awhile back i saw a guy doing toe presses on the leg press. He broke the #1 rule which is he unlocked the safety catches. his feet slipped off and he crushed his fingers and then the foot platform crushed him. I don’t know what happened to him. Never saw him again.
This happened to me on my last ME squat/dead day…
We were finishing up our workout with heavy leg presses with a three second pause at the bottom. If anyone has every done these you know the extreme pressure that builds up in your head. Also at 285 pounds you have to squeeze yourself into position.
We worked up to a heavy set of 6 reps. On my last set, every time I brought the weight down and paused it, the room would get really bright. I only remember doing 3 reps. Apparently I got my six reps, stood up and started to walk. I made it two steps and fell flat on my face. The first thing I remember is one of my buddies trying to roll me over. The funny thing is the gym was packed and everyone saw me fall but then pretended that nothing happened.
One of my buddies said that as I started to walk, my eyes were rolled up in my head.
We lift in a Dungeon of a basement. Next to my 1/2 rack is a concrete wall about 3’ tall, and I have a laminate countertop on it. This is the only place things fit.
Now, once we had the bar high for some leg work … a TON of plates. I was bent down rearranging some plates on the floor. Wife doesn’t notice that I have not been unloading.
Whoooo… deep breath…
Her end goes up in the air, and the bar slides down the peg with about 300# still on it! Guess whose HEAD was between the weight plates & the laminate!! Yikes! It was like a reverse gillotine!
I am always aware of my surroundings in the gym, so I jumped out of the way. It was a mess. We had a “TALK”.
Couple of years back-
I was on my last set of bench with out a spotter. The weight was too heavy to be doing without a spotter. I got four reps, the last one was a struggle. I thought at the top of the fourth I can get five. I took it down for five and pushed harder than I ever have and I barely got the weight up. I stood up and immediatly fell to the ground. I got back up and somehow ended up in the steam room. Turned out to be a severe pinched nerve in my neck.
Senior year in highschool I was doing seated dumbell military presses. I lost control of my muscles at the top of the last rep and my left arm went backwards smashing my middle finger between the weight, and the bar holder. broke the entire finger down to the knuckle. It also sucked.
I was benching the 100 lb dumbells a couple months ago and hit my 4th rep. Well, the benches at the gym (my friends gym) are too fucking short. So the top of my head was off the bench. I decided to readjust myself with the dumbells at lockout, so I slid down the bench with them at full extension. As a result of this retarded plan and my hypermobile shoulders, my shoulder slid out slightly tearing my right labrum and the 100 lb dumbell bounced off my chest. Funny thing is that my chest didn’t hurt at all. But I needed surgery on the shoulder.
Another time I was doing L Lateral Raises bringing the dumbells in front of my body. I pinched my dick tip during the lower part of the lift between the dumbells. It stung. Nothing amazing, but funny.
The 3rd person perspective you experienced is a pretty good mode to jump into in a crisis like that, leaves you with less emotional scars and lets you be more objective during and after the experience.
I did push presses to complete failure once, by complete failure I mean everything started failing, it was funny, slowly the weight started going down despite me pushing it up, down, down it went, me with it, it did not SEEM like a long time, it WAS a long time, it took seconds as every muscle group kicked in to keep it up and failed in turn, down I went, funny as can be. But not sensible nor advised.
About 3 years ago my buddy and I decided to do squats. I, having never done squats at the time, didn’t know what I could lift and decided to throw 90lbs on each side. I made it down, but as I came up the weight shifted forward and I lost my balance… weights went into the rack with a huge CLANG! and I came about 1" away from putting my face into a mirror. If it wasn’t for my buddy holding me around my chest I would have colapsed with the weight still on me.
About 5 years ago I started doing chest presses with DB’s. I chose a weight that was too heavy and my right wrist buckled/lost strength, and I dropped the weight… since I was way out of balance now, I found myself on my left side since I slid right off the bench and onto the floor.
The worst part in all of that was having a bruised ego and other people laughing at me. Ah, the memories… :o)
16 years ago (fark time flies) a buddy had a great home gym setup and we were not working out or anything, so he says “can you take that barbell down for me” … it was his barbell setup for squats, on the squat stands.
What he didn’t realise was that I was going to just pick it up and put it on the ground. He expected me to do it plate by plate.
What I didn’t realise was, he didn’t use collars.
So I pick it off the rack, it was pretty heavy, I must have tilted it a bit and a plate falls off - I think, “what the frik!?” coz I always use collars. Anyway, it teetered to the other side, and a plate falls offf … and so on and so forth with plates falling all over the place, smashing down breaking things and rolling away. (actually, nothing broke). Pretty funny, was scary though for a minute or two, I’ve seen people lose toes like that.
I was getting ready to squat and someone had left 135 in the rack at Dl hieght. I walked up to it and cleaned it to rack it at my squat height. Well, just as I snapped it up, my then GF decided to grab her water bottle which brought her face within 2 inches of the end of of the bar mid- clean. If it’d made contact, her jaw would’ve been shattered for sure. I think it actually brushed her hair on the way up. [/quote]
I have a power rack in my basement that isn’t bolted down yet (working on that still). I was doing heavy squats and went to rack the weight, and when I leaned the bar into the rack to set it on the hooks, the goddamn rack slid up against the wall. It didn’t lean over, or anything like that. It just fucking slid, as if to deliberately piss me off. Now, I was exhausted from that set, weak, the bar was sliding down my back, my arms were cranking in completely the opposite direction that they were designed to move, and I’m fast approaching a dimension of rage I’ve never comprehended before because I never imagined something this retarded happening to me.
