I need some good advice here. Started at 119lbs when I was 18, hit a hard plateau at 165 (37yo), and now the biggest I’ve ever been at 180 (43yo).
However, my workouts used to be about volume and pushing myself HARD. Now, I’m having to constantly drop volume and intensity. Instead of the focus being on building muscle, it’s about not accidentally lifting enough to destroy my connective tissue. My joints are soooo easy to hurt now. Elbow tendons flare up easy, I tore my wrist FCU and AC joint in my shoulder. I had surgery on my common flexor. I feel like all I do now is rehab tendons.
All my workouts feel easy (because intensity hurts tendons) and I’m still growing, but I’m so sick of hurt joints. What do you guys do for your joints?
Support parts that hurt. They’ve got braces and cuffs for every joint. Get some and wear it every workout. I use “Voodoo Floss.” It’s like a rubber ACE Bandage, so it’s versatile and can be used everywhere. Wrist, elbow, shoulder, no problem.
I wear neoprene sleeves on my elbows and knees and I’m pretty into using “cheater” bars like the SSB. I think exercise sequence can also help and just being willing to substitute movements that hurt.
Specific training for the connective tissue. If you hurt yourself, then do rehab, then return to normal training and hurt yourself again, something has got to change. So you do a few months of training with the goal of working on the joints. Basically lighter weights and higher reps on stuff that doesn’t hurt for awhile. And instead of overwhelming your joints right away, you stimulate and rebuild them. So when you return to normal training your connective tissue is no longer a weakness hold you back. We could do like 4 books worth of material here. How exactly you set it up will depend on how your workouts are arranged now, but that’s the general idea.
Also, think about your hormones. It’s normal for your joints to hurt if your estrogen is high and test is low. If your diet or sleep is fucked up, cleaning those issues up might make your joints hurt less. Again, how to approach this depends on what you’re doing now. We could talk about going to bed earlier, all the way up to taking steroids.
I’ve had issues for years with joint/tendon/inflammation.
You just have to find exercises/reps/weights that don’t bother you.
Welcome to getting old!!!
I’ve used everything from peptides to cortisone to malaoxon to get rid of the inflammation.
Thanks for this. I’ve swapped out a lot of painful exercises and started using lighter weight for 15 rep sets. I always get more than 8hr of sleep since I’m retired. My dr. keeps my test at 1000, which is 90mg test cyp twice a week.
I count all my macros, but most of my carbs are junk or liquid.
Daily, I take krill oil, a multivitamin/mineral, d3+k2 and a zink/mag for sleep.
I do legs, push, pull, rest, legs, push, pull, rest. After 4 cycles of that, I take an entire week off and start again. All my workouts are 4-6 movements with everything being 3 sets.
I do legs, push, pull, rest, legs, push, pull, rest. After 4 cycles of that, I take an entire week off and start again. All my workouts are 4-6 movements with everything being 3 sets.
I only take it to failure if I’m feeling really good with no pain. Otherwise, I’m always very cautious now.
Yeah, the Voodoo Floss is cool because it can go way tighter and more supportive than sleeves. And then you can back off the tightness over time. And use it on other body parts too. No sizing to worry about. blah blah blah.
As far as training, it looks like you’re going for “effective reps” and avoiding “junk volume” and smart stuff like that?
An example of a chest day is a pressing movement, flys, a triceps iso and then lateral raises, all 3 sets with 2min rest between everything unless I’m feeling amazing and then I’ll rest less.
In this case, at least, maybe we could make the argument that a bunch of lower stress pre-fatigue work before the main movements might be a smart strategy?
Dude! That’s awesome. A compound move, then some isolation moves. Higher reps so the weights are lighter.
That will be easy tweak. The tendons, ligaments and cartilage in your joints don’t get much blood, so to heal them you want to get a nice pump in the muscles around the joint. And then structure the rest periods to keep the swelling up.
So Push day could be switched to
Fly x 20
Tricep Pushdown x 20
Delt Raise x 20
In a circuit, not to failure, no rest between moves. For 3-4 rounds, with 1 minute rest between rounds. Decreasing rest times as you move towards deload week.
Followed by
Main Pressing Lift x 10 reps x 5 sets
with 2 minute rest periods, decreasing test time week by week until deload.
That way you get everything ready before your big Pressing lift. The individual muscles get warm, lengthened and primed up. The tendons get into their proper grooves. The short rests keep the blood “in.” After then main lift should be “perfect.”
And decreasing the rest times allows it to feel challenging, builds your conditioning and builds capillaries and mitochondria so you’re actually getting “better” pumps.
After a month or 2 of that, you could switch back to your “normal” sets/reps/rest times. But keep the structure of small moves before big moves. As like a middle ground approach to train more normally, but still keep the weights lighter.
And after a month or two training that way, you will have given your joints like 4 months of lighter training to catch up with your muscles. Without totally losing every bit of mass.
Thanks! My wrist and shoulder are getting better quickly. My elbow extensor tendons haven’t gotten worse, but they’re healing incredibly slowly. I also just had lab work that showed my test at 1600, so they’re dropping me from 180mg/wk to 140.
