Gym Etiquette: A Trainer’s Rant

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Gym etiquette comes down to one rule: leave the gym better than you found it. Everything else is a version of that.

I've spent most of my working life on gym floors: a college rec center, then commercial and franchise gyms, a boutique gym and finally mom-and-pop gyms, before going independent at the end of 2018. That's a lot of hours watching how people share a space. College is what really set my standard: clean up after yourself, don't make the staff your parent and respect the equipment. Most bad etiquette comes down to respect. People stop thinking about the person after them.

Think of the gym like a shared road. You signal, you don't park in the middle of the lane, and you don't leave your junk in the intersection. Nobody gets a ticket for being a little slow. They get honked at for blocking everyone else.

So yes, this is a rant. But it's a rant with a point. Follow the basics below, and nobody will care how much you lift or how long you've been training.

Your First Step: On your next session, put back every plate, clip and dumbbell you touch, wipe every bench or pad you sweat on, and leave each station the way you'd want to find it.

The Breakdown

My Top Five, Ranked

1. Respect other people's things and the gym. A lot of people don't respect their own stuff, and they bring that into the gym. That equipment cost real money, even if the membership comes out with a tap of a card. Treat it like someone else paid for it, because someone did.

2. Dress for the gym. I’m not expecting a Keeping Up with the Kardashians, designer-level outfit and shoes, but I am expecting gym attire. No shirts ripped to pieces, no shorts with holes in the crotch and certainly no flip-flops. And for the love of God, no work jeans and work boots. Boots track dirt around the gym and make a mess. Jeans are pants, yes, but they aren’t gym attire. They snag and rip upholstery, and that’s a maintenance bill the owner or company doesn’t need.

Get a decent T-shirt, some shorts and a pair of actual shoes. Here’s what I wear:

• T-Shirts: $5 to $8 wholesale, plus about $8 to print my logo. That’s under $20 a shirt.
• Shorts: GASP shorts, 99% of the year, about $20 each at their warehouse sales. Their long pants run about $30 at the same sales.
• Shoes: Nike Metcons, bought in bulk on clearance for $40 to $60. I think a $150 pair of shoes is asinine.
• Towels: A stack of original GASP rally towels I got for about $3 each when a store went out of business. They stay in my truck year-round.
• Underneath: Because I know someone will comment: an Under Armour compression shirt for about $25, boxer jocks for $8 to $12 and socks for $5 or $6. That’s about $40 altogether.

My gym outfit is inexpensive, and it isn’t Hollywood fashionable. It’s functional, and it adds up to around $120 for the entire outfit. I have maybe 10 items I rotate through. I wear my shoes until they’re worn out, and then I have another pair ready to replace them.

I’m not there to flaunt money. At any point, the most expensive things on me are my headset, my phone and maybe a watch.

Take this as you will. It’s my two cents: a lot of this is just common courtesy. You’re not there to look good. You’re there to put in the work.

3. Hygiene. Shower. Wear deodorant. It’s the gym. Nobody needs you smelling like you just walked out of Nordstrom in perfume or cologne, but the person next to you on the bench shouldn’t have to train through your body odor either. Spraying a whole can of Axe body spray to cover up your stink, or skipping laundry for four days and rewearing the same gym clothes for the third time this week, is unacceptable. WASH YOUR FUCKING CLOTHES.

4. Wipe down your equipment. Benches, pads, seats and handles. If you sweat on it, wipe it. Nobody wants to lie down in a puddle that isn't theirs. This is mostly about respect, not fear of germs. More on that in the Bro Science Check below.

5. Put it all back. Plates go back on the tree. Clips go back where you found them. Dumbbells go back in their spot. Strip the bar: if you can put it on, you can take it off. If you use chalk and make a mess, go to the staff and ask for a vacuum or a mop. Don't leave it for them. It wasn't their mess.

The Fine System

In my early-to-mid twenties, I worked at a gym with a simple cleanup standard: if you didn't pick up after yourself, you were fined.

Leave five plates on each side of a deadlift bar and add it up. Gym bro says easy math: 495 pounds. If you have the energy to put it on, you have the energy to take it off. If you didn't, someone else has to put it back. Here's what that cost:

• First offense: $0.10 per pound, or $49.50.
• Second offense: $1 per pound, or $495.
• Third offense: another $1 per pound, or your membership was terminated.

