Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Compulsive Screen Behavior Invades the Gym

Compulsive screen behavior invades the gym.

Humanity is being forcibly metamorphized, a shotgun wedding of the Soft Machine with technology.

My Early Morning YMCA Baseline

I belong to a local YMCA. I arrive when they open at 6:30 a.m. It is always deserted, or nearly deserted, so I have near-exclusive use of the free-weight section, an extensive collection of resistance machines, the various cardio training machines, and as an added bonus, a wonderful steam room and a sauna. Show up at 6:30 p.m. and the place looks like rush hour at the Dupont Circle Metro subway stop on the DC redline. No problem, I never go, other than early morning. It would never occur to me to train there in the evening.

The Road-Trip Reality Check

On a road trip this past weekend, I got a bit of a fitness facility reality check. Once I got outside my hermetic bubble, I observed a widespread sea change in acceptable fitness facility behavior, what we used to call gym etiquette. My quick take: the zombie apocalypse is here, and it is real. Only, instead of sci-fi humans deformed and molting, MM, Modern Man, has a collective crack-like attachment to what is occurring on the screens of their iPhones.

There is an epidemic of compulsive device behavior: the irresistible need to interact with a device, to send and receive, to continually bathe in the firehose gush of incoming data, interspersed with game playing, or porn watching, continually watching, everywhere everyone all the time, eyes glued to screens. The instant the screen-bound are done doing whatever they are doing in the real world, the zombies immediately return to the virtual world.

This past weekend I visited two different commercial facilities in two radically different locales: one remote rural locale and another in a super upscale urban community. The accepted behavior in both facilities was to consult phones in every spare instant. For the resistance trainers, the moment the set ended, they headed to the device to consult or log. Cardio exercisers consulted phones during extended cardio sessions, perhaps while riding a stationary bike.

Machine Hoggery and Phone Trance

Another modern phenomenon: remain sitting or lying on the resistance training device you are using between sets. And hey, while recovering from your body-shattering submaximal set, why not catch up on emails? Finished with the first set, the machine hog continues to sit or lie on the device. Comfortable, they interact with the phone while monopolizing the machine for however long it takes to complete their three, or more, leisurely submaximal sets, reposing between sets as if they were luxuriating on a living room sofa. If the machine hog is interrupted while texting or tweeting, the interruption evokes a hostile response akin to, “How dare you!”

I observed machine hoggery at the rural facility, a modest-sized, nicely appointed gym. I arrived mid-morning and there were perhaps fifteen people scattered throughout a roomful of cardio devices and resistance machines. At one juncture, I counted six of the fifteen actively interacting with the phone. Just a random snapshot. An out-of-shape 40ish-year-old male dominated the high-tech leg press machine for a full 15 minutes, intently communicating with someone via the iPhone between sets.

As I was leaving the rural facility, I saw a gaggle of mid-twenties ladies clustered around the lat pulldown seat, simultaneously engrossed in something occurring on the phone screen of the middle lady. As my old training partner Nacho Del Grande used to gripe, “There ain’t much hypertrophy happening around here!!”

The Rise of the Machines

At the mega-urban facility, the overall vibe was “rise of the machines.” In the progressive resistance section alone they had 50 machines, a veritable iron armada of mechanical devices designed to attack any muscle you can name with great specificity. The modern resistance training machines are wonderfully constructed, insofar as engineering quality. These devices have exacting tolerances that were not possible even a decade ago. The machines are clever, comprehensive, and extremely specific.

The free-weight section was minuscule compared to the amount of floor space allotted for the resistance machines. The facility was jam-packed with well-built male and female bodybuilders, the vast majority using machines. An isolative machine is conducive for isolating and enabling the pump-pump-pump strategies bodybuilders use to carpet-bomb a targeted muscle. Machines are ideal for forced reps and drop sets.

Machines take a back seat to free weights when it comes to maximal strength training in my world. Strength training is not bodybuilding. Bodybuilding is about appearance without regard for function; strength training is about function without regard for appearance. Somehow these ultra-sophisticated cardio and resistance machines seemed simpatico with the iPhone.

The Impoverishment of Attention

Daniel Goleman wrote an excellent book entitled Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. It ruminates on the impact of continual device usage on the human brain. He has a wonderful phrase, “the impoverishment of attention.”

The phrase captures a variation on the theme I witnessed at the fitness facilities: people in possession of every electronic device known to man, constantly checking texts, updates and feeds, firing off replies in between games and digital distractions. This makes people less aware of what is happening around them and less fluent in how to interact with live humans for any meaningful length of time.

Deep reading requires deep thought, sustained concentration and immersion in a topic, the extreme opposite of hopscotching around the web, bouncing from one unconnected factoid to another. I would add, deep training requires sustained concentration and immersion into the totality of the training session. From the first rep of the first set to the last rep of the last set, the goal is to maintain an overarching fierceness, a high level of concentration, even, especially, between sets. Diffusion and distraction are the enemy of all-out training efforts.

The One Good Use for a Phone During Training

One excellent use for the phone during training is to listen to music. Create a soundtrack for your workout. The right music at the right time amplifies the workout effort, increases concentration, and sharpens psyche. Music is a concentration-gathering device used to enhance hardcore training. Another benefit: it is hard to start a conversation with someone wearing earbuds and avoiding eye contact.

Once the session is over, anyone wanting to converse is more than welcome. Unless training with serious training partners, try to have zero interaction with whoever might be populating the resistance training section of the local commercial gym. Avoid phone interaction. It is hard to mount a storm-the-barricades mindset, a requisite for success, if you are texting, tweeting, talking on the phone or playing a video game between sets.

Are we losing our ability for deep thought, due to the lack of extended contemplative time needed for great works of art and science? Sure feels that way. Humanity is being forcibly metamorphized, a shotgun wedding of the Soft Machine with technology. Improve the quality of your workouts by making the entire workout, not just the sets but also the spaces in between sets, an exercise in sustained, unbroken concentration and focus.

Safety and Etiquette Note for Phones in the Gym

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW gym-floor observation and opinion. It is not individualized medical, mental-health, rehabilitation, or programming advice.

“Compulsive” is used here in a common-language sense, not as a diagnosis. A gym member checking a phone between sets should not be labeled with a mental-health disorder.

Phone use around moving belts, pedals, cables, stacks, barbells, dumbbells, racks, and shared machines can divide attention. Texting, talking, gaming, or scrolling while training can lower awareness of surroundings and increase the odds of wasted time, poor setup, unstable movement, or conflict with other members.

Use phones deliberately: music, a timer, a training log, a form video when safe, or an emergency contact. Then put the device away. Train while training. Text when finished.

Equipment Notes for Focused Training Spaces

Equipment does not create focus. But a well-organized facility can make focused training easier by separating training zones, reducing bottlenecks and giving lifters clear places to work.

For cardio areas, facilities can compare exercise bikes and indoor rowing machines. Specific options such as the Spirit Fitness CU800 commercial upright bike and the Spirit Fitness CRW800 commercial rower can support focused conditioning when matched to the user, room, and facility needs.

For the resistance-training side, compare Olympic weightlifting bars, dumbbells, selectorized gym equipment, and plate-loaded leverage gym equipment. A free-weight area might include the IRON COMPANY urethane dumbbells and the Iron Grip OB-7 industrial chrome Olympic weightlifting bar, when those tools fit the training environment.

The equipment does not fix distracted training. Focus fixes distracted training.

Related Training Focus Reading

For more on serious training behavior, read How to Break in a New Training Partner. For Marty Gallagher’s companion topic on music and workout psyche, read Music and Weight Training.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.