Quote Originally Posted by Pax View Post
In that vein, there is a young male Asian student who works out faithfully at the same time I'm there, he struggles and groans while doing curls with...pink plastic coated 5lb. weights. He's so sincere that I try to give him an encouraging nod now and then, but it is pretty hilarious.
Could he be doing rotator cuff exercises? Lots of people skip these because they don't provide dramatic muscle definition results, but . . . anyone who has ever injured a shoulder has probably spent a lot of time building these back up.

Definitely ask if you can work in, otherwise they'll think you're just standing there admiring them. People can be courteous if you ask in the right way. But you have to ASK.

In my case, I'm very small, so it would be ridiculous for me to remove large plates from a bar to work in, or to move them if someone simply forgot to clean up after themselves. It's pretty evident just from looking at me. I let the guys feel like they're being chilvarous by moving their weights out of my way.

In my gym-going days, I would ask if I could work in, or if they could tell me how many more sets they had planned. If they just had one-two more sets, for example, I would tell them I'd just rather wait until they finished (if it's a pain to change the setup), and could they let me know when they were done, and I'll be over by the free weights in the meantime (doing my rotator cuff exercises). If they had a few more sets and their setup was only slightly different from mine, I would ask if I could work in.