Aaron Gustav Parker Eiben’s

Gallery of Failure

It’s okay—the title makes me laugh.

NOTE: There is a lot of reading/watching here. If your time is short, I suggest jumping to the important takeaway at the end.

It seems that I am going to be telling a lot of strength coaches about my history with the overhead press (and to a lesser degree, the deadlift.) Instead of writing the same thing over and over again, I’ll just direct everyone here!

Apparently, I prone to some form of reflex syncope. Consequently, there are occasions when my strain with a heavy weight leads to a sudden drop of cranial blood pressure and temporary loss of motor control or even consciousness. As I understand, this condition is harmless in and of itself, but the fall to the ground has resulted in injury—the most serious being a concussion. Plus it kind of messes up my flow at the gym.

At the request of my first strength coach, I had my doctor order an electrocardiogram which came out normal. So my heart works just fine! It’s muh brain dat’s broke. But I knew that already.

Episode I

I don’t remember precisely when it first happened, but it was sometime in early 2018, and it was on a 300 or 305 lb. deadlift. As I (vaguely) recall, I picked the weight up, put it down, and then, while still grasping the bar on the ground, loss control, falling forward over the bar. I smashed my face into a (thankfully) thickly-padded bench and left some interesting chalk handprints on the mat on the ground, meaning I had at least enough subconscious reflex to catch myself. In fact, I was aware throughout the whole event—I just couldn’t do anything about it! I remember trying to jump up off the ground but being unable to do so for at least a second or two.

The subsequent episodes occurred after I started recording myself at the gym. Thus, for all of these, I have video!

Episode II

August 22nd, 2018
First Rep of Only Set
320 lb. Deadlift

Please ignore my atrocious form! I’ve gotten a lot better since then. Beyond that, there’s not much to say here other than it looks like I stood up too fast. I was very thankful that the people on the ellipticals didn’t notice anything, because I didn’t feel like explaining that I was okay.

That was the last time I passed out from a deadlift. Since then, my nemesis has been the overhead press.

Episode III

October 8th, 2018
First Rep of Third Set
112.5 lb. Overhead Press

I was aiming for three sets of five reps. I completed the first set, but I missed the last rep on the second set. Then, after the first rep of the third set, this happened.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t lose full control because I didn’t wind up on the ground. But that poor safety bar has never been the same…

Episode IV

March 14, 2019
Third Rep of Fourth Set
125 lb. Overhead Press

Here I was going for five sets of three reps. My notes say that I felt the syncope after the first rep of the first two sets, and the fact that I paused after the first rep of this set tells me that I felt it here, too.

After I hit the ground, I made a bunch of noise and faked a laugh in a vain effort to convince the two fellows there that I didn’t need to go to the hospital. It all worked out. And later the guy in the blue shirt spotted me for my fifth set, which I completed without issue. He’s awesome.

Episode V

March 28th, 2019
First Set of First Rep
132.5 lb. Overhead press

Here’s the big one!

This was my first ever attempt to overhead press 132.5 lbs. I didn’t achieve lockout before I felt the syncope setting in big-time. Instead, I re-racked the bar as quickly as possible. Then this happened.

I’d say this was a full-on loss of consciousness. Or at least the most I have ever experienced. Interestingly, though, I kept my grip on the bar as I went down, but that just set the stage for my torso to whip back and smash my head into the ground. That produced a concussion. I didn’t go the emergency room after this (though I did message my doctor right away), so I guess I don’t have an official diagnosis, but I had the symptoms. I was dazed, which is why it took me so long to get off the ground, I was nauseous, which is why I held my head in my hands and why I dragged the garbage can to my side when I finally got up, and my brain wasn’t the same for a very long time. In fact, my ears are still ringing from this event.

It’s something I don’t need to repeat.

Episode VI

April 7th, 2019
First Rep of Fifth Set
122.5 lb. Overhead Press

But I almost did repeat it!

I was going for five sets of three reps, and I felt the syncope after the first goddamn rep of the first set. But I carried on and managed to crank out four reps. Then, in the fifth set, I almost lost it.

The syncope set in hard, but not so hard that I didn’t manage to re-rack the thing before worse things happened. Not that bad things don’t happen after I rack the bar, as the video before this shows.

Episode VII

January 3rd, 2020
First Rep of First Set
150 lb. Overhead Press

After the concussion, I bit the bullet and finally signed up for online coaching—right after they upped the price, I learned… But, it’s been worth it! I broke through all my sticking points, including the magic 135 lb. press, and I was well on my way to 150 lbs. until this happened.

Luckily, I convinced the paramedics that I was fine, so I wasn’t then stuck with a several thousand dollar ambulance and emergency room bill. M’RCUH! FREEDUM!!

This was a very similar situation to Episode V: I almost completed the rep, but I opted to re-rack it before lockout. At the present time of writing, this episode occurred 6 months ago, so I don’t remember why I chose to re-rack it, but I suspect I felt an oncoming syncope episode. No matter the case, as soon as muscle tension was released, I was down.

