How to Ensure Your Home Gym Equipment Is Safe
Mar 13th, 2008 by Mehdi Tags: Home Gym, Injury, Weight Lifting
This article was submitted by reader Jim Doolittle.
If you have a home gym, equipment safety is your responsibility. Ensuring your equipment is safe is even more important if budgetary constraints forced you to buy equipment that may not have been designed and manufactured with a sufficient level of quality.
For equipment like power racks and benches, failures can be related to loose bolts or weak weld joints. In my case, the leg curl/extension attachment to my bench failed. I found there was a missing weld joint on the bottom of where 2 2”X2” steel tubes were joined. The stress on this joint is lower than the sides and top so it took years of repeated movement for the failure to occur. This type of material failure is called fatigue.
The warranty for the equipment had expired so I had to pay for a new part. I argued this was a design flaw which represented a safety hazard. I talked the customer service representative into giving me the part if I paid for shipping & handling ($20!).
In retrospect, I should have held my ground and not paid anything. You should not let expired warranties stop you when it comes to design or manufacturing flaws that compromise safety. The ironic thing is that I no longer even use this equipment since I am following StrongLifts 5×5.
For barbells, material fatigue, material quality, weight load, impact (such as when bar is dropped) or a combination of all of these can cause failures. The point of failure is most likely where the bar diameter is smallest such as within the grooves cut near the knurls of the bar. A 2nd major point of failure is due to load and impact and tend to be about 1 plate width away from the collar.
How Can Your Ensure Your Equipment Is Safe? I do not have any data that suggests the best inspection frequency but I recommend thorough inspections at least on a monthly basis. If you tend to drop your bar with heavy weight, inspect the bar after the workout. It shouldn’t take too long.
Except for testing whether bolts are tight, most of your inspection will rely on visual inspection because other methods such as ultrasonic testing are costly. Visual inspection only allows you to observe flaws that are… well…visible.
Most failures occur from an existing defect. You can increase your chances of finding defects by using a magnifying glass or microscope. RadioShack has a small one that magnifies up to 100X.
What To Check? This is what you should check on a monthly basis.
All weld joints. Check for cracks near the weld.
All nuts and bolts connecting equipment parts. Check for tightness.
Check for cracks near the knurl marks of your barbell.
Check for cracks at the collar.
Check for cracks about a about 1 plate width away from the collars.
Make sure that bolts on ends of barbell are tight. There may be caps covering the bolts. The caps are typically held in place with a small set screw.
Note whether your barbell has areas flaking of the chrome plating, especially if the flaking is linear. Cracks are linear and they can open and close (fatigue) causing chrome plating to spall off.
Note that flaking can be normal for older barbells so don’t be too alarmed. In my opinion, it is better to be safe than sorry.
What To Do? If you find loose bolts, tighten them. If you have weld cracks in your bench or rack, find a welder to fix them or replace equipment. If you find a crack in your barbell, then ditch it and get a new one. Or, spray paint it red and use it only for empty bar work.
This article was submitted by reader Jim Doolittle.
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Very interesting. Nice pictures. Thanks.
Word on cracks in the bar….I read this article here: http://www.ivanko.com/article5.pdf
on page two it tells the story of a Russian olympic lifter in the ’60s who performed a clean and jerk with a bar that cracked in the middle during the second pull…the jagged edge punched through his adam’s apple and severed his arteries, killing him right there on the platform…I guess the moral of the story is don’t buy cheap bars….
Thanks for the tips. I am very guilty of not inspecting my equipment for huge spans of time. I got to get better at this before I end up at the emergency room!
Funny thing is that the day after I sent this article to Mehdi, I noticed that I needed to tighten the bolt on the end of my bar. Once the set screw is loosened, you can get the end cap off quite easily with a magnet rather than trying to pry it out. The problem is that I do not have a hex head wrench large enough for the end bolt so I had to hand tighten. That should not pose a significant safety risk but until it is properly tightened with a wrench, it will come lose again rather quickly.
@buck
Mehdi had pointed me to that article. I do very similar work (I work with automotive coil springs instead of barbells) and could have written a similar article. I did not want this one to be too technical. The key is to make sure your equipment is tight and not broken.
This is great as I just got the starts of my home gym
It might also be wise to inspect the equipment at your local commercial gym before you use it. Commercial gym equipment usually gets abused and it isn’t checked as frequently as you would think.
I would agree with Nik, I’ve been a member of various gyms, some low end, some high end and in between. Every gym I’ve found equipment isn’t maintained that well. A couple times I’ve found the nut that goes on the end of bar lying on the floor or just about to come out. Just because its a commercial gym, don’t assume they do regular maintenance checks. I always take a quick look over any equipment I’m using.
One of the sure signs that a place isn’t take care of their equipment is if you see broken equipment. In general, equipment doesn’t spontaneously fail. There was likely something wearing away long before it failed, the equipment broke because no-one was looking for the wear.
cheers doo! great article…I just thought the excerpt from that Ivanko pdf about the Russian olympic lifter was crazy…Before reading that, I had never even realized that a bar breaking due to brittle steel was even possible…but I’m just an IT guy, I know 0% about anything mechanical or metallurgical
Did you mention rust?
@RT the fitness guy
I did not mention rust. Most bars are chrome plated and will not rust unless the chrome starts to flake off. I did mention about chrome plating flaking off and rust would make it easier to notice that the chrome plating had flaked off. However, rust itself is usually not a problem. Rust becomes a problem when it is so severe that it starts to cause “blistering of the surface” which indicates chemical attack. Severe rust should not happen unless equipment is kept in very humid environment, or worse, moist salty environment.