For you seasoned vets, have any of you reached a point where you are just done getting stronger or bigger?
Meaning you are just maintaining whatever you have built because you have no interest in adding more weight or reps to your lifts?
Just curious what your training looks like, how do you keep yourself motivated in the gym, etc?
I always tell my wife I would LOVE to get to a point where all I need to do is lift 2x a week for the rest of my life to maintain a baseline of strength/size that I have built (I’m still a few years away from anything like that).
I have trouble imagining a scenario where I ever go to the gym with the intent of just maintaining across the board. Now, I have done that with some lifts. Deadlift being one. I haven’t really improved my deadlift in 2-3 years, but I’ve done what is necessary to keep it around 600 while I work on bring other lifts up. But I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you’re talking about.
There will certainly come a point, probably sooner than I’d like, where progress really halts. But even when that happens, I think I will continue to TRY to get stronger. I may just fail, lol.
But honestly, I think I’m beyond a point where I can take my foot off the gas and expect to maintain the strength level I have now. I think if I decided I was good with having all my numbers drop by 10-15 percent, I could maintain that the way you’re describing.
Someone like Stu would probably be well suited to answer this question, since he’s past his competing days, but still lifts.
I’m recently realizing that my answer to this question is yes, at least for now. I’m 38 years old and lifetime natty, but in 10 years I may hit my mid-life crisis and decide to see what a well-managed steroid cycle can do for me. For now I’m content with my strength levels for everyday tasks and as a semi-serious jiu jitsu hobbyist.
I’m still figuring out what my lifting will look like, but I’m finding that I can go in to the gym, hit a heavy top set in the morning on a squat, push and pull movement, work all day and then still feel good for 90 minutes of jiu jitsu in the evening, albeit with a little less gas in the tank for rolling than if I hadn’t lifted.
I’ve also been doing a ton of shoulder rehab work which has done wonders for me, so I imagine there will be a lot more small movements like that in my future to keep mobility and good function.
There’s a lot of people I’ve encountered in jiu jitsu who don’t seem to think lifting is very important, usually pointing to the current top-dog in open competition being a relatively small and weak dude by the name of Marcelo Garcia, who beats jacked up monsters regularly. I’m beginning to think that’s bullshit for almost everyone not named Marcelo Garcia. I see quite a few people around me who do not lift accumulating some pretty nasty injuries along their jiu jitsu path. Not all of that is because of weakness or a lack of strength training, but I think a good chunk of it could be mitigated by getting stronger.
Jiu jitsu is a rough sport and one I hope to keep at for a long time to come, so my lifting goals right now really center around keeping myself strong, rugged and well-prepared for the rigors of my hobby and everything else I enjoy doing in life, which still includes lifting heavy.
I’m certainly done chasing numbers in the gym or on the platform. I also fully realize I’m probably not going to get considerably bigger or stronger, and that’s fine. I’ve been happy with my physique and strength levels for 5 years or so. I’d like to stay this size, maintain my strength, and stay relatively lean the majority of the year.
I go into the gym to work hard and enjoy the effort. I’ve been training for 2/3 of my life, so at this point it’s just something I do every day. It’s not like I’m not trying to add weight to my lifts or improve, I just realize that the gains I make are going to be increasingly minuscule relative to what I’ve already done.
Of course, everything I mentioned above is a lot easier to accept since I’ve started bjj. I get all of the self-improvement gratification I need from that now.
You should always want to get better at something or training is dumb. I still even want to hit some all time PRs, but I don’t chase those all the time anymore.
I recently found new motivation to get bigger and stronger. Prior to that I’d say I was doing what you described. I had goals but would rarely reach them or I’d reach the goal but lose ground somewhere else. I’d focus on regaining what I lost and lose ground on something else. It can become an endless cycle of you’re not smart enough to see it.
I think I’ll accept my strength levels once I stop manipulating my weight. I’m convinced that I don’t have what it takes to add much to the bar through improved neural efficiency and skill. I need to get bigger.
Once I reach that point of indefinite maintenance I think it’ll be a result of the risks outweighing the rewards.
“It hurts to do this so is lifting X amount of weight necessary or could my quality of life be the same if I settled for Y amount of weight (Y being lighter than X)?”
I’m an older lifter, been at it 31 years now. I’m not chasing numbers anymore but I still hit it 5 times a week with the goal of working the muscles as intensely as possible. Most of us older trainers are working around old injuries so there’s usually some limitations. At 59, my fire is still there and I still feel I can make improvements.
