Have you ever had one of those embarrassing moments at the gym? If you have, you're probably not going to talk about it. However, if you witnessed someone else having their most embarrassing moment at the gym; you were probably more than willing to tell everyone and anyone you meet. That is precisely what this article is about. We hope to bring smiles and humor to the surface of bodybuilding. Please enjoy these stories that were shared with us from some of our happy customers.
-Zanderay2491
#1 Benching AccidentAbout a year ago I was bench pressing at a local gym. It was my workout partner and I rotating off and eventually maxing out. I had him spotting me and there was a mirror in front of the bench that he was looking in. When he realized I couldn’t lift the weight he reached to grab the bar but didn’t realize he was standing a good distance behind the bench because he couldn’t tell the depth in the mirror so he missed the bar by at least 3 feet. I looked back to see where he was and dropped the weight on my head pinning it to the bench. There were at least 10 people around me not including all the personal trainers and Kelly Johnson from the Atlanta Braves. They were all too busy laughing at my stupidity to help me lift the bar off my head. My spotter then lifted the weight off my head, but standing up off the bench was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Looking at those people feeling like a complete moron is not what I wanted.
Moral of the story: Make sure you have a reliable spotter before you try to max out and don’t look back to see where your spotter is if you can’t lift the weight. #2 Squatting Mis-hap
This story is from only a few months ago. I had 275 on the bar and was on my first rep. I was in a hurry to get to the gym and didn’t realize I threw on some boxers that were slightly small for me. As I go down I hear a noise that sounds like my knee is shredding and I had no idea what it was. I continue my workout and go straight to work afterward. After working for about 30 minutes I realize that my employers keep laughing at something as I walk by. I then walk to the back office and sit down at the computer chair and wonder why the leather feels cold on my butt so I stand up and feel with my hand. Sure enough my shorts and boxers were both ripped about 4 inches right down the middle.
Moral of the story: On leg day make sure you wear fitting boxers, boxer briefs, or compression shorts.
#3 Awkward Bench PressWhen I just started working out I still wasn’t sure what I was doing. It took a while to get the hang of everything so occasionally I would ask people for help. The man who works at the front desk set the state record for bench press at 711lb with a benching shirt. I was benching and asked him for advice on proper form. I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong that worked my right arm more than my left. I thought for sure my left would be stronger since I’m left-handed but that wasn’t the case. He walked with me over to the bench and I sat down and did a couple reps. "See, it’s going up much easier on the right side than the left. What could I be doing wrong?" He replies, "Well it might help if you have the same weight on both sides." Oh yeah, I guess that might help. Talk about feeling stupid. I had a 45 and 25 on one side and a 45 and 35 on the other.
Moral of the story: Make sure you put the same weight on both sides before benching.
-Eixtc
1st (Funny, embarrassing)My workout partner, who is also a full-time electrician/construction worker, came in one day after work to our high school gym. He had paint all over his jeans and long sleeve shirt. So he takes both off and has a tank top and board shorts underneath. We start out with doing chest workouts, doing incline bench press, then decline bench press, then regular benching. Half way through the bench sets, he stops, racks the bar and bends over. I'm wondering what's wrong with him and it's at this point that he shows me a gaping whole in his board shorts crotch that his workout partner slid through!(of course he put his equip. back in) lol. He told me he suddenly felt cool air down there and then realized he was exposed. He and I both didn't notice it the whole time, and luckily for him it was only me and him in the room.
2nd (Embarrassing)Like I stated in my reply to Zanderay, a friend came into the weight room one day with a showboat attitude. He decided he was going to show off his new benching capabilities. He started off by repping 225 (2 plates) as much as he could and on the 7th one, he pushed it up so fast that it went out of his hands and landed on his chest with a THUD. We laughed so hard but we forgot that he was pinned by the 225 on his poor chest. haha. Then of course we went to help. Moral of the story, do not try and show off.
