Takano Athletics

That blog about dangerous Olympic lifting brought about a couple of interesting responses from Takano Athletics advisory board member Eric Burkhardt.

Eric was once a power lifter, but after going through the sports science program at Cal State Long Beach under John Garhammer he switched over to the Olympic lifts and never looked back.  So he knows a thing or two about bench pressing.  Furthermore he’s spent the last two decades as the head strength and conditioning coach at Cal State Long Beach (twice), University of California at Irvine, and University of California at Santa Barbara.  During his weightlifting career he represented my PHAT Elvis Weightlifting Club so I’m well aware of Eric’s sophistication in the strength coaching realm.

In his first anecdote Eric cites a youngster who was killed while performing bench presses on a Smith Machine in Huntington Beach a few years ago.  Unable to remove the weight from his chest he was crushed by the weight and asphyxiated.  Apparently everyone thinks that the Smith Machine is a safe way to go and it is unless you miss hooking the last peg above your chest as you lower a too-heavy weight.  With a free weight you can often roll the weight off your chest toward your abdomen and then sit-up without being crushed.  A second strategy with a free weight if you haven’t used collars is to tilt the bar toward one side whereupon one of the plates will slide off, and immediately cause the bar to tilt in the other direction and remove itself from your chest.  Neither of these options are available on a Smith machine.

In the second anecdote Eric cites an incident that took place in the weight room of the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team.  He actually was sent the link by Loren Chiu, my predecessor as the chair of the NSCA Weightlifting Special Interest Group.  Anyway it’s not about bench pressing but supine pressing, the really ancient name for the lift.  In the old days, probably before the invention of the bench, barbell enthusiasts performed presses while lying on their backs on the ground.  This could be done with either barbells (which had to be handed to the trainee or pulled over from above the head), or dumbells.

Kings guard Francisco Garcia was performing supine presses with a pair of 80 or 90 lb. dumbells while lying on a Swiss or physio ball.  Apparently the forces were too great and the ball exploding causing Garcia to land on the floor on his back, dumbells in hands.  This resulted in a fractured right radius as well as ligament damage for the athlete.

Thanks very much, Eric, for letting us know about two more ways to make the bench press even more dangerous.

By the way I’ll be interviewing Eric in the future and it will be posted on the Takano Athletics website.   Eric is one of the best S & C coaches I’ve encountered and he has a ton of insights that would be of value to this audience.  Look for it in the next month or so.