Long-Term Lifters: What broke down? And what did you have to rebuild?

Training
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The more I age and the more I talk to the even older guys in the gym, it seems like everyone has a story. We all know none of this stuff is ever truly linear forever, and very few manage to just keep adding load without taking a few steps backward. Sometimes they are small steps, sometimes they are big ones.

This could be anything from fixing a lift you got wrong for years, a recurring minor injury, a serious injury, a compensation you didn’t know you were making, and anything in between. It could even be something you are still currently figuring out - maybe someone has the experience you need to hear.

I thought this could be a good thread or reference point to perhaps examine our own training, help others, and learn how to solve things without all the noise of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all done things that you had faith in but was a waste of time. I’m also sure you’ve all come back from something gym-related that really tested your fortitude.

What’s your story?

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Awesome thread idea!

I’m young for an “old lifter” - 33, but with 15 years experience. The biggest issue for me has always been my low back. I’ve got spina bifida occulta and that makes my entire lumbar hyper mobile, so it’s really easy for me to throw it out or tweak it lifting. Fought it for several years and the big fix was to really strengthen my hamstrings and abs to hold everything where it needs to stay. Every lower body lift is always superset with hanging leg lifts to decompress my spine and keep my abs tight enough to do their job.

The other fun side for me has been fighting IBS-M and trying to eat a lifter’s diet without feeling miserable or producing more noxious gas than a prehistoric swamp. It took a lot of fine tuning, but 16/8 intermittent fasting and a heavy focus on fruits and vegetables for carbs/fiber did most of the work for me. Grains are ok in moderation, but my digestion really slows if I get more than ~25% of my carbs and fiber from even whole wheat-based grains.

My old timer realization is that powerlifting will get you strong, but you have to really build a lot of grip/forearm strength, cardio capacity, and overall back strength to be able to take advantage of it outside of the gym.

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Did my left shoulder AC joint about 12 years ago plain rugby. My right one took the strain when I was able to start lifting again as was consciously worried about injuring the left. That’s led to a succession of rotator cuff problems and then did my infraspinatus a couple of years ago. After 18 months of physio it’s relatively pain free but my tricep eroded. I wish I’d gone to physio sooner but was waiting for a promotion at work which bought in free private healthcare and in the end I said fuck it and funded it myself.

I’ve also had lower back problems for a few years but I can actually self manage most of the symptoms with daily mobility.

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Over pronation of the humerus, or too much emphasis on bench not enough on the small groups that position and stabilize the scapula.

Lots of rehab/prehab movements fixed that. High rep, slow motion, lots of angles, wall crawls, external rotations, etc.

Then hips- tightening of hip flexors & quads underactive glutes- that took a little more doing, cuz I dislocated my spine down low, but once again, it came down to stability, mobility, & strength. Strengthened the abs,loosened up the itb & hip flexors, kinda reconoitered the movement patterns to activate and strengthen the posterior chain and relieve stress from the fronterior stuff.

Currently- heart muscles. Screwed up bigtime there! Quit smoking, got some stents, staying up on cardio. But once you dick up that part, theres only so much coming back you can do. Just have to make the best of whats there, and be very judicious on how I delegate what I’m going to spend my energy on.

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I had to take a few years off to deal with a flesh-eating bacterial infection that eventually turned into necrotizing fasciitis that was solved by a partial foot amputation once it hit the bone.

I’ve mentioned it in other threads and even posted some photos of the whole thing.

For most of that time I had a picc line in my arm that also limited any upper body work and how high I could push my heart rate.

When I was going through that I had to trade intensity for frequency. I canceled my gym memberships and invested in a home gym and settled on a hybrid OLAD spreading out 10 sets over the day, with kb swings in between picc bag changes. I viewed it as a prrotectionary measure, even though I was losing weight. I dropped 40-50 lbs, and not in a good way. People kept saying I looked too skinny.

After the amputation I had to learn how to lift around missing a part of my body and how that affected simple things.

For instance, I can’t really do anything that requires pushing off your toes on one foot, like Push-ups, planks, walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats, and sprinting. Anything that requires specialized footwear or balance like skating, sking, surfing, biking, or rock climbing is out of the question.

When I was able to go back to the gym, I just pretended I time-traveled back to yell at my younger self how to do the basic shit and made very rapid progress by doing the basics again. Thank god for muscle memory.

