'Am I the one who is wrong??'

Is there crying in bench press?

Hi Casey,

I had a problem today and I’m hoping you have suggestions for me. Bench press made me cry. I’ve progressed through LIFTOFF and have reached a weight where I failed on the fourth rep of the fourth set. I have a home gym and my husband was spotting me. I was not in any physical danger nor was there any reason to feel embarrassed. As I realized I wasn’t going to get the weights all the way up on my rep, my body instantly went into panic mode. I weakly said “no, no, no” and my husband immediately took the dumbbells out of my hands. I started crying pretty hard, to the point I thought I might have a panic attack. I’ve failed most of the other lifts before with no more reaction than “welp, that’s not going to happen” and continuing at a lower weight. I assume it has something to do with bench press feeling more inherently dangerous? If I fail a row, I can let the weight fall to the floor. If I fail a press, the weight is falling on me. I also assume it’s stemming from a lifetime of not feeling very strong and not trusting my body to protect me. Any tips for working through this?

Thank you,

(Anonymous Please)

Aw, my sweet girl! First of all, I’m not so sure that your reaction comes from danger, per se. I’ve definitely had the experience of something going minorly awry in the middle of a lift—I remember once someone very gently bumping the end of my barbell mid-squat—and I was all of a sudden fighting back tears and incredibly upset.

I don’t have concrete research on this. (This article suggests “it’s just pent up stress!”, which to me is an incomplete answer.) I really believe it comes down to the fact that when you are lifting heavy weights, your nervous system is pretty maxed out and very occupied and focused. It’s maxed out in the same way that, if your job were womanning a nuclear silo and the president had issued a DEFCON 1 and one colleague was screaming at you to PUSH THE BUTTON and another one was innocently asking if you take milk in your coffee, you would bellow at the second one NOT NOW, YOU MORON even though he didn’t really do anything wrong. You’re just on edge!

Of course, there’s probably a little soupçon in here of how we are socialized/culturally conditioned to respond to stress. It’s why weight rooms have an outsize, unfortunate reputation for being full of vein-poppin’ angry dudes (rarely actually true, in my lived experience): If one of their barbells gets bopped by a passerby, they might slam it down and lay into that guy ‘til they’re blue in the face. Me, I cry.