"you know almost every guy in the gym is measuring himself against you every time you load a barbell in the bench press station."

Absolutely. A couple sessions ago this guys came in with his obviously brand new gym program in hand. He had to be sixty at least, grey hair and skinny all over. He went straight for the bench, and put on two ten kilo plates for a total of 40 kg.

There was no. way. He barely managed to rack the bar without hurting himself. Took off the tens, added fives, so 30 kg total. This time he could lift the weight and did reps. In between my sets I was facing the mirror opposite him, and I kept staring at the bar when he was lifting, because he lifted it up crookedly, left arm leading, and the unsecured plate on the other side of the bar kept slipping toward the end... And he never noticed.

His form was sloppy too, and at the end of the sets he was barely lowering the bar ten cm, then twitching it back up.

I didn't dare make a sound. Because I'm a GIRL who was benching more than his first attempt and I didn't wanna scare him out of the gym forever, how sad is that... You see, I'm positive he only put the tens on because I was lifting 42,5 right next to him. Because there is no way his trainer (who put together the paper program he had in his hand when he came to the bench) would have encouraged him to lift that much above what he could clearly manage, not without good form and maybe a spotter.