Schooled again in the gym
Minor note:
So I totally do judge others in the gym, impressed with guys who bench over 315 generally even if with shit form, often quietly rolling my internal eyes at guys who yell and drop weights on smith machines or nautilus. Sue me.
I'm working out in a different golds near work, and learning the new crew as I do. One guy makes a fair amount of noise doing overhead presses with the straight pre-set barbell bars. Granted, he also does a fair amount of weight, 90-110 or so, though it's kind of a strange push-press. Not a big deal, I just sort of noticed, because what he did was a little odd but not very, and it was real weight he was throwing (he's about my size, maybe 5'6" and 155 or so).
Yesterday I saw him using his cane to move from the set-weight barbells to the pull up / dip bar. I never noticed he was visually impaired.
I didn't see the cane at first, I just had wandered off between pull-up sets to the water fountain when I heard him sort of call out to ask if anyone was using the bars...as he moved there while swinging his feeler-cane. When I came back I talked to him briefly and swapped sets on the pull up bar while he did pull ups and dips.
Not a big deal, just kind of interesting to me (my field is employment law, in which I run into a lot of disability issues both real and fake). I've seen a lot of disabled people in the gym - I was a temporary one after my surgery, working out with my brace on, but it's usually a missing leg or legs (lotta military folks where I work out). This may be the only visually impaired person I've noticed, and if I'm just not remembering others, this was easily the strongest.
Makes me wonder what I would or would not do with particular impairments myself. Hope it isn't condescending or discriminatory to notice the guy - some would say noticing "he's strong for that disability" was a bad thing, while others might say it's better to note examples of people overcoming disabling conditions. I did notice him as being strong on his own, just for doing something a little different. Meh.
So I totally do judge others in the gym, impressed with guys who bench over 315 generally even if with shit form, often quietly rolling my internal eyes at guys who yell and drop weights on smith machines or nautilus. Sue me.
I'm working out in a different golds near work, and learning the new crew as I do. One guy makes a fair amount of noise doing overhead presses with the straight pre-set barbell bars. Granted, he also does a fair amount of weight, 90-110 or so, though it's kind of a strange push-press. Not a big deal, I just sort of noticed, because what he did was a little odd but not very, and it was real weight he was throwing (he's about my size, maybe 5'6" and 155 or so).
Yesterday I saw him using his cane to move from the set-weight barbells to the pull up / dip bar. I never noticed he was visually impaired.
I didn't see the cane at first, I just had wandered off between pull-up sets to the water fountain when I heard him sort of call out to ask if anyone was using the bars...as he moved there while swinging his feeler-cane. When I came back I talked to him briefly and swapped sets on the pull up bar while he did pull ups and dips.
Not a big deal, just kind of interesting to me (my field is employment law, in which I run into a lot of disability issues both real and fake). I've seen a lot of disabled people in the gym - I was a temporary one after my surgery, working out with my brace on, but it's usually a missing leg or legs (lotta military folks where I work out). This may be the only visually impaired person I've noticed, and if I'm just not remembering others, this was easily the strongest.
Makes me wonder what I would or would not do with particular impairments myself. Hope it isn't condescending or discriminatory to notice the guy - some would say noticing "he's strong for that disability" was a bad thing, while others might say it's better to note examples of people overcoming disabling conditions. I did notice him as being strong on his own, just for doing something a little different. Meh.