Originally Posted by
FatButWeak
Legal liability reasons: If some fool dies/becomes injured doing bench presses with a suicide grip or befalls some other calamity while lifting weights, the presence of a Smith machine gives the gym owner a viable defense, namely that the fool could have been using a much "safer" machine to do the same exercise. For this reason, I would recommend to any gym (inc. WFAC) that a Smith machone be acquired, since they have become de rigeur in the modern Amercian gym, people are familiar with them and they expect to see them. We all know the Smith machine is dangerous to the joints, but the legal defense to the lawsuit is not based on any real saferty, but the paper perception of safety. If there is a Smith machine at the gym, the injured fools lawyer cannot argue that the gym patron had no safer alternative to bench presses, squats, whatever. So, long story short, Rip should buy one.