Fitness Fail Friday: Here’s What Happens When You Bench Without a Spotter
Each Friday, STACK brings you a video of an exercise gone horribly wrong. You may or may not learn something from it, but you will laugh very hard.
As you can see in the video above, setting your one-rep max alone in your basement is not super smart. Once you can’t lift the weight, you’re basically out of options. We say “basically” because there are a few things you can try. Our man illustrates them all for you.
Huffing and Puffing
Most lifters’ go-to option for getting the bar up, huffing and puffing has never once proven to be effective. That leads this guy to quickly move to…
Happy Feet
An unconventional technique to be sure, happy feet don’t seem to be getting the job done for our man. That doesn’t stop him from continuing to bounce his feet through the rest of the video, though. When things still don’t improve, he ups the level of humiliation by…
Screaming for Mom
This one really only works if you live with your mom and she’s nearby AND she can lift more than you can. Soooooo, not a high rate of success. This video actually seems to present one of the few situations in which the technique could work, but unfortunately, Mum is not nearby. One last thing to try…
Wriggling
What’s more humiliating than a grown man screaming for his mom? The image above. Fortunately, our hero can only lift 50 kg. (about 110 lbs.), which is light enough for him to (just barely) wriggle out from underneath the bar. If he were trying to lift a little more weight, he could have been toast.
Benching without a spotter is never smart. Next time you’re tempted to try it, take a deep breath, set the weight down and rewatch this video. Or at least make sure your mom’s in the next room.
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Fitness Fail Friday: Here’s What Happens When You Bench Without a Spotter
Each Friday, STACK brings you a video of an exercise gone horribly wrong. You may or may not learn something from it, but you will laugh very hard.
As you can see in the video above, setting your one-rep max alone in your basement is not super smart. Once you can’t lift the weight, you’re basically out of options. We say “basically” because there are a few things you can try. Our man illustrates them all for you.
Huffing and Puffing
Most lifters’ go-to option for getting the bar up, huffing and puffing has never once proven to be effective. That leads this guy to quickly move to…
Happy Feet
An unconventional technique to be sure, happy feet don’t seem to be getting the job done for our man. That doesn’t stop him from continuing to bounce his feet through the rest of the video, though. When things still don’t improve, he ups the level of humiliation by…
Screaming for Mom
This one really only works if you live with your mom and she’s nearby AND she can lift more than you can. Soooooo, not a high rate of success. This video actually seems to present one of the few situations in which the technique could work, but unfortunately, Mum is not nearby. One last thing to try…
Wriggling
What’s more humiliating than a grown man screaming for his mom? The image above. Fortunately, our hero can only lift 50 kg. (about 110 lbs.), which is light enough for him to (just barely) wriggle out from underneath the bar. If he were trying to lift a little more weight, he could have been toast.
Benching without a spotter is never smart. Next time you’re tempted to try it, take a deep breath, set the weight down and rewatch this video. Or at least make sure your mom’s in the next room.