The gym can tend to be a bit of an intimidating place for novices; it makes complete sense, though. It’s like when you go over a friend’s house for the first time and you don’t know how exactly to act around their parents or family. It feels a little bit like you’re tip toeing around broken glass. In order to help absolve this feeling, I have set out to teach you some basic gym etiquette so that you can be respectful of the gym. The gym is a shrine to many, and it is important that one keeps it in it’s right order.

This is one of the most important parts of gym etiquette. Never, and I mean never, curl in the squat rack. It may seem harmless, but the point of the squat rack is for people to do SQUATS not to curl. If you ever find yourself curling in the squat rack, I promise that you will receive a lot of dirty looks.

This is possibly one of the most annoying things that can happen in the gym. People in the gym should not be giving you advice and you should not be giving them advice unless they ask for it or if they are about to do something wrong and hurt themselves. As someone who has been in this situation multiple times, I cannot stress how annoying it is when people go out of their way in the gym to tell you about how you should be doing things their way in the gym. Unless you are a licensed personal trainer, you should not be giving people unwarranted fitness advice.

Another one of the most annoying things in the gym is when people are constantly dropping the weights. When you drop weights, it reflects poorly on you. Dropping the weights gives the impression that either you don’t respect the weights or you weren’t strong enough to lift the weights in the first place. The only two situations where it is completely acceptable to drop the weights is either when you’re deadlifting or if you are doing Olympic lifts with rubber weights. For those two, it is actually safest if you drop the weights on the way down, but do keep in mind that as basic courtesy, you should not let the weights bounce more than once.

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is for people like me who call the gym their home when people make an absolute mess of the weights. Some people put the weights they used back in the wrong place, while others don’t even put the weights back at all. Not only is this annoying, but it can be dangerous to have dumbbells lying on the floor where people might not notice them.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be on your phone at the gym. Be at the gym to be at the gym. If you don’t take your workout seriously, then other people won’t take you seriously.