That being said if you are a regular gym goer you'll notice that your gym is more crowded with more people who seemingly have no idea what they are doing. Its annoying to see the 18 year old 130lb kid spend 20 minutes on the chest press 15 minutes of which he was on his phone and the other 5 minutes he was doing too much weight with terrible form and the smallest range of motion you didn't know was possible. Rather than being a dick to that kid (unless of course the kid is an indignant little twit as sometimes happens), help him. He has no idea what hew as doing and any person who's been weight training long enough knows that they wouldn't have learned half of what they know had it not been for the kindness of others. Everyone starts somewhere, and if all people are met with when they enter the gym is indifference, callousness, and judgement they aren't going to get very far. As seasoned vets it's your job to lift them up, not put them down. The fact that they are there to begin with is awesome, don't discourage that.
Now for the newbies, there are some rules that you HAVE to know. Biggest one is rerack your damn weights. People don't know if you are done or if you just had to pee. Put your shit back. Seriously. It's no fun for a gym worker to have to rerack a couple of hundred pounds of weight at the end of the night. Plus it's disrespectful to the gym, the workers, the other patrons, and the equipment. Don't do it. In the same vein don't hog equipment. Especially if the gym is busy. If you walk in and it's packed maybe do something other than the circuit that requires you to use 8 pairs of dumbbells and 4 machines. You can still do a circuit, but maybe adapt it a little bit or allow the people trying to train work in while you aren't using a particular piece of equipment. Sharing is caring!
Next is getting all judgey. Just, no, please don't. Not everyone works out for the same reasons. You might not want a muscular physique, but the person next to you might. You might just want to look good naked, while that seemingly chubby dude in the corner who's doing some unconvential training might be trying to qualify for a national strongman competition. "Don't yuck my yum." I won't yuck yours. It's always great to encourage people to try new things, but there is more than one way to do things and everyone has different expectations and goals when they enter a training facility.
To finish up it's easy to want to just leave your weights for the next person if you're at the end of a workout and tired, and it's equally easy to hold yourself higher than the person next to you because you're full of a new found confidence. This is a community, a great one, in my opinion the best one, help keep it great. If you keep an open mind you never know what you might find!
Just gonna leave that here. Have a great 2016 guys!
