A few weeks ago, bodybuilder Ryan Crowley suffered one of the worst injuries we’ve seen in a long time. While incline benching 220kg (484lb), Crowley’s right pectoralis major detached completely from the anterior humerus. The whole incident was caught on camera, and has been giving lifters the world over the absolute heebie-jeebies since it first appeared.
Ryan Crowley’s Sickening Injury
Crowley was lucky to have Larry Wheels and two other spotters close at hand to save him when the muscle tore. And now, as he continues to rehab the torn muscle after surgery, he’s opened up in an interview with Kevin Levrone about the experience, speculating on precisely why and how it happened.
Crowley first of all states that he has had problems with his left shoulder, which means he generally shies away from bench pressing.
Watch Ryan Crowley’s Interview with Kev Levrone.
“Normally I have problems with my left shoulder so I try to shy away from any kind of bench press stuff. But we were filming and they wanted to do the exercise so I was like okay, I’ll do it. I warmed up, and did a lot of warm-ups, which is not something I would necessarily normally do.”
Crowley continued by saying that he believes it was the excessive warm up and stretching that may have caused the injury.
“Part of me thinks that maybe the excessive warming up and the bad stretching could have been a cause for this, but I don’t know, obviously at the end of the day the weight was too much for me…”
We examined the injury, and pec tears in general, in a recent article. We’d be more inclined to point the finger of blame on the weight itself, especially since Crowley admits himself that he generally doesn’t bench press because of a nagging shoulder injury. Ego lifting is one of the prime reasons for pec tears, and warming up is more likely to prevent a pec tear than cause one; although the precise nature of Crowley’s ‘excessive’ warm up remains a mystery.
Whatever the cause, we wish him a speedy recovery.
