Back in March, the L.A. Times published a piece about how researchers examined 18 years' worth of data and concluded that weightlifting injuries are on the rise.
It must be a slow news day, because today, nine months after the fact, the New York Times decided to report on the same study. And what new information did the Gray Lady have to add?
This year Jessica Cleary, a 40-year-old mother from Chicago, joined the growing number of injured weight trainers. Ms. Cleary said in an interview that she had been working out with free weights and on resistance machines about five times a week for several years. She believed she was well trained, having been guided by a personal trainer for eight months. But on a fateful day last May she slid off a leg-strengthening machine head first, and her neck landed hard on a metal part of the equipment.And once there was a guy who stuck his penis in a tree and got bitten by a squirrel. Lesson: Your ween doesn't belong in a tree, just as your ass doesn't belong on a "leg strengthening machine" if you have no clue how to use it properly.
Unable to talk and having trouble breathing, she was taken to an emergency room, where tests showed she had fractured her larynx. A challenging operation and three months of recovery later, she said she felt lucky to have ended up with “only a paralyzed vocal cord” and a permanently raspy voice.
“At another gym on a similar piece of equipment, a woman broke her neck,” Ms. Cleary told me.
Tip of the Day: If you want to strengthen your legs without "slid[ing] off a leg-strengthening machine head first" (and by the way, how exactly does one manage to do that?), do SQUATS, for crying out loud.
And can someone please explain to me why wasn't this nominated for a Darwin Award instead of being held up as an example of a common weightlifting injury?
