My new article on Return of Kings pertains to the myriad types of gym paraphernalia. More specifically, the ones that suck and are unnecessary.

After going to the gym for a few months, a newbie lifter will likely become more serious and dedicated to the sport. Shortly thereafter, that lifter will begin seeking an edge, to make himself stronger and more able than his fellow gymgoers.

Seeing as I generally assume that my readers are decent, law-abiding citizens, the “edge” that I am referring to is not the advantage one gets from performance enhancing drugs. Instead, I am referring to an edge that you can obtain from various accessory paraphernalia you buy from an external source, and then use in the gym to either immediately improve your lifts, or make the lift more difficult and thus make you stronger in the long term.

This paraphernalia, much like any other category of things you can buy, runs the gamut from essential (not many), kind of useful but unnecessary (most), and complete crap (some). But seeing as we here at Return Of Kings are very much against the consumer culture that is modernity, I’m largely going to tell you not to buy things. So without further ado, here are five pieces of gym paraphernalia that you don’t need…

…As if that wasn’t dumb enough, sometimes you’ll see guys wearing this altitude mask while weightlifting, which is even more pointless. Unless, of course, you were planning on going to the San Diego Comic Convention to cosplay as Bane…or you happen to be an overcompensating manlet who wants to cosplay as Bane in his daily life.

And while I allow you to contemplate who exactly the “overcompensating manlet” is that I was referring to in that last sentence, you can read this article here on Return of Kings