Commercial Gym Safety

Gym Equipment Manufacturers Say Bolt your Gym Equipment Down!

Do you feel that you need to see more information on fitness equipment to hear how we can help you? You can call me now on 071 863 7398 or mail me immediately at miles@holisticgym.co.za Or look at more options at our main Gym and Fitness Equipment For sale Site and our Fitness Equipment Reviews

Gym Safety

When I began training in a gym all those year ago everything was different.And All Those Years don’t seem to be that long ago

The gyms were sweathouses and the owners did not make much money, not from gym memberships anyway!

Gym fees were paid monthly, nobody used towels and the changing rooms always smelled of eucalyptus oil and if you are already relating to this article you are giving your age away.

Things have changed at the gyms.

The treadmills talk back to us, there are womanly looking women walking around, the exercise bikes have real fixed saddles that don’t give enemas when we use them!

The black grease from the smith machine leg press and other commercial gym equipment has been replaced by advanced stain proof silicone oil.

And lastly the machines are so heavy and stable that they don’t have to be bolted to the ground.

Or are they that heavy and stable?

A  USA appellate court disagrees with that last point (they don’t say much about my other points) and we could now be coming full circle with how we create our gyms spaces and layout the floor plans at our health clubs.

“Cybex International of Medway, Mass., was found by an Erie County jury to be 75 percent responsible for a woman’s injury, said it is now liable for about $33 million, after insurance, plus interest.”

Their crime? The gym didn’t bolt the leg extension machine down!

Natalie M. Barnhard, 31, a former physical therapy assistant, was left a quadriplegic when a weight machine fell on top of her seven years ago.

Barnhard, 5-foot-1 and 110 pounds, was crushed when she did a shoulder stretch using a leg extension machine. She currently lives in the Atlanta area, where she receives physical therapy and treatment.

The company will be paying between $40 million and $50 million in compensation for that mistake

You see when I first began running gyms in the 1980s all of the equipment was either bolted the floor or bolted to the wall. The idea of free standing lat pull down has not been contemplate until companies like the ill-fated Genesis Gym Equipment came along.

In South Africa, Genesis was one of the first manufacturers to produce heavy hard core equipment. Granted many of the angles were wrong and people got injured, but not from equipment falling over. That was just bad design.

For the last two decades we have been placing equipment knowing that we can just shift it around whenever we want to. That may have to change.

Plan Your gym Properly from the beginning and bolt the equipment down

The jury found Amherst Orthopedic Physical Therapy, where Barnhard was working when the accident occurred, 20 percent liable and Barnhard 5 percent responsible for the accident.

A 608-pound Cybex leg extension machine tipped over and fell on top of her when she was with her assigned patient at Amherst Orthopedic.

She stood on the weight-stack side of the machine, put her hands on top of the equipment and pulled on it in order to stretch her arms and shoulder. The machine was not secured to the floor.

While Barnhard was not using the machine for its intended purpose, the appellate judges found that the use of exercise machines for stretching is common and foreseeable.

As she was a staff member she had not required to sign a waiver of liability simulate to  membership form.

The Lessons for South African Health Club and Gym owners.

Although we don’t live in the USA type of litigation economy and society, we do owe our clients th best possible information and safety measures. No matter how heavy the machine is we cannot see that it is possible for a well designed and stable machine to topple over.

Bolt your machines down.

Some manufacturers such as Powertec and SS Strength provide plates at the base of the equipment so that it cab bolted down

Do you feel that you need to see more information on fitness equipment to hear how we can help you? You can call me now on 071 863 7398 or mail me immediately at miles@gym4me.com. Or look at more options at our main Gym and Fitness Equipment For sale Site and our Fitness Equipment Reviews