Prejudgment

by Brian Pittman

Wassup BigFellas!  To begin, no, the title's not a typo.  Our contributing writer Brandon Stoops and I were actually preparing pieces on a somewhat similar topic this week.  After reading his piece I decided to just go ahead and publish mine as well since they cover just enough differing information that I thought maybe someone could get something out of both.

I wanted to talk to you all today about prejudgment.  Let me clarify what I mean by prejudgment, however.  I'm talking about making a decision on someone's ability to work / learn in the gym by an external factor, be in you know them from outside the gym, their reputation, or even how they look.  As we're looking to build our BigFellas powerlifting team, my Brandon and I are learning the hard way that we could be really missing some great people by prejudging a bit based on things other than watching iron move up and down.  To give you an example, we had a gentleman that I work with join us for a couple of nights this week to see if he liked training with us.  Now, to be honest, at work this man gets his job done but doesn't go out of his way to "knock it out" day in and day out.  There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not my personal philosophy.  Judging him by his work ability as I knew it to that point from lifting couches and the like, I didn't really expect this man to be able to move a lot when it came to the iron.  He surprised me greatly by putting in some quality work on both rack pulls and squats this week, knocking out three reps of 315 on the rack pulls at his heaviest and pushing through five sets of five at 185 on squats.  He's been sore as hell for the last few days but that's not a bad way at all to get back in the house of iron and pain.  I stand corrected sir, and welcome!

The other prejudgment I want to mention is prejudging someone on their size.  Every single BigFella out there has had someone develop a wrong opinion about them just because they are larger than average.  It's like a law of nature or something.  For some reason people are naturally judgmental toward those much larger than they are and the gym is no exception.  The sad thing is that in most cases, the larger guys are one of the best resources available to you as a novice lifter or an experienced lifter trying to learn more about his hobby.  In fact, that's how a lot of the bigger guys learned themselves.  Someone taught them.  Consider this: the silverback gorilla in the hoodie, cargo shorts, Chuck Taylor's, and weight belt that's over there grunting through his fifth set on the squat rack may not be the mindless gym monkey he looks like he may be.  He may have an English degree, author two blogs, and be in the middle of writing his third book.  He might also know exactly how much he owes to all those who pitched in and helped him as he was starting back down the iron road a little while back and is perfectly willing to help you out.  Just saying and all.

Have a good one all!