Suicide in the Gym :(

[PuliMorgan]

Suicide in the gym

[mouse]

I saw this video earlier and have no real desire to watch it again... but how exactly was this suicide?

[mgil]

Yeah, stupidity is not suicide

[aurelius]

Damn. Sad. And a great example of how it takes incredible amounts of human stupidity for things like this to occur. It was the bench that killed her. It did not allow her to completely collapse under the weight. Just fucking why?

[dw]

Not sure I want to watch. Someone breaks her neck by dropping a bench press?

[murphyreedus]

Not sure I want to watch. Someone breaks her neck by dropping a bench press?

Smith machine guillotine.

[mouse]

For those who don't want to watch but wanna know...

Dude has ~405 loaded on a smith machine with a bench in it (box squats I assume). Some conversation between him and a woman, she unracks the bar facing into the smith (backwards). She either tries to squat it or just can't hold on to the weight and because she's facing the other way her butt misses the bench and she winds up getting guillotined by the bar/bench...

I've never used a smith, so I don't know if the 'safeties' didn't catch because she was facing backwards or what... but they didn't...

Sucks...

[Hardartery]

For those who don't want to watch but wanna know...

Dude has ~405 loaded on a smith machine with a bench in it (box squats I assume). Some conversation between him and a woman, she unracks the bar facing into the smith (backwards). She either tries to squat it or just can't hold on to the weight and because she's facing the other way her butt misses the bench and she winds up getting guillotined by the bar/bench...

I've never used a smith, so I don't know if the 'safeties' didn't catch because she was facing backwards or what... but they didn't...

Sucks...

The safeties are almost never set on a Smith, and sometimes don't exist at all. She had zero chance to turn the bar and catch the hooks on the way down, she wasn't positioned to do it. It looked like fairly typical gym stuff, honestly. I see stupid stuff like that all of the time in commercial gyms, minus the death. The guy probably didn't expect her to even get enough force under it to unlock the hooks.

[ChasingCurls69]

Jesus fucking christ, I didn't see the blood pooling until I watched it again

[PuliMorgan]

I saw this video earlier and have no real desire to watch it again... but how exactly was this suicide?

Yeah, stupidity is not suicide

I meant in a figurative way. Anyway, I stand corrected. It was not a suicide because the "intent to die" wasn't there.

[mgil]

I saw this video earlier and have no real desire to watch it again... but how exactly was this suicide?

Yeah, stupidity is not suicide

I meant in a figurative way. Anyway, I stand corrected. It was not a suicide because the "intent to die" wasn't there.

It’s still absolutely terrible and an awful way to learn a lesson.

[PuliMorgan]

I saw this video earlier and have no real desire to watch it again... but how exactly was this suicide?

Yeah, stupidity is not suicide

I meant in a figurative way. Anyway, I stand corrected. It was not a suicide because the "intent to die" wasn't there.

It’s still absolutely terrible and an awful way to learn a lesson.

Indeed.

[mbasic]

gym-muchacho-bro should be written up for manslaughter IMO.


Also, weird look as there appears to be a pre-teen girl in a skirt, with a mask on, standing behind her .... like .... I really hope that was not her daughter that watched her die. (EDIT: turns out that was the case)

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The bench certainly didn't help things, and she MAY have been simply kicked out the back (bar rolled over her neck).

But I've seen another fatality video like this: hvy.squat + smith machine + safeties set at floor height (minus the bench) .... where the guy got stapled face into the ground and killed. So much momentum builds when they are collapsing downward even if the edge of the olympic plates hit the floor first the damage was already done.

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EDIT:EDIT: damn, googling it, a lot of people die in smith machines. The whole idea about the track bars are really fucking you here. At lease with a free barbell, the bar can move off of/or away from you when the shit hits the fan .... like, in multiple directions and all ! the irony

[aurelius]

damn, googling it, a lot of people die in smith machines.

I thought this was pretty well known. Smith Machines are not to be used for heavy movements.

[mgil]

damn, googling it, a lot of people die in smith machines.

I thought this was pretty well known. Smith Machines are not to be used for heavy movements.

Years back, Matt Reynolds wrote that article about his brother in law (or similar relation) perishing while trapped in a smith machine doing bench press.

It really is a stupid piece of equipment for most people to interact with. Because it stabilizes the weight in (x,y), it emboldens idiots to lift heavier to the point of actual failure where the failure is sudden, as in similar bar velocity to broken bone/ruptured tendon failures.

It is ironic that these things are promoted as being safer than a regular power rack with safeties.

[Culican]

Speaking of safeties: I've noticed a new trend in my gym. Several times now in the last few weeks I have seen groups of late teen/early twenties guys squatting. In lieu of using the safeties, which are set much too low to be useful if the squatter fails, one guy is doing the spot from behind thing with his arms positioned to grab the squatter's torso if the squatter starts to fail. What a recipe for disaster.

