SMU safety Chris Banjo has two ways to look at Friday this week.

He can revel in the fact that he established a new personal standard by bench pressing 385 pounds Thursday morning, a hefty lift for a player whose weight is listed at just 200 pounds.

Safety Chris Banjo said he is looking forward to joining his teammates in spring workouts after he recovers from wrist surgery (photo by Travis Johnston).

The lift is made even made even more impressive considering Banjo accomplished the feat with a broken bone in his wrist.

Banjo has a fracture of the navicular (or scaphoid) bone in his right wrist, near the base of the thumb. So while he is justifiably proud of his lift, he’ll undergo surgery Friday — the day before his 21st birthday — to have a small screw inserted into the bone to accelerate the healing process.

“They said I’ll be out until about a week, week-and-a-half into spring (workouts), but I want to push to try to get back for the start,” Banjo said. “I don’t want to miss any time.”

Banjo said he originally hurt his wrist Oct. 2 in SMU’s victory over Rice, although he doesn’t remember a specific play.

“It hurt after that, and I got an X-ray, but it didn’t show anything,” he said. “I thought it was just sprained.

“It hurt, but this is football. Sometimes you’ve got to suck it up and play.”

Banjo played the rest of the season, despite the discomfort in his arm. When he and his teammates began working out in their offseason conditioning program, the pain in Banjo’s wrist persisted; another X-ray showed the fractured bone.

Banjo said he wants to bench press 400 pounds before he graduates next year. “I hope this doesn’t set me back too far in the weight room,” he said.

He also said he wanted to postpone Friday’s operation until after spring workouts — an idea that was vetoed by the Mustangs’ medical staff.

“I wanted to wait until after spring,” he said. “But (the doctors) said I’ve got to get it done now, because it could become arthritic.

“It’s not really how I wanted to spend my birthday, but it’s going to be good to get it done as soon as possible, because I want to make sure I’m completely ready for the season.”