To “go MacGyver” in the gym is to seek out new and novel methods of exercising using equipment that was designed for some other use. It can be funny, dangerous, ineffective, or brilliant. In the post Tales From the Glitter Gym – Bellevue Edition, we had an example of “dangerous” with the guy I referred to as Dummy Dead-Lift.
This one left me speechless. A proper dead-lift is done with your feet firmly planted on the floor. At a gym this is done from one of the cages. You load up the weight, walk it out, place it on the floor and then begin the exercise. I thought this was common sense. Not for Dummy Dead-Lift. This guy climbed up onto a padded flat bench, pulled the weight from the back and proceeded to do dead-lifts while balancing on the bench with a 2 inch stance.
Back when I had a home gym and before I acquired a dip stand, I got a MacGyver idea one day. I looked at my cage and figured out that if I climbed to the top, I could wedge myself in the corner and perform dips. It was brilliant, except for one oversite. If you tire on a dip stand, you fall at most one foot. Had I tired from my MacGyver dip station, I would have crashed down 4 feet and possibly broke my ankle. That is why I ended up buying a dip stand.
Back to the present. There is an old guy at my Glitter Gym that couldn’t do 10 push-ups, yet he probably has more core strength than anyone I’ve seen outside a martial arts movie. He does nothing but core work on unstable surfaces. For most people, I think those exercises are ridiculous at best and dangerous at worst. This guy can handle any core stability exercise you can throw at him.
I never realized his sport was kayaking until this week. He stacked 2 mini Bosu balls on a bench, then grabbed a long stick, sat on the stacked Bosu balls, and then started air paddling his invisible kayak. I don’t know how many miles he air kayaked, but it went on for quite a while. Of course, this is in the middle of the free weight room. Below is an artist rendering of what I saw.
I continue to be amazed at the things I see in Glitter Gyms.