Failure or refusal to pay resulted in a ban.

My stance was simple: “I'm not your father, and I'm not there to clean up after YOU. That's YOUR responsibility.” I have nothing but the utmost respect for owners who know where to draw the line. Everyone who became a member at gyms like that acknowledged those conditions in their membership contract when they signed up to use the facility.

Putting your weights away takes about 30 seconds. Some members chose to take the fines anyway. Over about three years, people paid roughly $15,000 in fines instead of taking 30 seconds to clean up. Your options were the cleanup or the fine, and if you didn’t pay, you were out.

The Worst Etiquette Moment I've Seen

It wasn't even my gym. A former employee was training there: sweating everywhere, earbuds in, and not wiping down a single thing. I asked him, "Didn't you work here? You didn't learn the rules when you worked here?"

I took it to the owner. His answer was that if I saw it again, I should confront the guy myself. My answer: "It's not my job to confront them. It's yours."

When I worked inside a gym, I enforced the rules myself. At a gym that wasn't mine, that was the owner's job. That's the point. Members follow the standard the people running the gym actually enforce. If the owner won't hold the line, nobody else will.

What I Did as a Trainer

When I worked inside gyms, my rule was simple. You tell someone once. If it keeps happening, they're removed. I've removed people for photographing other members without consent. The gym is for training. Be there for that purpose.

Even though a gym feels like a public space, it's still a private business. You have to know the difference between right and wrong, smart and stupid.

I had no problem terminating members who didn't respect the gym and its equipment, and I never understood why others, even managers, didn't see it the same way. Every broken piece was a bill and a liability. I saw both sides: members pay for access, but they don't pay to abuse it. The goal isn't making everybody happy. The goal is setting a standard.

Don't Camp

Your rest between sets is part of your workout. Your phone break is not. I program most rest at 45 to 60 seconds, up to 90 seconds on bigger lifts, and 2 to 3 minutes only when it's earned. See Rest Between Sets: Your 10-Second Fuel Tank & How Long to Rest. If you're sitting on a machine for five minutes scrolling, you're blocking someone and you're cooling off.

If someone asks to work in, let them. Alternate sets, adjust the seat back and keep it moving.

Give People Room

It’s common courtesy. Respect other people and their personal space.

• Don’t stand right in front of the dumbbell rack. Grab your weights and take a step back. Someone should be able to get to either side of you without interrupting you, and you shouldn’t be completely in the way.
• Don’t walk in front of someone who’s clearly watching themselves in the mirror during their set. They might be using it for feedback, to watch or critique their form.
• Film yourself, not the people around you, and don’t set your tripod up in a walkway.
• Headphones in, speaker off. If you’re going to have a conversation on your phone, get off the gym floor.

Don’t be a distraction to somebody else. It’s a shared space. You don’t own the gym.

If You're New, You're Not the Problem

If you're reading this nervous that you're "that guy," relax. Being new is not bad etiquette. Not knowing how to adjust a machine is not bad etiquette. Asking someone how many sets they have left is good etiquette.

The people who cause problems usually aren't beginners. They're the regulars who stopped thinking about anyone else. If you're unsure about a gym's rules, ask the front desk.

How to Handle It When Someone Else Is the Problem

• Ask nicely first. "Mind if I work in?" solves most problems.
• Don't fight over a bench. No machine is worth an argument.
• Take real problems to staff. Unsafe behavior, harassment or damaged equipment is their job, not yours.

Bro Science Check: "Gym equipment is crawling with staph. Skip the wipe and you'll pick up an infection."

What the Research Says: One study cultured gym surfaces at three gyms before and after cleaning, 240 cultures in all, and found no Staph aureus, the bacteria behind staph infections, including the drug-resistant kind (MRSA) (Ryan et al., 2011). Another found cold viruses on 63% of hand-contact surfaces, more often on weight equipment than cardio machines, and routine disinfection didn't reduce them (Goldhammer et al., 2006).

Verdict: Keep. Wipe down your equipment, because nobody wants your sweat. But wiping isn't a force field. Wash your hands after you train and keep them off your face during your session.

Etiquette is the easy part of training. It costs nothing and makes the whole gym better. Next: Rest Between Sets: Your 10-Second Fuel Tank & How Long to Rest.

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