The rack is right up against the wall where I can’t even reach the hooks anymore. Luckily I have a habit of setting the pins before I lift (just for occasions like this) so I squatted down and set the bar on the pins. My wife was there the whole time and was clueless as to what to do.
As soon as I racked the bar I started throwing shit around the basement and having a temper tantrum that would make any rich kid proud. I’ve been trying to bolt that fucking thing down for a couple of weeks but so far everything is a waste of time and money. Concrete lags are bullshit by the way. So are concrete screws.
get one of those big rubber mats. Bolt it to the mat, and it won’t slide. It works for the jammer so it should work for a squat rack.
[quote]djoh615893 wrote:
I have a power rack in my basement that isn’t bolted down yet (working on that still). I was doing heavy squats and went to rack the weight, and when I leaned the bar into the rack to set it on the hooks, the goddamn rack slid up against the wall. It didn’t lean over, or anything like that. It just fucking slid, as if to deliberately piss me off. Now, I was exhausted from that set, weak, the bar was sliding down my back, my arms were cranking in completely the opposite direction that they were designed to move, and I’m fast approaching a dimension of rage I’ve never comprehended before because I never imagined something this retarded happening to me.
The rack is right up against the wall where I can’t even reach the hooks anymore. Luckily I have a habit of setting the pins before I lift (just for occasions like this) so I squatted down and set the bar on the pins. My wife was there the whole time and was clueless as to what to do.
As soon as I racked the bar I started throwing shit around the basement and having a temper tantrum that would make any rich kid proud. I’ve been trying to bolt that fucking thing down for a couple of weeks but so far everything is a waste of time and money. Concrete lags are bullshit by the way. So are concrete screws. [/quote]
Was practicing catching my clean as low as possible with lighter weight, and my left elbow came in, causing the bar to come down on my palm/thumb as I went to catch.
Lost my balance while rock bottom, and started to fall back. Whole time, since I didnt catch properly the bar is on my right hand, as I try to get under the bar. Ended up just laying there with a loaded bar on top of me for a few minutes. Still can’t press or snatch.
KA, work on your shoulder flexibility. That way if the bar drifts back, you can ditch it behind you.
in college, i was benching in a shitty weight room and i was the only guy there. i tried for one too many reps and the bar was stuck on my chest with nobody down there. luckily i didnt use the clips and i just rocked the weight to the side and the weight started falling off each side.
also when doing the snatch i caught the bar awkwardly and it fell and hit me in the back of the head and i dropped. i had to options, get up and act like nothing happened or just lay there. i just layed there.
[quote]SquatDr wrote:
in college, i was benching in a shitty weight room and i was the only guy there. i tried for one too many reps and the bar was stuck on my chest with nobody down there. luckily i didnt use the clips and i just rocked the weight to the side and the weight started falling off each side.
[/quote]
I was hoping somebody would post that so that I could say me too and not have to type it.
Had a few, I can remember one time getting ready to start hitting heavy sets on the squat and no one really was around and I didnt feel lik walking the gym to find a spotter and then xplainin how to spot a squat. So I went for it 500 a weight I play with, walk it out and begain to squat, the next thing I know I am staring at the roof wondering what the fuck happened. LUcky I had set the rack to save me if I did fail and the rack did its job and all I had was a serious bump on the back of the head. Deloaded the bar placed it back and figured out what I did wrong, suck my hips too far back and lost my balance. Hit three seets after that, the one I missed and two more weight jumps.
Late last year I was training for a Powerlifting Comp and was squating with 180kg (396lb). As I was descending, I felt a severe muscle pull in my left side and dropped like a stone.
Bad enough that it hurt like hell to breathe, worse was the fact that I trapped my thumb between the squat rack and the bar. You ever see an illustration of a seismic fault where one side of the earth lifts and tilts?
That was my thumb.
This is from about 15 years ago when I was young and stupid. I was finishing a periodisation cycle - if I remember right got from the cybergenics kit I had bought ( younger and REALLY stupid :-).
I was doing standing barbell press from behind the head - and the scheme was over the 12 weeks increasing the weight and reducing the reps. It was the last week and I had to do 2 reps at a heck of a heavy weight (for me at that time). First rep was fine. Second rep got half way up, muscles just failed and I dropped the loaded barbell onto the back of my neck. There was this crack and I went light-headed and got very nauseous. Ice-packs and head and neck x-rays later there was no permanent damage - just one scared Pagan!!
Over my career I’ve also manage to burst a small blood vessel in my eye leg pressing and slightly rip a trap also while leg pressing.
Biggest non-injury scare was also early on when I was unloading someone else’s bar and took one too many weight off one side - the bar flipped and took out a full-length mirror - not good but damned funny a day later
“I hear ya TDog, I get like that sometimes as well. About two months ago I was training arms and I was in a pretty good zone. I was doing skull crushers and had some good weight on the bar. So the bar is lying in front of the bench that has my towel on it and my water jug right next to it. But that did not stop some jackass to remove ONE of my clips of the bar in-between sets when I walked away for a few seconds. I kid you not. Of course I did not notice and neither did my spotter who hands me the weight. On the first rep, the shit comes crashing down and a 25 lb plate missed my face by a few inches. I was fucking steaming and ready to kill someone. So I go into the other room, find out who did it and I confront the dude and he has the nerve to tell me he asked several times before he took the one clip. The other guys say they did not hear him ask anyone so I told him, do me a favor and walk away right now. He did and I havent seen him since. Looking back it is somewhat funny in a disbelief kinda way, but his stupidity almost cost me big time.”
Thinking back that was pretty scary, more shocked really after I realized what could have happened. If a 25 pound plate lands flush on your grill, you can get fucked up pretty bad I would imagine.