Pec Tear

A fairly popular YouTuber just posted a video of his pec tear benching 315 lbs. This led me down a tunnel of pec tear videos with various commentary as to why this occurs. As there wasn’t any data to support their claims and they are not medical professionals I thought to ask here.

  1. One comment made was during the warm up to 315 lbs excessive shaking was occurring during the un-rack indicating the weight was already too heavy. This caught my attention because my arms shake during many warm-up sets of weights I can complete my SSLP 3x5 with proper form. I have seen in Mark Rippetoe’s Q&A that this shaking is just how some people’s nervous system behaves and unrelated to how much weight you can “handle” (weight that you properly complete working sets with). Thoughts?

  2. Another individual tore his pec with 275 lbs and commented that this was a weight he had worked with comfortably very recently and wasn’t a maximum load. Other than improper form or working with weight beyond your means does anything pre-dispose a person to this type of injury, suggest one may occur, or does stuff just happen?

Thank you.

I’d have to see the example you’re talking about to see whether the “shaking” was evidence of using an excessive load.

And yes, sometimes this just happens, unfortunately.

I haven’t seen the 315 bench video either but I heard he tried to bench 315 after a 2 year layoff. If that is the case it would reasonably explain the tear.

I always shake when I am benching a reasonably heavy weight.

Thanks for your answers. I agree about the 2 year layoff contributing to the 315 pec tear (as does the individual who tore his pec in the video). My arms noticeably shake when un-racking anything above 135 lbs during warm up sets but I can comfortably complete 3x5 with 215. The shaking doesn’t occur when completing reps. The explanation by others on YouTube as to why this pec tear occurred is perhaps ignoring the 2 year lay off. Alarm bells just went off in my head and i thought to ask. I’m not terribly worried about it but was interested if there were easy to spot signs of an impeding pec injury, which appears not to be the case. Again, thank you for your time.