Why has no one created a better power rack?

[PressesPeople]

One that catches the plates on a wide, flat, adjustable surface, so the bar doesn't get bent during a fail? Also, this would theoretically allow the user to drop the weights, if they needed to for some reason.

Also, why in the benching portion of competitions do they not use safety bars that protect the neck/face, considering past injuries with faulty spotters?

[AdamW]

I can't imagine something that catches the plates themselves would be very practical. Rogue sells a strap system for their racks that is a lot nicer on bars than regular pipe safeties, but it has it's disadvantages too.

I believe the IPF does sometimes use spotter arms when benching. This is an IPF rack setup for benching:


Agreed that the rest of the powerlifting world should probably adopt something. I like the EFS benches that have the safety section just to protect the face:

[Dastardly]

the chinese use these sort of jerk stands exclusively.



They are adjustable height, so you can use place them in the bottom position too.

Or you could use regular squat stands combined with the kind of boxes you use for elevated cleans/snatches.

Or you could just use bumper plates and ditch your squats to the floor.

[Dastardly]

I wonder if the safety straps used on monolifts sometimes, are easier on the bar than landing on metal?

[Scrofula]

One that catches the plates on a wide, flat, adjustable surface, so the bar doesn't get bent during a fail? Also, this would theoretically allow the user to drop the weights, if they needed to for some reason.

These exist. My gym has one or two of these things. They were probably intended as adjustable jerk blocks, but you could use them as safeties, I guess. I haven't seen anybody use them for anything other than box jumps, though.

I don't know how useful they'd be, since when I fail on a squat, I usually manage to set the bar down quite gently.

[Frankie]

i got a powertec rack

[Dabs]

You'd need a much wider safety to catch the plates first. There are scoops that work like this. Personally, I would like the regular safeties (a little bit lower) in addition to the plate catching safety.

[hbriem]

A fellow lifter and friend of mine, Gudrun Groa Thorsteinsdottir dropped a 110kg bench press last year, much too fast for the spotters to catch. Thankfully it was in an IPF meet and there were safety bars that took the impact. Her face would have been badly injured and possibly worse had they not been there. The barbell really slammed hard into the safety bars. We were all pretty shaken up and relieved.

PS. The IPF bench rack safety bars now have a short (20cm? 8") upward diagonal section closest to the face. It was this diagonal section that actually saved the day.

[DRice311]

The USAPL meet I competed in last month had a bench set up that looked almost exactly the same.