Wayne's Hard News - The Bench Press: The Dangers and the Safety Precautions.

Bench Press Accident - Is this exercise a killer!

Here is a chilling story from last week's press along with some very good advice on bench pressing in a second article at the bottom.

NEWARK, Ohio — A college student and competitive bodybuilder was on life-support Tuesday night after a weight training accident. Chris Harmon, 20, of Granville has years of experience in weight training. On Monday he was at the gym, lifting hundreds of pounds, when the bar slipped, 10TV's Glenn McEntyre reported. Those who know Harmon describe him as a young man of exceptional focus and determination.
"Lifting weights and bodybuilding's always been his passion," said Harmon's father Scott Harmon. On Monday, Harmon broke a personal record, bench-pressing more than 400 pounds. He was following that up with a 250-pound decline bench press when the bar slipped.

"And somehow the bar slipped from his hands and fell about two and a half feet and struck him across the face," Scott Harmon said. The impact shattered his cheekbones and jaw, crushed an eye socket and severed two arteries, McEntyre reported.
(See photo left of the MRI scan of his skull which shows the bones that were crushed in Chris Harmon's face.)

Doctors told Harmon's parents there was some good news. "He said if the bar would have hit him that much higher, on the head, he would have been paraplegic and been brain-dead basically," Scott Harmon said. Harmon's future is still uncertain, McEntyre reported.

He has already undergone two surgeries, with more to come. In the last 24 hours, his father said he was conscious for only a brief moment. "I was sitting there stroking his head. And he grabbed my hand, and he
looked at me and they gave him some medicine and made him go back to sleep," Scott Harmon said.

As experienced a weight-trainer as Harmon is, his father said his mistake was lifting without someone to spot him. "Because it only takes a split second. In one second he dropped that weight and his life is forever changed," Scott Harmon said. Harmon's father said he wants to thank those who helped his son immediately after the accident. He does not know if it was the medics or gym staff, but someone placed Harmon face down, rather than on his back. Doctors said that prevented his lungs from filling with blood, and likely saved his life, McEntyre reported.

"Injured weightlifter faces complicated surgery - Reconstructive work will attempt to restore crushed bones in head".
Thursday,  February 25, 2010
 
Chris likely will never completely recover from the injuries to his face from a dropped 250-pound weight. A Granville amateur bodybuilder who almost died after a 250-pound weight fell on his face still can't breathe on his own. He remains in critical condition at Grant Medical Center. Chris Harmon, 20, might be blind in his right eye, said his father, Scott Harmon. He has a broken jaw, broken cheekbones and very little of his nose left. He likely won't regain feeling in part of his face because of a severed nerve.

Mr. Harmon is thankful for the nearly 1,500 members of the "Pray for Chris Harmon" Facebook group. And he is thankful for his son's tough personality. When his son was little, Mr. Harmon used to punish him for misbehaving by making him do push-ups. Chris Harmon channelled that into a passion for weightlifting. Mr. Harmon feels certain he will channel this, too. "He will make this into something positive," he said. "That's just the way he is."

Chris Harmon had bench-pressed a personal best 435 pounds Monday evening using free weights with a spotter. Then he moved to a Jones machine to continue his workout, said Kevin Rowe, owner of the Advantage Club. A Jones machine is a sort of cage that provides guide rails and safety catches for a weightlifting bar. Jones machines are designed so solo lifters can work out safely without a spotter, said Jerry Greenspan, owner of Columbus Fitness Consultants and Exercise Equipment Experts. Greenspan said it would be unusual to use a spotter with that machine.

Chris Harmon was on the Jones machine to perform a decline bench press - lying down with his head lower than his feet - when the weight apparently slipped out of his hands and crushed his face, Rowe said. Chris rolled off the bench onto his knees, and blood began pouring from his face, Rowe said. "It was a freak accident. He was doing something he has probably done dozens if not hundreds of times before." Chris Harmon first went to Licking Memorial Hospital in Newark, then to Grant. Substantial blood loss and difficulty breathing were the most pressing worries initially, Mr. Harmon said.

Chris needed blood transfusions and an emergency tracheotomy. Chris is in critical but stable condition now, his father said. Doctors are using medication to keep him unconscious. A scheduled surgery to reconstruct his face has been delayed twice because of fluid around his lungs. That surgery often happens within several days of the injury to make sure the bones are stabilized and can heal properly, experts say. The first surgery is complicated and often takes eight or nine hours, said Dr. Gregory Pearson, a craniofacial surgeon and assistant professor of clinical surgery at Ohio State's College of Medicine, Division of Plastic Surgery. Several broken bones in the face can make it difficult to find an undamaged one to use as a guide, he said.

