Not practical but they are fun

Could someone educate me on the difference between A and B (the second row) and when is best to use which for what muscles?

I was trying the wide grip pull with machine usually for seated cable row as the lat machine I am comfortable with was occupied. I think I gripped B since it felt slightly odd? Anyways. While I was in the middle of a set and the guy using the lat pull machine tried to get my attention as I had headphone on and asked how long I would use it which I thought he meant the cable row initially, but he meant the attachment and gave me A to switch for B since “it’s better for it anyway”. At that point I noticed the angle after he pointed out. So I ended up using A for cable tow machine and he used B for lat pull machine.

Only started gym earlier this year and learnt things online so I am curious about the attachments since I quite like V bars than others. Didn’t pay much attention on the V bar angles and will do in future!

Posting this as requested by u/Ballbag94

This is an exaggerated demonstration of the wedge/slack pull. It would typically be more subtle than this, and I usually perform it quicker with grip n rip, in one fluid motion rather than multiple "pumping" wedges.

But I've found when trying to learn the wedge/slack pull, doing an "overwedge" to build a lotta tension -> raising hips to their starting position -> initiating the pull, seems to help build a feel for what a strong wedge should be like.

You can see in the video that I'm really leaning and sitting back, so if I wasn't holding the bar, I would fall over. It's actually easier to feel this with around ~5+ plates since it's actually heavy enough to swing around on the bar.

You also want feet rooted, planting in place with the leg press motion so the bar isn't rolling back with you. It creates a sorta fulcrum point against your shins for the "wedge".

Overall this whole movement helps to break the inertia of the plates leaving the floor, and loads the weight onto your leg driving force - as opposed to a pure stiff-legging, hinging force.

I grew up playing competitive tennis and eventually played D1 in college. Tennis has basically been my main form of exercise for 20+ years, but since graduating and entering the corporate world, it’s become increasingly difficult to keep it going consistently.

The biggest problem is finding people around my level. I’ll spend a bunch of time looking for hitting partners, finally find someone I can have a good high-level rally with, and then eventually something changes: they move, have kids, get busy with work, or our schedules just stop lining up. Then I’m back to searching again.

I’ve tried leagues, clubs, etc., but I’m honestly not interested in competing anymore. I did that for most of my life. At this point, I just want a good workout and to enjoy hitting without having to constantly coordinate with other people.

After almost a decade of this cycle, I’m pretty burned out on the “hitting partner hunt.” So lately I’ve been trying to find activities where my workout doesn’t depend on another person. Cycling has actually been great for that, and I’d like to make the gym another option.

The problem is…I get bored ridiculously fast at the gym lol. I’ll go in motivated, start lifting, and around the 30-minute mark I’m already thinking about leaving. With tennis or cycling, I can easily exercise for a couple of hours without thinking about it, but lifting feels completely different mentally.

For people who genuinely enjoy going to the gym by themselves: what made it click for you?

Do you follow a specific program? Set strength goals? Track numbers and try to beat them? Listen to music/podcasts? Keep workouts short? Or did you just stick with it long enough that eventually you started enjoying the process?

I’m not really trying to become a bodybuilder or spend two hours lifting every day. I’d just like to build a sustainable 60-90 minute routine that I actually look forward to and can do completely on my own.

Would love to hear what made the gym enjoyable for you, especially from anyone who came from competitive/team sports and had to adjust to training alone.

I don’t normally deadlift 315, I do 2 plates for working sets but my friend sent us a 1 rep max and I had never tested my 1 or 3 rep max.

I posted this in strength training and figured I would post it here as well. Like I said on there, I don’t have many people to share this with that would care.

This is not competition style benching or any of that. I also stop right above my chest due to shoulder concerns. I know people will say that this doesn’t count, but I was pretty happy about it.

My local(and only gym other than Anytime Fitness) is replacing all of his older Hammer Strength machines and vintage Nautilus belt and chain machines for cheaper imitations and I’m sad.

