He's a #242 lifter that runs a gym in New York. To be fair to the guy who ran over, Oak squats out of the rack with no spotters at all a fair amount, so everyone probably just thought it was just another day. He's almost a #1000 squatter in comp. The wooden thing looks like a heel elevator for squats or a slant board.
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Start at 2:50 -
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Very impressive knee-grow lifter!
I agree with you about the spotter - he was jut a bystander to the situation, and did at least attempt to do something about spotting the squat.
When I see people lift weight like that, I keep an eye out, and I do intervene if I think the situation could be dangerous, or definitely is already dangerous. And I'm pretty good at making quick decisions in those situations, but it would be unfair to expect any given bystander to be the same way. I have a lot of experience in the gym in situations like this, and I generally don't have blocks of wood
blocking my path.
I think you're right about it being a slant board! I've seen them before, and it just so happened to be in a bad spot at the time, in addition to the squat rack being too high in the first place. This was bound to happen, given all that.
That being said, 800-lb is NEVER to be taken lightly. Even if the spotter who came to Oak's aid saw him do that same lift dozens of times before, he should have taken what was happening more seriously, despite being impeded by that slant board. When he came up to help rerack the weight, he wasn't even using both of his arms, and not even the full strength of the one arm he was using. You could do that if the weight was maybe 225-lb, but that's about it. Again, I just don't think he took it seriously.
I guess 800-lb is light weight for Oak, so the spotter didn't think much about it. Combined with the slant board being in his way, which didn't help either. But regardless, he didn't really try at all there.
Oh well - on the plus side, no one was hard [hopefully, the bar wasn't hurt/bent either].
