Unfair School Boards

3 months ago, I was injured at my school during a weight training class. This particular class does not train for size, but for strength and technique, meaning that in order to ever further our experience in body building such as size, we must 1st know the proper way to lift weights without hurting ourselves.

To understand my story I thought the above information would be needed. Now let me elaborate on my injury. I was participating on an exercise called “The Bucc Complex” (short for buccanear complex)-which is relevant because my school’s mascot is a buccaneer. The complex simply means that the coach made up the exercise himself. Please understand, my issue is not with the coach. In fact, from time to time, I still visit and talk with him. Describing the steps of the exercise may be difficult to understand unless you are experienced at weight lifting so bear with me. I stood with my feet spread just outside my shoulders and the 45lb bar held in my hands against my thighs. From this position, I did a small but quick jump in order to move the weight from my hips to my chest so that my elbows face outward from my body and then I rest the bar down again. I would repeat this step again and on the second time around, thrust my arms so that my elbows are now facing forward and my palms are facing upward still displaying the bar. I’m almost done. This next step involves a lift above the head like an incline front raise, then I lower it onto my shoulders like an incline back press. For the last step, I go into a back squat, come up, and repeat the complex in reverse order. All of these steps are done in a quick pace but we have been trained enough to do it correctly at the same time.

How did I get hurt? My arms gave out from previous reps and as i brought the bar behind my head, the bar crashed onto my shoulders forcing me down. I fell into the seated position with my legs in front of me and the bar bending me almost in half, also causing my knees to cave into my diaphragm. The air was knocked out of me and I had no time at all to control myself which means that it all depends on the spotters’  attention, which I lacked. Yes, the two spotters were present and perfectly fit to carry the weight i was working with. Including the weight of the bar, the weight totals up to only 90 pounds. That may not seem like a lot but with the exercise I participated in, it is safer to use. I squat 300 pounds max and incline 115. The rule is to never use as much weight as you can on squats or bench press because of the difficulty of the exercise.