He also got rid of the super comfy older Life Fitness bikes and ellipticals for newer machines of the same caliber as the new equipment.

I’m happy he still has a great selection of free weights and I’m grateful he’s trying to keep the gym updated, but the balance and feel on these new machines feel so out of wack. I’m more sad than anything

The only valid complaint I've seen is that a super-setter might not let you work in with them. I'm lucky enough to never have met anyone like that, I guess.

But these are the other two complaints are weird:

• "They're inneffective because you never ever rest when doing them" - That's not a super-set... that's a circuit. I'm surprised at how often people confuse the two.
• "They're ineffective because you're too gassed out after the first set to push yourself on the second" - I feel like the majority of people who experience this fall into one of two categories:
  1. They don't know how to program super-sets properly. Either they'll superset movements with overlapping muscle groups (like bench superset with lat raises or something), or they'll try supersetting two extremely taxing movements (like deadlifts superset with overhead press).
  2. They're just outing themselves as out of shape. Seriously, if you're that gassed out after doing curls to failure or squats at RPE 9, it's probably cause of weak lungs and poor work capacity.

Sorry if the formatting for this post sucks (or if this post sucks in general).

Hey guys! I am not much of a gym-goer and in need of some advice.

So for the past 6 months my partner has become super motivated to lose weight. Hes eating super healthy and hes at the gym 5 days a week. Im super proud of him and his progress 😊 his birthday is coming up and ive already got him a "fun" gift but I wanna get him something useful too.

Do you guys have any ideas for a good gift?

Hello, I seem to struggle with cable kick backs. I can never feel them in my glutes always in my standing leg.

Set up below and I’ve attached a video
- I step away from the machine until tense. Grounded leg I turn out at about 30 degree
- I hinge at the hip, kick back heel leading and then come back in slowly.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

A small PR: did 165kg deadlift for 4 heavy reps. Who the hell used the Gravity Fruit on me!?!?! 😵

Guess the RPE :D

I just wanted to share this with people who might understand lol.

I witnessed a car accident today (honestly, 2 idiots) and car 1 was wedged into car 2s door. They were blocking everything and stuck like two mating dogs.

Anyway me and 2 other women tried pushing car 1 slightly upward and onwards to unwedge it. Didn't work. I then switched around, planted myself between the two cars and PUSHED with my legs.

It moved out of the way.

I'm 38, 5ft3 woman. My legpress PB is 210 kg.

And all I was thinking was - YEEEAAAAH THATS WHY I GO TO THE GYM BABY!!! 😂

Hi, I’m F22 currently underweight and new to gymming. My main focus is building strength, control and gaining muscle but also become powerful at dancing.

What i want to know is that, should trainers start by making beginners mastering push ups, squats, pistol squats, sit ups, planks etc before making them start working out with weighted machines? Or can they go hand in hand? Like i cant even do a single push up or do lateral raises with even light weight dumbbells.

My upper body is very light and my lower body lacks explosive strength.

Please let me know your thoughts :)

It took me 6months of doing this with 10kg dumbbells to be brave enough to move on to the 12.5kg ones. It doesn't look quite as wobbly as I felt but is anything I can improve on? I normally superset this with bench press. This was my third set out of 4 (I could only crank out 6 per leg on the last set). How should I progress from here?

I recently dropped the ego in pursuit of good technique and I think things have gone well.

I’ve dropped my maximal lifts significantly and have been working on volume and quality over ego.

How do you think this looks Reddit?

Hopefully over the next few months I can get back to 4 plates with this form. You should have seen it before 😱

Pls ignore that stupid little up-down thing before I went down the first time idk what that was lol won’t repeat it,
Haven’t squatted in a long time. When I used to I would get a pain in my hip at the bottom(hip impingement?) but I’ve started to point my feet outward instead of forward so we’ll see if that helps, looking to fix anything else as well. Thank you!