I miss my bouldering gym so much. It was always a great vibe there and people from all skill levels could climb together, chat, help each other out. Any time I went intending to climb alone I still ended up chatting and making friends because so many people are just friendly and happy to be there

Where I moved to has a proper climbing gym but it isnt the same vibe.

This sounds like the gym I used to go to. It was mostly massive powerlifters and female Instagram influencer....all super serious into fitness. And guys would ask me to spot them all the time, and we would often share racks and chat. The girls mostly kept to themselves, but the dudes were all pretty chummy with each other.

Although that being said, I still think this is made up because I've never heard anyone vocally bad mouthing other people at the gym such that they can hear, and the bad mouthing i have heard has absolutely never been about someone out of shape trying to better themselves. It's always because someone was being a jerk, or selfish or something like that.

I've been going to the gym 4 times a week for 2yrs and I've been asked exactly one time to spot someone. Not to contradict you because it definitely happens, but some gyms don't have that culture, like mine.

For RDL/stiff legged deadlifts you should only have a slight bend in the knee and focus on moving your ass back during the eccentric instead of letting your knees get forward. It's a great exercise that will primarily load your hamstrings and glutes, which is why every* girl you see in the gym are doing them. Glutes and hamstring are part of a normal leg day.

For a deadlift you knees will have a greater bend and move slightly forward which puts your body in a better position for maximal force output. You can load it a lot heavier and you're putting more tension on your quads. Deadlifts isn't as much of a leg exercise as it is a "your entire posterior chain" exercise.

*not every, just a whole lot

There's a variation where you keep your legs straight to help you get more bootylicious, but generally no.

I similarly gave some side-eye at the leg-day/deadlift thing, but some people have weird schedules 🤷‍♂️