I Dropped a 95 lb Dumbbell on My Toe!! (HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED)

Have you ever wondered what happened if you dropped a 95 lb. dumbbell on your toe? In this video, I am going to show you how a small accident led to my toe being smashed and what the resulting injury is. While you might think Jesse has something to do with it, I can assure you that it wasn’t his fault… this time!

As you’ll see, while Jesse was setting up the camera for us to shoot a video (not this one, of course), I was cleaning up the dumbbells that I had left out from my workout the night before. Unfortunately, the dumbbell rack has a shallow lip and I didn’t place the dumbbell securely enough which led to it slipping off the rack and landing right on my big toe. Talk about a gym fail!

Can you say “OUCH!!!”

Fearing that there may be some sort of fracture, I headed to the doctor and got an X-Ray done. This was important to know because depending on the severity of the fracture, things can go from bad to worse. If there needs to be medical intervention and nothing is done about it, it can lead to some serious problems like a bone infection and trust me, that is not something you want to deal with! Thankfully, there was no fractures to be seen.

A few days later, I posted a picture on Instagram showing the aftermath of what my toe looked like immediately following and it was gruesome looking. Oddly enough, this happened to be the most liked Instagram post on my page (thanks a lot!) The comments that you guys posted ranged from grossed out to sympathetic to some great jokes. Jesse even shared his 10 favorite comments at my expense, as you would expect.

Cue the imbalance jokes!

Speaking of those imbalances; you might remember that last year I broke my big toe on the opposite foot by kicking a plyo box after getting frustrated during a shoot for another YouTube video. You can thank Jesse for bringing that back to our attention and for highlighting that I can’t afford an injury imbalance!

Now, what is the lesson to be learned here (outside of not dropping a dumbbell on your toes)? First, it’s taking the appropriate actions in the acute phase of the injury. Within the first 24 hours, I made sure to ice my toe. While some may argue that icing is counterproductive to the healing process, it is important to bring down inflammation in the first 24-48 hours of the injury occurring.

The next step was to avoid movements that would aggravate the injury further. This meant that I was going to avoid putting weight and pressure on my toe. So, when I continued my leg training, I avoided movements like lunges knowing how they would feel. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t perform flat footed leg exercises such as squats as I was able to displace pressure throughout my foot instead of through my toes. I didn’t let my injury compromise my training.

What does this mean for training with an injury? I believe that you shouldn’t stop training altogether. Now, I’m not saying to train through the pain, but instead that you should find ways to train around the injury and the pain.

Another step that I took to make sure my toe was taken care of was to establish and maintain proper range of motion. This didn’t mean cranking on it and incurring further pain. No, it meant moving my toe through a ROM that was comfortable and allowed it maintain blood flow and prevent it from stiffening up.

Now, I’ll give you a live look into how my toe looks just a few days later. As you can see, the swelling and bruising has gone down considerably and looks pretty good for being smashed with a 95 lb. dumbbell. If you are wondering why it doesn’t look worse; it’s because I took the appropriate actions in the initial healing process.

What does this mean for you? Well, for starters, clean up your dumbbells when you’re finished with them and always be careful handling weights, especially heavy ones. Secondly, take the appropriate actions to determine the severity of your injury. Next, you want to find ways to continue your training without further aggravating the injury. Lastly, it is important to take care of it in the acute phases of the injury occurring to make sure the healing process goes smoothly.

I hope that you found this story valuable and eye-opening as to how to deal with an injury and continue your training. If you are looking for a complete training program where we put the science and common sense into everything we do, be sure to visit athleanx.com via the link below and use the program selector tool to find the plan that is best suited to your current goals.

For more videos on dealing with training injuries and how to train around them so that you never compromise your gains, make sure to subscribe to our channel here on youtube via the link below and remember to turn on your notifications so you never miss a new video when it’s published.

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