There are a lot of people at the gym that annoy me. Busy gyms actually can function quite well if people follow a certain protocol but it doesn't seem to matter which gym i go to whether it is a Gold's Gym on vacation (lots of scary looking beefcake dudes in there but man do they follow protocol VERY closely) all the way down to a YMCA where it seems that almost no one has any idea how to use any of the equipment.
However, there is always that one or two people that we can't really even understand why they even came to the gym because they are clearly far more interested in social media than they are in doing any sort of exercise.
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I use my phone at the gym as well, to play music and I will admit that I do look at it between sets and then only for the 1 minute or so. This, in my mind, is acceptable because you are not holding up the line at all. However, I see people at the gym who will basically just use the equipment as a chair as they scroll through dozens of posts as if they were at home on the toilet.
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Certainly you can see that you are in major breach of etiquette by doing this especially if you are on a machine that everyone uses such as the Smith Machine and you are holding up everyone's workout by being a selfish jerk.
I'm not gonna be one of those people that doesn't bring their phone to the gym and I am not trying to preach to everyone about it either. But if you look at the above candid photo, which I did not take, you will see that everyone in the pic is staring at their phone.
I have found myself in situations where I had to politely ask a gigantic human being if he was finished with some equipment on more than one occasion because he was just leaning on the Smith machine for 4 or 5 minutes in a row while he looked at IG.
Most gyms these days have seating areas to the side that are not blocking equipment. If you feel the need to scroll through all your friends pictures of food and airplane wings for 20 minutes during a gym session, perhaps that is the place you should head towards? Maybe get a protein shake while you are over there.
One gym that I went to recently had a big sign as you walked and the staff would point it out to you as you walked in, even if they knew you were a returning member. It was a list of rules and it included excessive phone use on a machine. This same gym also had trainers that would roam the gym in order to enforce these rules. It is truly a shame that we have to have this "courtesy patrol" but social media and our phones have truly turned a lot of us into zombies that wont do the right thing unless forced to do so.
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So if you are at a gym and you feel the urge to catch up on social media even though there is a really good chance that you do that all day anyway, just be a nice guy and step out of the way.
Sorry, I get better results with 2- or 3-minute breaks than with 1-minute breaks. Sometimes it helps to do unrelated exercises inbetween, like chin-ups between squats.
Anyway, I won't go the gym during Covid and I hope to built a power cage at home soon.