Nice guys at the gym

I have a pretty consistent Sunday afternoon routine: I go to the gym around 2:30, when it's usually fairly empty. I deadlift, I bench, I do a superset of upper-body accessories, and I'm done. But today I got to step 2 and all the flat benches were occupied.

I stood nearby and waited for a few minutes to see if anybody seemed to be wrapping up. One of the guys walked up to me while I was resting and asked politely if I was using the machine next to me -- he wanted to snag one of the weights. "Go right ahead," I told him. Politely, oh so politely, he said, "Do you need any help with anything?"

You guys, this man was jacked. Like, his name could be Yoked McSwolerson and it still would not convey the massiveness of his mighty muscles. Also he was, like, 6'5". "Oh, no," I told him, "just waiting for one of the benches to open up."

He asked me if I'd ever tried decline bench. I never had, because it looks a little scary. You have to put your knees over one thingummy and your shins under another thingummy and uncurl yourself backward without thwacking your head on the barbell. If you fail a rep on flat bench, you can roll the barbell down to your middle and escape that way. But if you fail a rep on decline bench I feel like you're kind of stuck, with a barbell that's well-positioned to roll right onto your neck. 

While he was resting between sets, he showed me which thingummies went where. After his next set I asked him a form question and he was friendly and helpful again. There was no skeeviness at any point.

I don't know how often I'll do decline bench, but it was fun to try something new. I was expecting it to be hard, because incline bench is significantly harder than flat bench, but it was not hard. I am mostly blogging about it because I want to remember the unexpected friendliness: I would not have expected Mr. McSwolerson to reach out and offer to help me out of the blue like that. "People at the gym are friendly," Joe assured me back when I first started lifting. I still think his gym experience as a muscular 20-year-old is different from mine. But what do you know-- sometimes people at the gym are friendly.