The unwritten rules of the gym floor

The other day somebody finished on the bench next to me, stood up, picked up their bottle and walked off, leaving a perfect sweat print of their own back behind them. They weren’t being rude about it. You could tell by the way they left that it hadn’t once crossed their mind. Nobody had ever said it to them.

My son’s started training and I’m proud of him for it, and being around somebody who’s brand new at something has had me thinking about how much of this stuff nobody ever writes down. There’s a sign by the door about closing time and a sign on the wall about the sauna, and there’s nothing anywhere about the twenty small things that make you easy to train around. Somebody taught me those about twenty years ago, mostly by pulling a face at me until I worked it out. Now I’m one of the older ones in the room, which is a strange thing to catch yourself noticing.

So this is the list I’d hand anybody walking onto a gym floor for the first time, and the one I wish somebody had written down for me. None of it’s hard. Most of it comes down to leaving the place the way you found it, and not making your session into somebody else’s problem.

Put it back, and put it back properly

Re-rack your plates. You already know that one.

The bit people skip is the second half of it. The dumbbells go back on the right rail, in the right order, the right way round. Dumping the 45s into the 30s slot doesn’t feel like much when you do it, and then the next lifter is hunting instead of training, and by the evening the rack is scrambled badly enough that fixing it costs somebody ten minutes of their own session.

I’ve timed it while resenting having to do it for somebody else. Eight seconds. That’s the entire cost. lol

Wipe the bench

Wipe it down when you’re finished, and wipe it even when you’re certain you didn’t sweat much, because you did.

The spray bottle and the roll of blue paper are usually about four steps from where you’re standing. If your gym doesn’t keep them out, put a towel in your bag and lay it down before you lie on anything.

Don’t live on a machine

Rest as long as you need between sets. Long rests are fine and quite often they’re the point.

Resting on a machine and living on one are two different activities though. If you’ve had time to answer your messages, scroll a bit, watch something and then go back for another set, you’re not resting any more. You’re parked.

Stand up between sets when you can, and keep half an eye on whoever’s waiting.

Ask to work in, and say yes when somebody asks you

“Mind if I work in?” is the whole sentence. You don’t have to apologise first and you don’t owe anybody an explanation of your programme.

The other half of that rule is the one that matters more. When somebody asks you, say yes. It’ll break your rhythm a bit and you’ll live. If you’re on wildly different weights and swapping plates every set would be daft, say so kindly and point them at the other rack.

Don’t hover

Standing a few feet behind somebody with your arms folded doesn’t make them go any faster. It makes them rush a set they should be concentrating on, and it feels horrible when you’re the one under the bar.

If you want the rack, ask how many sets they’ve got left. Then go and do something else and come back. Everybody knows what hovering is, including the person doing it.

Leave the collars on

Collars on, both sides, every working set. It costs you a second, and it’s the difference between a rep that got away from you and a pair of plates sliding off one end of the bar while you’re still underneath it.

Nobody has ever regretted clipping them on.

Careful with the camera

Don’t film other people. Not for a laugh, not for a post, not because somebody’s doing something you think everyone should see. They came in to train, not to end up in your content.

Filming yourself is fine and plenty of us do it, since watching a set back is one of the more useful things you can do. Just look at what’s in the frame before you start, point it at yourself rather than across the room, and have a proper look at what you caught before it goes anywhere.

Drop the weight only when you actually have to

Sometimes there’s no choice. Deadlifts from the top, a heavy pull that’s gone, bailing out of a squat. That’s what platforms and bumpers exist for and nobody sensible minds.

The rest of the time, put it down. Slamming a pair of dumbbells from shoulder height at the end of a set you finished comfortably is just noise, and it slowly destroys kit the gym has to keep replacing.

Lower them. Sit up first if you need to.

Put the bar back where the next lifter can reach it

If you’ve been squatting with the hooks set high, drop them back to somewhere in the middle when you’re done. Same on the bench.

It’s a small thing. It saves the next lifter dragging a step over, or stripping a loaded bar just to move two pins.

Give people space when they’re set up

Don’t walk across somebody’s platform mid-lift. Don’t cut between a lifter and the mirror while they’re watching a bar path. Don’t stand anywhere you’d be in the way if a set went badly.

Go round the back of them, or wait the fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds is nothing, and getting walked in front of mid-set is properly off-putting.

Don’t coach a stranger who didn’t ask

People argue with me about this one and I’ll say it anyway. If somebody hasn’t asked, don’t.

The exception is safety and it’s a narrow one. If somebody’s about to get hurt, say something, quickly and kindly, and then leave it there.

Everything else, keep to yourself. You don’t know what they’re working on, you don’t know what their coach told them, and being corrected by a stranger is one of the quickest ways to make somebody decide not to come back. If they ask you, help all day.

Clean your chalk up

Chalk’s brilliant. Chalk all over the floor is somebody else’s job to sweep.

Keep it over the bowl, knock your hands off before you walk away, and give the knurling a brush if you’ve caked the bar.

Nobody knows any of this on day one

This is the bit I most want you to hear, and it’s the reason I wrote the rest of it down.

Being new isn’t rude. Not knowing where the dumbbells live isn’t rude. Loading a bar wrong, wandering into somebody’s set, sitting on a machine far too long because you hadn’t noticed a queue forming: none of that’s bad manners. It’s day one, and every single one of us had one.

I got taught all of this slowly and badly, mostly through embarrassment, and I turned out fine. Somebody was patient with me at some point or I wouldn’t still be in there.

So if you’re new, don’t let any of this put you off walking in. You’ll pick it up as you go, faster than you think. And if you’ve been training twenty years, have a think about which one of the two of you is more likely to have a bad time in there, and be the one who says it kindly.

What’s in my bag

Nothing clever, just what I carry.

El Chapo, AMINO AF BCAA + EAA, and the SwoleAF gym bag it all lives in.

Stay Swole,
Justin 💪