Weightlifter Dies After 315 lbs Barbell Drops on his Neck

Damn, thatā€™s awful.

This is why the thumbless grip is AKA the ā€˜suicide grip.ā€™

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Damn, thatā€™s sad.

the trick here is that the if the bar slips to the thumb side, it falls on your chest. This one slipped off the finger side. I guess maybe the opposing thumb could prevent the bar from rolling over your fingers?

Are you sure?

Nope, but just by physics I would guess thumb side would come down armpit or lower (inferior).

I agree with you that most cases of thumbless-grip bar slips do end up on the lifterā€™s chest. (Lots of YouTube evidence to this effect.) However, I have seen videos wherein the bar ended up falling on the lifterā€™s throat, presumably because the bar-path was up and headward.

That said, I donā€™t know for a fact that he was using a suicide grip; it was an assumption on my part. Have you ever seen or heard of someone losing the bar on the finger-side? (I havenā€™t.)

Iā€™ve actually only ever seen dropped benches with full grips, like these ones

You see it a lot especially in geared lifting.

Sadly, a thumb just doesnā€™t do a whole lot when the bar starts rolling. Itā€™s usually the wrist screwing up that do it.

Well that hurt just watching itā€¦ ouwwwwch!

I just donā€™t see an easy way for it to go off the thumb side of the hand and land on the neck. It would be on the wrong side of the arm. Iā€™m not saying itā€™s impossible, but it seems improbable.

I have never seen finger side. Iā€™ve lost a bench once, but it was thumb side and I wasnā€™t using a ā€œthumblessā€ grip. I also wouldnā€™t recommend it.

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Yeah that happened about 8 miles from where i live, on local news.
He had a spotter just couldnā€™t pull off quick enough.
Died of internal bleeding organ damage.
Reminds me of a bodybuilder in Canada who was declining 295 and bar pinned his throat no spotters , died easy weight for him.
You would think in squat you could just dump it , my weightlifting coach said he was training by himself xmas, and got pinned with over 500 lb x3 bodyweight, took a while to get out of.

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I read somewhere that about 10 people die from bench press accidents every year.

I could totally see that happening on lift off. A really common thing Iā€™ve done and have seen others do is to grab the bar and roll it, sort of twisting your grip into it. Feels good, but leaves your hands at a bad position in relation to your wrist.

Iā€™ve seen someone drop 150kg on their chest benching using the suicide grip. After we lifted it off him he was like ā€œAGAIN!ā€ and tried it straight away, totally smoking the lift.

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TIME TO BAN THE BENCH PRESS! :wink:

If you outlaw bench-pressing, only outlaws will bench-press.

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Now remember their is suicide grip , and reverse grip. Their tryed banning reverse grip when AC was lifting. I think suicide grip is more dangerous, no thumbs.

I was told one of the 24 hour chains dont have flat benches with racks. Becuase of this

I bet heā€™s glad he didnā€™t use the bar catches. Because that would look gay.

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Oh fuk thatā€™s terrible. The author had a typo though. The headline should have read 22 year old boyā€¦