3rd (Embarrassing)Since I lift in my old high school's weight room, there are not many people there. Students are not allowed usually to lift so it's mostly alumni and teachers. Well, many years ago, the weight room was full of hardcore lifters (amateurs and professionals who once went to the school.) Well one of them decided to pay a visit after coming back to the high school for his daughters basketball game. He's an aspiring bodybuilder and is 6'0 255. Me and my electrician friend were in there, shirts off, flexing. Now we are only about 5'10 170 and it's no where comparable to his body. Well he just decides to pop in at that time we're flexing to Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back. Ha-ha. He just looks at us at shakes his head and turns down the music. And if that’s not embarrassing enough, he later asks me to spot him doing inclines. Now, I’m definitely a sweaty guy while in the gym so while doing so, my sweat drips down my chin and slowly plops onto his face! Lol talk about embarrassing. He then had to rack his weight and stop and wipe because it was going into his eyes. Needless to say, he didn't ask me after that for spotting. 4th (Embarrassing)This happened in my freshman year of high school. I had never lifted before in my life and my friends and I decided we were going to try. Benching was considered the "manly" thing to do at the time and we all believed it to be. So one by one my friends tried. They first tried the 5's and then 10's and thought it was so impressive! Well, when it came to my turn I decided to start out low and said, "Let me warm up with just the bar." Little did I know it would be so heavy! I got pinned by the bar in front of everyone and I had to ask for help. That embarrassed me for the longest time and I would not go into the weight room for awhile.
-Jglickfield
Pony-tail Guy
Aside from the stupid things that newbies do their first month in the gym (get pinned under bars on their first rep, etc) I have never really witnessed anything so hilarious or embarrassing in the gym... except for the Pony-tail Guy (PTG from now on), and only had one embarrassing experience myself. I refer to him as PTG because where I live it is only normal for someone to have a pony tail if they are a preteen (or younger) girl, so this is his defining physical characteristic.
Because PTG would typically embarrass himself every time that he entered the gym I will only give an overview of his most astounding antics. He is in his 30's, overweight (but only on his stomach, skinny arms/legs) and has his trademark pony tail haircut. He is one of those guys who does every lift "his own way" and if you ever try to tell him to do otherwise (often your motivation being purely that you think he will hurt himself if he continues) he explodes angrily.
I had just joined my gym and was lifting again. I got up from a set of dumbbell rows and saw someone about to do something really dangerous. He stood out in the crowd of other gym goers because of his pony tail. He had his wrists strapped to an Olympic bar with three plates on each side, and looked like he was about to do a dead lift... only he was taking an underhanded grip! I thought to myself "Oh, no! This guy is about to dislocate his shoulder!" and ran over to him, when I saw the most bizarre thing that I had ever seen in a gym. He began JUMPING up, and at the top of his jump, he would freeze his grip, and lower the weight in a bicep curling motion. He had maybe half an inch of a range of motion and was obviously only getting a negative. This guy thought he was curling 315 pounds! Several people gathered around to watch and I thought that they must be filming some kind of safety video about what not to do in a gym. After his set, PTG went over to check out his biceps in the mirror, and began doing poses. This was absurd because not only did this exercise achieve NOTHING for him in terms of a pump, but he barely had biceps anyway... but he went through a whole posing routine anyhow.
He also would do half-reps on bench press (top half of the range) and tell people that he benches 350. Typically high school boys were impressed by this. He would also try to train people, and since he would need wrist straps for every lift, he had a couple of people going out and buying them for exercises like curls and dumbbell row. I once confronted him, asking what his credentials were. He said six years of experience. I told him that only successful experience counts and he flew off the handle telling me that "I don't know him" and did that L-shaped hand gesture on his forehead that girls in the 90's used to mean "loser". When people were laughing at him he actually thought that they were laughing at me and he then FLEXED HIS CHEST "AT" ME which generated more laughter.
PTG never realized how embarrassing his very existence at the gym was. He was that guy who made up his own lifts, listened to no one, got no results, but instead of either giving up on training or improving what he does he just imagined that he was this huge bodybuilder. It was sort of embarrassing being around him... kind of like that feeling you get when you see a lady dragging a screaming child demanding a toy or candy or whatever. You feel like "wow it would be so humiliating to go through that!" and that was how everyone felt around PTG.
Looking back to I guess my first experience in a weight room, I did have a similar experience as Eixtc. I am a naturally big guy, and to this day look a lot stronger than I am. My legs barely fit into pant legs (because they are 28 inches) but I only squat 8 reps of 245. The same dimensions on upper body. So in gym class my friends were fooling around in the weight room. I had never done it before, but a friend said "oh hey! Let's get him in here!" I saw a guy much smaller than me bench 65lbs (that’s 10lbs on each side of the bar) so I said I guess I would try that weight. I picked it up off the rack and it slowly sunk down onto my chest. I had no hope of pushing it back up. People thought I was joking but I was really stuck! It was totally humiliating. 
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