What is the weirdest/most painful thing you have ever witnessed (or been victim to) in the gym?
I walked into the back of an ajustable bench that had a sharp edge. It put a 6 inch gash in my knee. I bled all down my shin and into my socks. I read recently that some guy rested a heavy bar on his belt and it pinched his skin-ouch!
Maybe not too terrible, but I was working out with a guy on my football team and when he pulled a 45 off the bar, it slipped out of his hand and dropped on the top of his foot up by his ankle an broke his foot.
Damn I felt bad…after 10 or 15 minutes of painful laughter.
It happened during a high school football workout. While I was witness to many hair-brained exercise performances during those training sessions, this appeared to be the most painful. The guy was psyching himself up, pacing back and forth in preparation for a max set of dips (well…1/4 dips). It was a makeshift dip station in a power rack, and a pullup bar hung not too far above it. On commencing his set, the idiot charged forward, rocketed himself up for his first rep, and rammed his face right into the overhanging pullup bar. The impact broke his nose and he fell to the floor unconscious. Needless to say, the dip station was moved to a different part of the gym after that incident.
A guy was squating 405 outside of the rack (like a f* idiot) with a spotter right behind him. He can’t get out of the bottom position, the spotter comes under to help, when the bar rolls off of the guy’s back and slams onto the spotter’s forearms, pinning his wrists against his own thighs, and doing some major damage to his arms. i don’t know what the end result was, since the guy went to the hospital, but squats outside of the rack were banned after that incident.
Some old boy screaming in german whilst benching, weird thing he was actually British and English speaking.
I was in the middle of a heavy leg workout when some guy walked up to me and asked if I “really wanted to get that big” I replied “no actually I’m trying to get a lot smaller,in fact I was just wondering what kind of work-out you do” Ha! I cannot believe some of the stupid questions I get!
A couple of things actually:
In college the jackass who ran my school gym put the squat rack on a part of the room that was tilted so lo and behold, one day I go to do some squats and naturally since the rack was on the angled part of the floor I fell backwards on my ass on the way down and my fatass partner/spotter just watched me fall. The two most painful things that happened to me were: once, a few months after I dislocated my shoulder playing rugby, I was doing to shoulder presses and popped my shoulder out and once when I was doing over-the-head rope extensions my calf was too close to the weight stack and I dropped about 100lbs. on my calf and ripped a good chunk of skin off, still have a scar.
And the stupidest thing I ever saw in the gym was: there were these group of schmucks who I never could figure out how they were able to lift the weights they had on the bar until one day when I actually watched one of them workout and what he did was load the bar up with 315 for bench, go to the bathroom, come back and take the weight off… it worked though everyone thought he could bench 315…
(1) i was at a powerlifting meet in chicago a few years back. some guy was warming up in the back room with about 365. he was just rotating the bar in his hands to get a better grip. well the bench didn’t have any lips on the supports and the guy rolled the bar off the supports and it dropped across his face. not sure the extent of the damage, but when he got up, there was blood everywhere. not pretty.
(2) some numb nuts were doing partial aquats with 225. one sack pulled both plates off one side without balancing the bar (if you balance the bar you can have a 100 lb plate on one side)and sent the bar end over end about 15 feet into a mirror.
(3) someone else was doing reverse grip presses with (luckily) only 135 on a bench press. tried to get the bar off the suports but was out of position and didn’t have the strength. bounced the bar right across his chest. he got up like nothing happened, but the red welt was clearly visible on his muscle-man tanktop covered chest
A friend of mine was doing side laterals and towards the end of a set the eccentric tempo was 0 and on one of the reps the dumbbels crashed together with his dick in the middle. We ran over to see what was wrong when he fell down and started yelling. Then he told us what happened and we laughed at him while he was still on the floor(Felt pretty shitty after that one).
a good friend of mine’s uncle, i think, was doing decline bench and for whatever reason, when he was about fully extended dropped the 300 lb bar on his chin and broke it
Oh, another one. Some pussy on my football team wanted to show everyone that he could “bench press” 315. Well, I’d be willing to bet he’d struggle with 225 and good form. He got a liftoff, sat there shaking like a maniac, then bounced the shit out of it a little low on his chest. Ran him a cracked rib.
