GYM Etiquette

With all the newbies in the gym lately, I felt like it was a good time for a refresher course in gym etiquette:
1. RERACK EVERYTHING YOU USE: It doesn’t make sense, you come into a gym to tear your body apart, get a good sweat going, and morph yourself into what you want to become… yet you can’t put away the 45 pound plates you used on leg press.

You can go balls to the wall on squat, but you can’t strip the bar?

You chase the elusive 400 plus pound raw bench press, yet you can’t put any weights back where they go.

QUIT BEING LAZY!!!!!!!!!!!! Rerack your weights, slide your dumbbells back under the sissy dumbbells, and don’t hide small plates in with bigger ones. There are multiple pegs on a bench rack, weight tree, and squat rack for a reason… use them.

2. When refilling your water bottle, ALWAYS let people go in front of you that just need a drink. No one needs to wait on you to fill up your 44 ounce shaker bottle while they just need a drink.

3. If you know how to spot, lend a hand to the little guy with too much weight on the bar.

4. Chalk has its uses… dips are not one of them.

5. If you need advice or help, ask for it. If you have advice, keep it to yourself until asked. I have figured out that you will save yourself a lot of wasted time if you keep your thoughts to yourself (unless someone is going to be injured). When I first got to UK I tried to fix every one’s form on everything, most people don’t listen to you if they don’t know your experience level and a lot of those people aren’t teachable. Those few "sponges" that want to learn and better themselves will find you.

CREATE YOUR OWN SUPPLEMENT

Gym-created products are the best at fitting the gym's needs. Any time you have a dedicated staff that is in your facility working out as much as they are there to work, you have the opportunity to develop a giant think tank.

Of course a huge topic in all meathead circles is supplements... when to take it, what to take, how much to take, etc. Obviously you should not be soley dependent on supplement powders and pills, food comes first. Supplements are supposed to be just that, a "supplement" to your diet of nutritious whole foods.

However, liquid protein shakes for peri- or post-workout nutrition are a nice additive if you are not able to get to solid food within a two hour window after training. Other supplements are easier taken in powder/pill form, like creatine, because in order to get enough creatine daily you would have to eat a lot of fish and/or red meat. For some people, that just isn't in the budget. Others supplements are great energy boosters prior to a training session, like caffeine. Some staples for me are glutamine, creatine, protein, and caffeine. Of course BCAAs are a plus that's why I choose a protein that has them mixed in with it.

Luke Beggs is a PhD student in applied physiology at the University of Florida and I had the pleasure of having him as a graduate assistant for the last year and a half at the University of Kentucky. He threw out the idea of just making our own pre-workout supplement... and then the rest of us started salivating on the possibility.

Luke started looking into buying the no frills version on the staples we wanted to include in our first Underground Labs Inc. concoction. There was five of us that jumped on board to fund this product. Here is what we came up with for the ingredient list:

We ended up having to add some more sugar free flavoring to it since the flavor wasn't the best... BUT it has given all of us a ridiculous pump when working out. Luke was also able to modify how many milligrams of caffeine each of us wanted, due to tolerance levels. I wanted 200 mgs of caffeine in mine.

I ended up naming it INCREDIBLE HULK for obvious visual reasons, but also named for how disturbedly hyped I was during my workouts on it.

Have you ever thought of creating your own supplement? If so, what would you need in yours?

Tour of the Underground Fitness Center

A couple weeks ago I noticed that a lot of people are posting what their gym looks like, so here is where I work and train.







and gett'n nasty in said gym on shoulder and trap day







go nuts

New Equipment!

It's been busy around the Underground. We have tripled our attendance from last summer... I love it when the gym is being used. The fitness director at the Johnson Center, Beth Atnip, across campus hooked me up with this list of equipment:
-Assisted dip/pullup machine
-7% grade smith machine
-Leg press machine
-weighted crunch machine
-glute ham raise
-pullover machine
-seated calf machine
-dip machine
-cable crossover
-three adjustable benches
-decline bench

Couple this new addition to our new dumbells and we should shock some returning students in the fall. A couple weeks ago I noticed that a lot of gym are posting "Tour of my gym" videos on youtube so I will bring my camera in tomorrow and show you all the Underground. I got a new camera some I will get some training videos up soon as well.

More posts and videos to come... School starts

So this past week I had to go to the american red cross CPR/AED instructor training course Monday-Thursday 8-5, and then squeaked a lift in every day. I am now certified to certify other people!
I will not have this large of a pause in random rants, videos, exercise information, etc EVER again. So you think I would have had time to blog about something Friday... right? I got to help freshman move in at UK and was trying to get all of the paper work ready for my staff to return tomorrow. HR here has had some problems adding some people to payroll so hopefully I will stroll into the gym tomorrow and every one will be added...

In other news, my buddy, Danny Amon, texted me about hitting deadlift today... so why not? We used the traditional stance, and completed the following for deadlift:
135x10
225x6
315x4
365x3
405x6
425x6
455x6

the last one was my favorite because I was going to add two tens to each side and Amon said,"the two tens won't fit, why don't we just throw on a 25 on each side?" and that's how my new pr for deadlift happened.

Do something that would motivate somebody else today

what is your workout for deadlift? let me know in the comments