ‘attitude of gratitude’, which is a saying that I repeat whenever possible.
He also drove a piece of shit car with a bumper sticker that said:
Don’t let the car fool you, my real treasure is heaven!
February 22nd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
there is a 0% change that your form is worse than the magician’s. also, our gym only has one bench press so it’s rather frustrating when he claims it for his entire lifting session. it would be different if he were going between two machines but he tends to hog 5 or 6 machines at once.
February 23rd, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Good point. My gym has several bench press stations as well as incline and decline. So I guess hogging one while hitting two or three other spots isn’t too bad as long as others are open.
And proper ettiquite would require that you allow others to “work-in” with you on the machines that you aren’t using at the time, even though you’re still “on” them.