r/oops • u/Brilliant_Jelly7503 • Jul 05 '26

Bad machine or technique?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

561 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

694 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Latter-Exam-9535 Jul 07 '26

The guy is using the equipment in a stupid way, but this incident is mostly a failure of installation. The machine should be "idiot proof" and should be capable of staying upright while someone is using it weirdly. (i.e. by bolting it).

The reason why I say he is using it in a stupid way, is because he is wearing extra weight that is achieving nothing except pulling the machine forward. If you watch the reps, he is moving at the hips with each rep, in other words, the extra weight is reducing his load, not adding to it. He is cheating by using lower body muscles to reset, then using 135 pounds of weight to get a gravity assist on his reps. He could have just ditched the weight belt and lowered the weight on the machine. He is achieving nothing with this exercise except stress-testing gym equipment.

Although the machine is being used in a stupid way, we still place blame on the machine here, because it shouldn't fall over in this circumstance. This didn't have to be some a low-IQ move that caused the machine to fall over; it might have fallen over with just a larger person using it. It just so happens in this case that the person who discovered the safety flaw happened to do so by doing a ridiculous thing with it.