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Millions of Americans enjoy living a healthy lifestyle. Oftentimes, their quest for healthy living prompts them to take up weight lifting, weight training, bodybuilding, power lifting and CrossFit. Unfortunately, even if they use the utmost of caution during their fitness routines, personal injury may result. Why? Weightlifting equipment isn’t always what it seems. Let’s take the Olympic weight bench recall from May 2015 for instance:
Collapsing Weight Benches and Personal Injuries
The weight bench in question was manufactured in China and sold under the Valor Athletics brand name for nine months in 2014. As it turns out, the bench’s steel frame was not welded together properly. Consequently, the legs could potentially break while the weight lifting bench is being used by unsuspecting individuals.
If the bench’s legs were to break while someone was lifting weights, users could end up with hundreds of pounds worth of metal on top of their chest and spinal column. History has shown us that such personal injuries could leave weight lifters paralyzed, dead or permanently disabled in other ways.
Is There a Body of Evidence Documenting Personal Injury?
Evidence indirectly backing up our assertion about faulty weight lifting equipment may be found in old issues of the Journal of Athletic Training and the American Journal of Sports Medicine. The contain studies which took a look at incidents of personal injury among professional weight lifters, not amateurs. The study included more than five years’ worth of scientific data.
The researchers found that when safe equipment and the right weight lifting techniques are used, several personal injuries were likely to occur. The list of injuries included, but was not confined to areas like the knee joints, spine, shoulder joints and the weight lifters’ soft tissues. Subsequent studies showed potential injuries to weight lifters’ nerves, elbow joints, wrists, organs and bones.
Perhaps some of the scariest personal injuries that occur in weight lifting are those involving the human heart and nervous system. Both the Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions and Texas Heart Institute Journal published proof that weight lifting has the potential to severely damage the heart muscles. By damage, we are referring to conditions like coronary artery dissection and aortic occlusion.
Articles in the periodicals, Neurosurgical Focus and the Clinical Neurology Neurosurgery highlighted potential injuries like neuropathy and paralysis instead. Although not life threatening, they have the ability to destroy a person’s quality of life and render them helpless. Keeping all of that in mind, just think about the types of personal injuries that could result if the
weight benches and other equipment were faulty!
Weight Lifting Accidents and Personal Injury Lawyers
Anyone hurt in weight lifting accidents involving faulty equipment should therefore reach out to personal injury lawyers. Personal injury lawyers can help seek justice for disabled or deceased weightlifters and their families. Depending on the weight lifting equipment involved and other fact facts of the case, manufacturers may be held responsible for damages. For example, they may have to pay for the weightlifters’ medical bills, lost wages, durable medical equipment, pain and suffering. To learn more, please contact us.
