How to Behave Yourself in the Gym

by Mark Rippetoe | February 19, 2025

There are several basic rules
from which all the picky details descend.

1.
You must respect the gym. The gym is where we all come to train, not
just you. The gym has changed a lot of lives, and it is therefore
worthy of respect for it’s own sake.

Don’t
mistreat the equipment. Take care of it like you own it, because if
you get kicked out you will have to buy it yourself, and you’d rather
not have to do that. Take it out of the bar or plate racks, use it
correctly, and put it back in the rack. Don’t leave it on the floor,
or on the bench, which means you’re expecting someone else to put it
up for you.

Don’t
leave the plates on the platform, because they are a trip-hazard.
People in the gym occasionally get tired and don’t watch where they
put their feet as carefully as they should. Don’t add to their
problems. Put the plates back on the plate racks, in the correctly
organized order: don’t mix small plates with 45s on the same rack
pin. Pattern recognition is the key here.

Be
careful about unloading the plates off the bar. If you pull a 45 off
and there’s a 5 outside of it, you may become acquainted with the
primary injury mechanism in a barbell gym when it breaks your toe.
Sliding plates are a general problem for this reason, and this is why
collars are always a good idea on a loaded bar.

Don’t
slam things around. Slamming plates on the bar can break the sleeve
collars – I’ve seen it done. Dropping plates on the floor can break
the plates and fuck up the floor. Slamming plates back in the plate
rack is just plain old stupid, so don’t do it. The gym is already
noisy enough without your histrionic bullshit. You don’t need to be
silent, but don’t add to the noise if it’s not necessary.

2.
You must respect the other lifters, and they must respect you. This
means spotting when asked, coaching only
when asked, and helping unload bars when you can.

Everybody
is there to train, although some are more serious about this than
others. If you are doing Starting Strength, you’re not just wandering
around looking for something to do – your time is valuable, and
cooperation between lifters with the equipment facilitates
efficiency. If two people, or even three, are squatting at the same
time, figure out how to work in together. Spot each other, load the
bar together, and learn to see errors that may benefit from feedback.
This is how Training Partners (and coaches) are born.

Don’t
camp out on a rack in a poorly-equipped gym. If there are only two
racks in the place and it’s late Monday afternoon, you’re going to
have to make an effort not to be a pain in the ass. If a couple of
guys are in a legitimate hurry, let them train through while you do
something else. If this
gets to be a frequent pain in the ass, you’ll need to change gyms.
Incidentally, poorly-equipped gyms are how new gyms are born.

3.
Don’t waste time in the gym with shitty programming and unnecessary
assistance exercises. Just because the gym has a
reverse-hyperextension machine or a cable-crossover doesn’t mean you
have to use it.

Most
gyms function within the larger fitness industry paradigm – they
exist to sell memberships, not to get people stronger. They sell
memberships by appearing to have an impressive collection of
machinery on the exercise floor, and the general public doesn’t know
a power rack from an Angus bull. And that’s okay, because even people
fucking around in a gym are better than people who only play cards
and smoke. They might eventually develop better habits and start
actually training.

But
if this corporate gym happens to have a couple of power racks, fairly
straight bars, a bench, and enough plates, you can train there even
if the staff has absolutely no idea what you’re doing. You may have
to buy your own fractional plates and carry them in with you, and
maybe your own collars, but there are worse problems to have.

Some
of us have to train in these corporate facilities, so we have to get
along with the other members and the staff. Which means keeping your
opinions about Functional Training to yourself. Don’t shit-talk the
personal trainers, the “coaches,” or the beauticians. Just train
as best you can and leave, thus ensuring that you’ll have a place to
do your next workout.

This
is probably a good place to talk about chalk. If you are training
heavy, you are going to have to use chalk, and this pisses them off
because it creates a cleaning problem for the staff, and it gets in
the AC filters. If they prohibit the use of chalk, you’ll have to use
“liquid chalk” which is chalk ground up in alcohol. It produces
no annoying clouds of dust, which you have seen emanating from your
histrionic buddies as they demonstrate their astonishing strength to
a roomful of people who do not care. If the gym will not allow liquid
chalk, they are just being difficult, and you’ll have to go somewhere
else.

And
that may be your own gym, which seems to be the best solution for
many people. You can do whatever you want in your own gym, and if you
want to be a slob, go ahead. But you’ll find that all these rules
still apply, for various reasons. And very soon, people will be
wanting to train in your
gym, instead of GloboCorp Fitness.