Nine inch fails

A client failed on a repetition. It was on the lever squat. It was not a heavy lift.

Her rack position was slightly off. And she was fatigued. The bar slipped off and landed on the floor.

And it went crashing down to the floor. The plastic bumpers safely hitting the ground first dampened the thud.

The client slipped away safely and quickly.

We discourage ego-lifting and overreaching in our gym. When people lift heavy, we provide ample spotting.

As far as gym fails go this was ideal. No one hurt. Nothing damaged.

The bumpers did their job. And the lever height allowed the client to slip away quickly.

Bumpers are 18 inches in diameter. That puts a bar loaded with a plate 9 inches off the floor.

This seemingly arbitrary height has had great consequences on training. A deadlift is nine inches off the floor you proportions or goals be damned. A clean and jerk or snatch is pulled from nine inches off the floor.

Why is the plate 18 inches in diameter? Here’s a completely unverified but decent guess from the internet :

Why Are Weight Plates the Same Diameter?

After much sleuthing, I finally got in touch with Dr. Jan Todd who came to this conclusion: A bar loaded with standard 45 pound plates is 8.75” off the floor because the original manufacturers wanted there to be enough room that if a lifter doing Olympic lifting fell with the bar overhead that the plates would be tall enough so that his head would not be crushed.

So, the diameter of a 45 pound plate is based on the diameter of Olympic plates, which are designed to prevent skulls from being crushed in a missed Olympic lift. As an engineer as well as a trainer, I’d say that’s a great design decision… at least for Olympic lifting.

This foresighted choice has saved many a lifter. The only way to seriously injure or kill oneself is on the bench press or a very poorly executed squat fail with incompetent spotters and no safety arms or straps. The latter happened last year when an Indonesian influencer died during a squat fail.

It would be safer to use safeties or attachments that are positioned under the bar to ‘dump’ the bar and slide out safely.

In an ideal world, you will always have someone around you to help in case you fail. This person is called a spotter. There are good spotters and bad ones. In case you don’t have a spotter, here are a few links on how to fail safely. Ideally don’t fail, don’t overreach and most definitely don’t ego-lift.

If you fail, there is such a thing as a graceful fail:

Failing a squat by dumping the weight

Failing a squat using safety straps (2:40 in)

Failing a bench by dumping plates

Failing a bench with spotter arms

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