Dr. Michael Vennemeyer, a plastic surgeon at Grant who isn't directly involved in Harmon's case, compared the surgery to putting together a puzzle with plates and screws. Recovery can take six to eight weeks, he said. Harmon graduated from Granville High School in 2009 and attends Ohio State-Newark, his father said. He also works at his father's land-surveying business and had been hitting the Advantage Club almost every day.

A fund should be set up to help pay Chris' medical bills by Friday, Mr. Harmon said. People will be able to contribute to the Chris Harmon Fund at any Chase Bank branch, he said. "Our primary focus is on his recovery."
Story by Jeb Phillips
Courtesy - THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH.

Safety Is Critical - The Bench Press courtesy Artie Drechsler, AOBS Journal. www.aobs.cc

While the use of illegal, performance enhancing, drugs continues to threaten the image of the Iron Game, there are other threats to that image as well. One of them is the long standing myth that weight training and weightlifting are very hazardous activities. While no strenuous sport is completely "safe", the public perception is that a sport like weightlifting is much more dangerous that sports like basketball and soccer and that is absolutely not the case, with the latter two sports having injury frequencies several orders of magnitude above that of weightlifting.

But every time someone is injured lifting weights, the naysayers regarding weight training emerge from the sidelines and trumpet the example of a weightlifting tragedy that "proves" their anti-weight position. Sadly, it is one of the most popular exercises done with weights, the bench press, that may well offer the greatest threat of injury of almost any barbell exercise ever conceived. Not that even bench pressing is dangerous in comparison with the threats found in most other sports, but the danger is real and we want to address it.

Recently, the press has focused on a near fatal accident suffered by USC star tailback, Stafon Johnson. In the course of a bench pressing workout with 275 lb., during which he was reportedly spotted by a trainer, the bar slipped out of Johnson's hands and came crashing down on his neck, crushing his larynx! It took 7 hours of emergency surgery to save Johnson, who doctor's speculate could have easily died without prompt and extreme intervention (in a typical year several people across the US do suffer fatal accidents while bench pressing).

The vast majority of readers of this article scarcely need any reminder of the safety essentials for the bench press, and we apologize in advance to those we may bore but, for those newer and/or more casual readers who might pick up this story, we want to discuss some critical guidelines.

What is the inherent risk in bench pressing?
First, bench pressing is one of the very few exercises where the body is positioned between the barbell and the bench, and the floor can offer no ultimate stopping point for the barbell because the plates cannot hit the floor unless the barbell goes through the athlete and bench, not a happy scenario.
The second problem is that the bench press starts where the athlete is strongest, near the finished position. Consequently, a weight heavier than what the athlete can actually bench can easily be removed from the rack.

Most fatalities occur when someone is benching alone. You should never do that unless you have a very solid mechanical spotter, such as a cage style power rack with heavy pins that will not permit the barbell to descend beyond a certain point (which should be set so that the lifter can't be hurt when the bar is caught by the pins).

If you are alone, or your spotter malfunctions, a bar without collars can sometimes be tilted so that the weights fall off one side (with the other following almost automatically). This is a very bad approach, but better than being crushed altogether. Also, never leave a loaded bar or the rack unattended. The parents of a young boy learned that several years ago. The boy was strong enough to get a loaded bar off his father's Smith machine, but didn't know how to hook it at the bottom when he failed to press it back up. Tragically, a fatality resulted.

But what happened to Stafon, who was being spotted? Apparently, he was using a thumbless grip and the bar completely slipped out of his hands and fell to his throat. It all happened so fast the spotter couldn't react. I'll go on record as saying there is no excuse for such a grip, as it is essentially the only grip which would permit such a disaster to occur, and it otherwise confers no significant advantage. Don't use it.

Spread the word about the risks, and precautions to follow, when bench pressing. You may save a life (and help the reputation of weight training at the same time). If you want to learn a lot more about the Bench Press and bench press training and technique, please check out these 2 DVDs on THE BENCH PRESS.

 

(Editor's note: GMV's own Wayne Gallasch held the Australian Nationa Bench Pressl Record continually for 10 years from the mid 60s till the mid 70s in the LightHeavyweigh class. When I spot him today in 2010 it still gives me nightmares!  Tina Gallasch.)