Today I was doing power cleans at the end of my session. I'm not an Olympic lifter and I don't do these regularly, so I started at 135 and worked my way up to 225 lbs for 5 reps. Everything is peachy until this beanpole of a personal trainer comes up to me. Right in my face.
"Hey, you're making too much noise with that. It's disturbing everyone."
"You don't allow Olympic lifts here?"
"That's not an Olympic bar."
"What? Yeah it is. It's a 7-foot bar, the standard in most commercial gyms."
"Okay, well, look, you can't make that much noise here..."
"Okay, but it's an Olympic bar."
"Just don't make anymore noise like that.."
"Okay, but this is an Olympic barbell."
"Okay..." and he saunters off.
Jesus Christ, the personal trainer doesn't know what an Olympic bar is.
After that, the manager came to talk to me and he was pretty cool. Very respectful, almost reluctant to enforce gym policy, and he told me he'd try to get some "special plates" for me so I can do cleans. Bumper plates are still pretty damn loud, but I didn't tell him that.
Also, I have zero sympathy for the reason that cleans are too loud. At my tiny, tiny gym in California (before I moved to Oregon) they had a CrossFit area and during classes the whole gym was athunder with 20 people doing cleans. Somehow staff still functioned without nervous breakdowns.
Anyways, right now I'm on Madcow for advanced lifters. I hate routine hopping and am looking forward to staying on this.
Squats:
325 x 5
Bench press:
205, 235, 255, 275 x 5
280 x 4
> Gassed here. Not worried, my work capacity will improve.
Cleans:
135, 155, 185, 205 x 5
215 x 4
