The Brazilian man’s bench press series ended in tragedy.
A Brazilian man died in an accident at the gym. PDO
A video of a 55-year-old Brazilian man’s gym death has spread around the world in December.
In the video, a man is doing a bench press when a barbell with weights of some tens of kilograms slips from the man’s hands and falls on his chest.
The security camera video shows how the man stands up after the accident but falls to the ground. The whole situation from starting the movement to shortening takes only about 10 seconds.
Brazilian news site G1 says that the accident happened on December 1 in the city of Olinda. The man was an ordinary but relatively enthusiastic exerciser. The man had been working out for three decades and had been going to the same gym for more than 10 years.
Many people have drawn attention in the accident video to the fact that the man used a grip in the bench press where the thumbs are on the same side of the bar as the other fingers. So the man did not “lock” the bar in his grip with his thumbs.
The extract is called monkey extract.
– I personally don’t like the monkey grip, because I like to squeeze the bar firmly, which stabilizes the bar. I don’t see what the benefit of the monkey extract would be, Jari “Bull” Mentula said to Iltalehti in February.
This is what the grip looks like, where the bar is “locked” with the thumb. PDO
This is what the “monkey extract” looks like. PDO