What I have a hard time with is, with a smith machine, you just have to lift the weight about 3 inches until you find a resting notch.
I fully understand that he could lift to failure and then he might not be able to lift it a further 3 inches. And if he’s doing an overhead press with — what? — 300 pounds? maybe I can see it — but what kind of idiot handles that kind of weight to absolutely beyond failure?
But there were bystanders. A human can lift a very heavy thing 3 inches, for one emergency moment. It seems odd to me that the people just couldn’t budge it even a little. Even just levering it — hey, let’s just get that right-hand side levered up to the notch! Then we’ll see about the left-hand side! How hard is that?
Further, if there were others there why couldn’t they just take the plates off the bar?