[asdf]

I'm no fan of Smith machines. I just don't see the point. But the problem in these cases is that the lifter did not set the safeties appropriately.

Every Smith machine should have a clear warning sign stating that serious injury or death is possible, that safeties must be used, and if the lifter is uncertain about how to set them, to contact a staff member for assistance.

[GrainsAndGains]

Regarding the safeties...it's been a moment since I've used a Smith machine, but you have to actually be facing the safety hooks to use them, right? If she was facing the opposite (correct) direction, it's possibly that she would have leaned forward enough simply from the force of getting pinned down to where the bar would have rotated forward and the hooks would have caught it before the bar reached the bench.

Really horrifying stuff, if that idiot who helped her set up that death trap was a paid trainer he should be arrested.

[mbasic]

Regarding the safeties...it's been a moment since I've used a Smith machine, but you have to actually be facing the safety hooks to use them, right?

no, there's a set of blocks that slide up and down and you set to block the "maximum" lowest position. The hooks you engage by rotating the bar are another (different) feature. Doesn't matter what you do with the bar-hooks, the bar will stop if you use the secondary "blockers".

I have seen one really really old smith machine withOUT those safety blocks..... but that ain't the one.

Also, they are usually a self-retained thing to where they can't be removed, or lost.

I believe this is the exact model. (Ffwd to 0:45)




And what those safeties "do" .... is that they hinge forward so can lay flat at the very bottom, for storage, or if you want to crush your instep/metatarsals doing RDLs with the empty bar or something ....

I'm pretty sure I can see one in the video laying over there.
The black area in front of the upright, just inside of the upright, blocking the white along the floor-runner-tubing.
The safeties were there.



you can even the twin hookie thingies .... the enable it to grab a pair of the stop pins on each side ..... for redundant backup (you'd have to sheer four pins at once)

I mean what idiot (talking the dude here) doesn't do math and put those safeties up. I guess he figures she'll just get (conventionally pinned) in an upright position in the bottom of a box-squat. But fuck. Its 405 man ! I mean a lot of shit could go wrong. I could sorta understand if it were 135, and she didn't rotate the hooks all the way when re-racking .... and you had a boo-boo or something. But 4 plates. That guy should go to jail. He probably fled to america by now.

[Hardartery]

Regarding the safeties...it's been a moment since I've used a Smith machine, but you have to actually be facing the safety hooks to use them, right?

no, there's a set of blocks that slide up and down and you set to block the "maximum" lowest position. The hooks you engage by rotating the bar are another (different) feature. Doesn't matter what you do with the bar-hooks, the bar will stop.

I have seen one really really old smith machine withOUT those safety blocks..... but that ain't the one.

Also, they are ususally a self-retained thing to where they can't be removed, or lost.


And what those safeties "do" .... it they hinge forward, and can lay flat at the very bottom .... I'm pretty sure I can see one in the video, the black area in front of the upright, just inside of the upright, blocking the white along the floor-runnner-tubing. The safeties were there.



you can even the twin hookie thingies .... the enable it to grab a pair of the stop pins on each side ..... for redundant backup (you'd have to sheer four pins at once)

I mean what idiot (talking the dude here) doesn't do math and put those safeties up. I guess he figures she'll just get (conventionally pinned) in an upright position in the bottom of a box-squat. But fuck. Its 405 man ! I mean a lot of shit could go wrong. I could sorta understand if it were 135, and she didn't rotate the hooks all the way when re-racking .... and you had a boo-boo or something. But 4 plates. That guy should go to jail. He probably fled to america by now.

At the risk of generalisation, the safeties are never used in any gym I have ever set foot in as far as the Smith Machine goes. It is normal, as in usually the case, for the equipment in gyms in Latin America to be purchased used in the US, disassembled, and shipped down to the destination and then assembled there. This results in safeties not being there at all, quite frequently. As well as incorrect bolts installed, stuff assembled incorrectly or "Engineered" to work in a different than original configuration, and there are zero considerations given to end user safety. There are also no real civil penalties for negligence or attractive nuisance features. That may, or may not, be a safety in the still. I would put money on not, it is more likely a random iece of rubber or something that was added, and there is no guarantee that there is a matching one on the other side. And there is no liability for anyone involved. Granted, Mexico is in many places a step up from much of the rest of Central America (And they hate being called Central America, they insist that they are in North America), but no one is worried about a lawsuit or criminal charges for anything like this. It just is not a concern.
** For reference, the price of a life in the country I am currently sitting in is $3000.00 USD. Give or take a coupleof dollars. I can run someone over, or push them in front of a truck or something and my liability is paying the family $3k USD. That's it.
And, additionally, it's NOT 405, it's 4 plates on the bar. A Smith Machine is typically zero pounds of resistance by itself, or something very close to zero, the bar doesn't count in the calculation.