Episode VIII

May 13th, 2020
Second Competition Single
345 lb. Squat

This is the first time I ever passed out on a squat—and I even tried to take a goddamn knee!!

This was my second squat attempt for the Barbell Logic Lockdown Smackdown. I don’t have much to say about it other than I attribute my lack of concussion to the nice, bouncy, hardwood floor. Oh, and for my third attempt, I squatted 365 lbs. without issue.

Episode IX

October 6th, 2020
Press “Starts” at 165, 167.5 and 170 lbs.
Press Lockouts at 165 lbs.

Whilst training for the 2020 Barbell Logic “Lift or Die” Halloween Strengthlifting Exhibition, I made incredible progress on my overhead press! My goal for the event was 150 lbs., which I had not attempted since the episode in January. But, when practicing press starts at 150, 155, and 160 lbs., I lifted all three to lockout. So, for the following week, we upped the weight to the 165-170 lb. range.

165 lbs. locked out with minor syncope:

167.5 lbs. locked out with more syncope:

Despite resting nine minutes, enough fatigue built up during the previous two lifts so that 170 lbs. was an actual grind. (I would have gotten it if I were fresh!) And this happened:

I personally think that video is pretty cool. Nonetheless, I recorded this afterward to share my thoughts and demonstrate to my coach that I was okay:

My last assignment for the day was 8 press lockouts in as few sets as possible. If I wasn’t so damn fatigued, I would have done all eight in a single go. Instead, I split it up into two, and syncope occurred after the second set's second rep. It’s not worth showing on its own, but in this case, it’s part of a complete picture. And I had more to say:

I look forward to pressing 170+ for the exhibition, though I know full well that if I fail to lift it, I might actually die. If that happens, I’ll be pleased with the fact that I died doing something awesome.

Episode X

October 20th, 2020
Press at 172.5 and 175 lbs.

These happened during the aforementioned “Lift or Die” exhibition. Obviously, I didn’t die. Otherwise, I would be writing this from beyond the grave. In fact, that’s what I tell people who cringe and recoil when I show them these videos: “What are you worried about? If I was dead, then I wouldn’t be here to show this to you!”

172.5 lbs:

175 lbs:

The helmet is a nice piece of equipment that I’ll be using on heavy presses henceforth. I need to find a better one, however, since that old bicycle helmet did nothing to stop me from smashing my face into the rack and obtaining a black eye.

I should point out that my coach throughout these past months, Dan Shell, inquired to Jordan Stanton, president of the United States Strengthlifting Federation, about syncope issues, and Stanton suggested smelling salts as a mitigant. So I used them when I did this:

When I first passed out, a bunch of people told me that I should stop training. “This isn’t good for you!” they said. “Aren’t already strong enough?!” they asked. (Note that none of these people have ever strength trained before in thier lives, and yet somehow, they know better.) They are correct about the fact that I have injured myself and may continue to do so in the future. But they’re missing the overall theme: lighter weights used to give me trouble, and now they don’t phase me at all. In fact, 135 lb., which once seemed insurmountable for an overhead press, is now a warmup weight. Syncope sets in at extremes far greater than anything I am likely to encounter in my life outside the gym, and when it does occur, I know what to do about it! By training through these difficulties and continuously pushing my limits, I am making myself objectively harder to kill; the exact opposite of what these people seem to believe.

Still, what’s going on?

Whatever I’m dealing with seems to be a function of muscle strain, particularly in regards to the upper-body. A gym friend of mine who also happens to be a firefighter/EMT suggested that it might come from a delay of cerebrospinal fluid pressure change in response to blood pressure change. Essentially, when body muscles tense up, blood pressure increases. In response, cerebrospinal fluid pressure increases to maintain equilibrium. When muscle tension is released, blood pressure drops. Cerebrospinal fluid pressure also drops, but not instantaneously. Therefore, for a brief time, one’s cerebrospinal fluid pressure is much greater than one’s blood pressure, and in that time, enough blood gets squeezed out of the brain to cause blackout.

That seems reasonable enough to me, particularly since I recall “hearing” (for lack of a better word) fluid gushing around inside my head during periods of high strain.

—————————————-OLDER SPECULATION BELOW—————————————-

So there you have it—a glimpse into what I’m dealing with. There have been many other occasions in recent times when I have felt the syncope to lesser degrees during the overhead press, and sometimes even after a chinup or dip! It doesn’t seem to bother me on the deadlift anymore, probably due to my vastly improved form. Interestingly though, in the deadlift video above, I was severely craning my neck backward, and the overhead press, chinup, and dip make heavy use of the shoulder muscles. I wonder if that strenuous muscle activity in and around my shoulders and neck does something to my vagus nerves, which then triggers the syncope. It’s an interesting thought, as the vagus nerve has been tied to several other things I deal with: depression, tinnitus, and ulcerative colitis.

But, alas, I shouldn’t speculate about such things, because dammit, Jim, I’m a physicist, not a doctor.