An Almost Death

Author: Tommy Leung | 04.29.2009 | Category: Life

I had almost died once. This wasn’t in a car accident or anything you’d expect to have a near death experience. I’ve had a pretty scary car experience too but, it never crossed my mind that I could have died. I’ve also never been in a war or been a police officer or firefighter. I grew up in a semi-dangerous neighborhood–to some people, the entire city of New York is dangerous.

This near death experience happened to me a long time ago. Back in high school, I often took Coed Advanced Weight Training. The other option involved a lot of mindless running around a track–they called that class Track. I don’t really like running and I do like weight lifting so that was a no-brainer. Did I mention it was coed?

So one day, it was after class and people had left. A friend and I stayed behind to do some more lifts. We had competitions in this class for max bench press, number of push ups, pull ups, dips, etc. Now this was a class near the day of the competitions so we wanted to work on the bench press.

I was never a monster bench presser. I was only about 155lbs and my max bench was at 185lbs. However, on this day, at this particular moment, I was not able to bench 185.

We did some warm ups and it was fine. We then proceeded to just do max lifts. I’m lying on the bench and have my hands on the barbell. My spotter is a good friend who has become more of a gym person than me. We pick up the weight and I proceed to do the lift. All of a sudden my arms just give and 185lbs of iron complied with the forces of gravity.

The bar dropped in line with my neck and at one moment I felt the cold metal of the bar touch my neck. At this same moment, my spotter grabs the bar and saves me from a beheading.

I don’ t know for sure if I would have died but, it was certainly not going to be pretty. There is no shortage of bench press accidents online and none of them look fun. To this day, I am still very cautious about doing bench presses.

I did lift 185lbs on the day of the bench press competition. That was not a winning lift–I believe it was closer to 215. I was happy that I did 185 that day. It was more about overcoming the fear than how much weight it was. You never really lose the slight dread that overcomes you when you lie under the bar to do a bench press.

I certainly do not try to do max bench presses anymore. The last highest weight I’ve benched was 215lbs a few times. I increase the weight of my bench at very small increments. I like to stay alive more than I like to have a high bench weight!

By Tommy Leung