A fitness enthusiast lifts during a training session. Some health-club injuries are caused by faulty equipment, but most mishaps are the result of improper form on the part of the participant.

MCT / Mark Reis

Surely our friendly neighborhood health clubs, supposedly temples of longevity and Lycra, cannot actually be injurious to our health.

Surely the several high-profile cases of gym mishaps involving notable athletes, including the Sacramento Kings’ Francisco Garcia and USC football player Stafon Johnson, are flukes.

And that guy in Chicago suing his health club over a deflated Swiss ball, that man in Taiwan who won a court judgment after slipping on a wet gym floor, and that woman in Los Angeles nearly chewed up by a treadmill? Again, flukes, right?

In a word, yes. Accidents involving equipment in health clubs, gyms and team weight rooms hardly are common, experts say, and nothing to raise your blood pressure over. For every Garcia — who broke his wrist hoisting dumbbells after the ball he was sitting on burst — scores of exercisers daily bob upon such balls without incident.

A 2000 article in the journal The Physician and Sports Medicine looked at emergency-room visits nationwide for weightlifting injuries from 1978 to 1998 — the most recent data studied. It showed that while minor injuries (soft-tissue related) jumped 35 percent during the period, 64 percent of all injuries were little more than bruises.

Dr. Ches Jones, a health science professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and the study’s author, said, “More serious injuries that required hospitalization were rare. In most cases, the injury was due to the individual not taking proper safety measures, such as wearing flip-flops instead of shoes, [and the] result was a broken toe.

“There were a few cases in which the equipment was at fault. But the majority were due to not practicing safety by the person lifting the weights.”

In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported that most weightlifting injuries occur at home, not in health clubs or school weight rooms.

Still, experts say health club members need to exercise vigilance when it comes to using weights, treadmills, exercise balls and other fitness tools.

“Pretty much throughout the health club, you have to be careful,” says Dr. Henry Williford, an exercise physiologist at Auburn University, Montgomery, who has long studied exercise safety. “In the weight room, there have been problems with faulty equipment and kids in the weight room that shouldn’t have been in there.

“Spotters [people who guide the bar back into place following a set of repetitions] are very important. Now, the weights people lift are so heavy it may take three spotters instead of one. And balls require a certain amount of balance and skill, and you have to make sure [they’re] inflated correctly.”

In seven years as a personal trainer, Mike Mendoza says he has witnessed only “a handful” of accidents in the free-weight area. But that doesn’t mean lifters aren’t at risk, he says. He puts the blame on poor form and inattention rather than faulty equipment.

“I’d say about 40 percent of the guys in there have poor form,” Mendoza says. “Or it’s a result of guys doing too much [weight] too soon.”

When it comes to using heavy weights, such as the bench press or squats, spotters become vital. Mendoza says he’s seen spotters “watching TV or watching the woman walking by” rather than attending to the task at hand.

Fitness instructor Zach Trowbridge says lifters need responsible spotters familiar with the experience level and skill of the lifter.

“You really need to have a level of confidence with the spotter and be very clear with what you want,” Trowbridge says. “Tell him beforehand, ‘I want to lift off on three’ or ‘On your count.’ ”

Many health clubs have instructors who roam the weight room to monitor activity and make sure people lift safely and with proper form. The problem is getting people to listen.

“When I try to correct someone’s form, they don’t want to hear it,” Mendoza says. “It’s almost always men.”

The injury to USC’s Johnson, who required surgery after dropping a bench-press bar on his throat in late September, was not a case of too much weight or poor form. But some have speculated that a popular “false grip” on the bar — with the thumb next to the fingers instead of hooked around the bar — could have been a reason it slipped.

“A lot of guys are using it,” Trowbridge says. “They call it the suicide grip, the monkey grip or the thumbless grip. It’s for comfort on the wrist, but at the same time, the risk factors go through the roof.”