Let me tell you how impressed I was with that display of power.
Mt college gym’s pulldown machine had a hook rather than a clip for the cable attachments. One time, as the bar was on the way back up, I leanes too far forward and caught the hook on the septum of my nose and ripped it apart. Blood went everywhere and I left a hunk of flesh on the hook for the next guy as I ran to the restroom.
As a floor trainer, getting bored and tired during an 8 hour shift. I leaned back on the bar side of an empty bench press with one leg bent up with foot resting heal up on the bench. Needless to say I pushed the bar off the rack and it came crashing on my calf.
Looking cool for the girls on stairmasters.
THirteen years ago when I was 15 and never having lifted before was told to do a full body workout complete with ascending sets, drop sets, maxing out on every body part, you name it. It was a good 3 hour workout. I was literally sick the next day, and could not straighten my arms out,walk normally, wash properly, or walk up and down stairs for more than a week,FUCKING PAINFUL! It’s amazing I ever went back to the gym,
I have two stories. One time I was putting our bumper plates away on a pipe we had for locking the equipment up. Anyway, I had several plates on the pipe and tipped the bottom end down so I didn’t have to bend over to put them on the pipe. As I was putting the last York 20kg. steel bumper on the now waist-high stack of plates, I stood too close, dropped the weight and promptly crushed my penis. The poor thing looked like a charcoal-burnt hot dog for two weeks. Another time I was sqautting on a platform about four or five inches high. This platform had an island extension about 3ft.x 3ft. This is where I was squatting. With 215kg. (475lbs.) on my back, I had a brain fart on my fifth rep and rather than force thru the sticking point I just dumped the weight off me. Only the weights hit the edge of the platform and rocketed forward, crushing my Achilles tendon and almost ending my weightlifting career. The bruise covered almost the whole under side of my foot.
There was a guy squating pretty heavy in my gym. In the middle of his set, I notice something fall from his face. I look at the floor and see an eyeball! Meanwhile, the guy continues doing reps until the set is finished. I was beyond shocked. Then, as he bent down to retrieve the white globe, I realize that it’s a glass eye.
The scariest thing I saw was when I asked a guy to spot me on squats. I was going for 300 for 20, and was psyched! I had it in the bag for sure that day until I lost my psyche. The rack was the dual stand type you back out of. Well this numbnuts proceeded to stand right in front of me and get ready to spot me. I told him it might work a little better behind me. After that I did a set of 12 and said my back felt tight. Didn’t want to be gutting the last few out with him.
Back in college i would work out at a kind of “singles gym”. Ladies with little jewelry bits and makeup and thongs were typical. Stripping down a bar, which was in the bench press rack, i got distracted and grabbed the 45 lb plate and not the 25 lber in front of it. Get the picture? A freefall to my big toe, the worst cursing and screaming you can imagine quicklly ensued. After surgery and several years it still kinda looks more like a thumb then a toe. Since then i prefer a more austere, dungeon type atmosphere for my workouts.
Far to many to list, but here’s a few.
Personal: While doing a final heavy set of seated dumbell presses, I began to struggle on the final reps. The spotter, whom I had told to spot me at the elbows not the wrists, wasnt paying attention. When I got stuck on one rep, half-way up, he snapped to attention, reached up, grabbed the elbows and instead of pushing up to assist in finishing the rep, he pulled my elbows straight back. There I was with 90’s in a position to do rotator cuff exercises. Needless to say, that spotters services were never used again.
Others: One arrogant putz from our gym had just started his first cycle of Test and Anadrol. Somehow he thought that during the first week of his cycle his strenght would just shoot up immediatly. This guy lays down on the Olympic bench to do flyes with a pair of 80's. He squeaks out a single and struggles for a second. He gets stuck, the resident 'personal trainer' comes running across the room to give a spot, leans across the bench not seeing the empty Olympic bar on the rack, hits the bar and knocks the bar across the bridge of his nose. In a nutshell, it wasnt a pretty sight.