Things Not to Do While Lifting Weights

[daedala]

I dyed my hair Sunday, and I was going to just have to sit there for a couple of hours, so I had the bright idea to lift weights with bunch of henna paste and a towel on my head! (I have a lot of hair.)

That worked...better than it had any right to. But it wasn't actually good! And I think part of the reason I bombed the finisher at the end was the unbalanced weight on my head.

Anyway, what's the silliest/stupidest thing you've done during a workout?

Comments

[rydra_wong]

... that would be a very long list.

But the recurrent one is that lifting heavy things apparently makes me lose the ability to do simple addition. When adding plates to a barbell, this can be problematic.

There's a lot of "... huh, this seems heavier/lighter than I expected," and a lot of standing staring at the bar for five minutes while my mind struggles helplessly with the question of what you have to add to 40 to get 60.

[daedala]

It's worse, because then you have to divide by two to get the weight balanced!

This is why there are kettlebells. :)

[rydra_wong]

Forgetting to divide by two is one of the things that frequently leads to "... huh, this seems heavier than I expected." Or, occasionally, to surprise personal records. *g*

[jld]

Ha. Yes. I've been known to walk up to the dumbbell rack, grab one from one weight and one from the next weight over, get to the bench, maybe even get the weights halfway into position, and then notice.

[lyorn]

Set up: Back in the electrical machines age, there was this back-bending-lifting-machine (sit, have roll put on your back in general area of your shoulders, sit up against the resistance), and this thing tended to kick me out of the chair when going down if I set it to anything that was half a challenge. So the trainer set it to "way too light" and wrote 20 reps into the training plan.

On to the silliness: First time I did this, around the third rep a tricky programming problem drifted into my mind and I started working on it. About five minutes later I had solved it and noticed a person standing close to me with a very unhappy/impatient "are you done yet?" expression on her face. I haven't the foggiest how many reps I did, but I never returned to that machine.

***

Other: Picking up the short (7.5 kg) bar when I want the olympic bar. Wondering why it would not fit on the rack. Picking up the olympic bar when I want the short bar. Wondering why I cannot do the exercise.

Hey, these bars look just too similar. What about colour-coding them?

[daedala]

That sounds like a very uncomfortable machine!

If I go to the gym, I will bring my rolling pin rings! (This is a joke but it was the first thing I thought of and I think it's funny, so you're stuck with it. :)

Hey, when we're done with NROL4W, wanna do NROL4A?

[lyorn]

That sounds like a very uncomfortable machine!

All the machines are uncomfortable, but that one was in the top 30%. However, set to a low weight, it's hardly noticable... *G*

Hey, when we're done with NROL4W, wanna do NROL4A?

Have not planned so far ahead yet... I expect to lose a month over the summer when it's just too hot for exercising, so I'll be way behind you then. But in general, sure!

[pantswarrior]

My workplace has a fitness center with a bunch of weight equipment set up for circuit training. So I went there with a few of my coworkers, and we started at various places on the circuit...

Thing is, my coworkers are like 200+ pound guys. And thus I sat down at one of the machines where you pull down, without checking what the weight was set at, reached for the handles... and promptly found myself using them as a chin-up bar. Uhm, yeah. There was about 30 pounds more on there than what I weigh.

[daedala]

But the important thing is, could you do the chin-up? :)

[pantswarrior]

Not even close. I'd only just started strength training at the time, so I just sat there going "*yank* ..... *yank* .... Okay, what the heck? *lifts self off bench and dangles pathetically* Whaaaa?" I think I even tried bracing my legs under the bench and still lifted myself off it before I thought that maybe I should actually look at the settings. :D