What is up everyone?!?! Welcome back to the third Wrong Wednesday and third Gym Etiquette post.  To give a quick overview of what Wrong Wednesday is for everyone who is most likely new; Wrong Wednesday is where I write my opinions on what I think is wrong with the gym, what people do wrong in the gym, and more.

Today’s post is going to be about something that is super frustrating to see. We’re going to go over half-repping and ego-lifting since both of them go hand in hand. Now you may be asking yourself “How does this fall under gym etiquette?” It falls under gym etiquette because I don’t want to correct everyone’s form on every exercise and the worst gym goers are ego-lifters who are almost always half-reppers as well.

Now I’m not going to go into correcting everyone’s form because that will be annoying and boring. Though I will start this off by setting some basic ground rules for full reps of the Big 3 Lifts:

Chest Press: Bar touches chest and arms lockout

Squat: Depth of at least parallel or below and you stand all the way back up

Deadlift: Someone show me a half rep, I can only think of bouncing the weight. Don’t look like a cat

There are millions of examples of half-repping in the gym. In fact, most of us are guilty of half-repping something, at some point. The problems lies in when you don’t know you’re half-repping or when you are half-repping weight you can’t actually lift. If you are “lifting” more weight than you can actually handle with bad form, while acting like you lifted it with good form, then you’re an ego-lifter.

There is an ego-lifter in every gym, everywhere. Usually there is more than one. They’re the guys who walks up to the squat bar throws on 315lbs and can only go down 3 inches. They’re the guys who throws 225lbs on the chest press and bounces the weight off their chest so hard it leaves a bruise. They’re the guys who looks like a cat when they deadlift (I’m looking at you Drake).

Not only will ego-lifters cheat anyway possible in order to “lift” the weight. They’ll brag about how much weight they can “lift” in nearly every conversation. When you try to tell them their form is wrong they’ll make excuses about light weight, how you’re just weak and more. 

At this point I would try to give some advice on how to help with ego-lifters but they can’t be helped. Their mind is too fragile to accept that they just need to lower the weight and have good form. 

Half-reppers can be helped though because they’re not always ego-lifters. If you’re spotting someone who is half-repping or has other form deficiencies try to be as nice as possible when explaining to them what they did wrong. 

In the end, if you don’t have correct form you’re only cheating yourself out of gains. If you’re going to cheat be like Arnold and cheat curls. If nothing in this post made sense to you then follow this link for examples of ego-lifters and half-reppers.

Thank you for taking the time to read today’s post! Let me know down below what some of your grievances are with people at your gym or the gym itself! If you enjoyed this post, disagree with me, or have a story for me; then leave me a comment below! If you want to keep up to date with future postings make sure to click that follow button to follow my page for future posts! If you want to keep up to date with me between posts make sure to head over to my Instagram with the link at the top of the page. 

Until next time, hit the gym, do something productive, and try to be less of a jerk.