So now I’m pretty close to where I was before, but with some necessary changes. I used to be really into sprints and deadlifts, both of which are difficult for me now, so things that don’t require weight on my front foot like swimming or front squats have become staples.

I’m a silver-lining kind of person, so I see the whole experience as something that gives me motivation to do things I would have ignored earlier.

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This is huge. Took me a long time to get there but I’ve been this way for approaching a decade. Bad shit is gonna happen eventually, might as well have a good attitude about it and still make a good life for yourself.

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I want to show this to my wife, but I also don’t wanna sleep on the couch :joy:

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The resilience runs deep in these last couple posts!

@Brant_Drake :flexed_biceps:. You weathered that storm like a boss.

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Most of my injuries over the years happened outside the weight room. Dirtbikes, mountain bikes, BMX, football, (broke my big toe running). Im still working my way back from a glute tendon tear. Had to bring my squat all the way back from an empty bar.

Ill be 40 next week. I feel good and still feel able to hit PRs but i have to go about it differently. I can’t recover from the high volume anymore. Shoulders and hips are usually the first to protest.

I love powerlifting. Im not particularly good, but I love the way a heavy single feels. Meets are so much fun. For that reason im sure ill keep coming back to it as long as I can find a way.

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I’ve had a lot break down, but most of it wasn’t in the weight room.

I’ve had the following fun experiences:

  • Surgery on my right shoulder to tighten it back up after chronic subluxations (2004)
  • Surgery on my left knee after a patellar subluxation (2008)
  • Surgery on my left hip to repair a torn labrum (2017)
  • Surgery on my right shoulder to repair a subluxed biceps tendon - same surgery as a ruptured biceps tendon (2019)

The only weight training injury occurred in 2014 when I bulged L3/L4 while spraining the ligaments of my SI joint. The disc swelled, pinched nerves, and my right medial quad quit working.

I’m no stranger to the orthopedic surgeon. The thing I want people to know is that just because one part of you breaks, it doesn’t mean the rest of you has to sit around. I never stopped training through any of that. Did I go to the gym too soon after knee surgery and end up lying on the floor for a bit? Sure.

I encourage anyone with an injury to find a way to keep going. The rest of your body will thank you.

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Did you have a sublux and a torn labrum?

I ask because I tore mine a few years back but didn’t get the surgery for it. Not as a badge of honor but because it subluxed and 3 days later I was back lifting no problem. Curious to know how it ages

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I was lucky and somehow never damaged my labrum. I was trying to pitch in college and it started to sublux on curve balls.

I also subluxed my right patella in high school and never had anything done. Now that I’ve injured both and had one cleaned up and left the other, I can say the repaired one is better. The problem with the other one is how it tracks. It’ll be bone on bone someday.

I say that to highlight the importance of function. If everything in your shoulder is in the right place and doing what it should, then you should be fine. It’s now looking like a 50/50 draw with torn rotator cuffs. Have surgery and go to PT or just go to PT? The end result is about the same.

I think you’ll be good as long as your labrum isn’t catching and causing issues.

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That’s what I was thinking at the time. I knew I could get my shoulder back to normal without the surgery and just PT with vigilance

Not yet!

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I didn’t care about actual muscles in my late 20s in fact I thought it would be cool to train strongman events only and do zero gym stuff and be a sleeper at events like yoke, farmers, carries and tire flips.

Then I started to loose my work and I was uneducated.

I got an education but rarely lifted, I would do 1-set of 20-30rep squats and 1-set of high rep deads like every 2-weeks all out efforts and then I started hitting 1-rep maxes on the deadlifts without any assistance work and not having money for proper eating.

Ended up hurt. I was in my early 40s and I had gained 40+ pounds all gut.

Now I’m 48 and lift every single freaking day. Train every area, Extra light if I have to for recovery and still go as heavy as I can but no more max high reps. I’m either doing super high reps for pump or 1-2 rep sets and being smart about it.

I plan to do this until the very end at whatever age I make it too. I’ll work around any adversity.

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Torn labrum in my right hip and also avoided surgery. Literally squatted my way to recovery. When I first did it, the joint would “lock up” and hurt so bad I’d have to drag my leg around work.

My hips feel good when I routinely squat and my shoulders feel good when I routinely press overhead. The old “motion is lotion” is definitely accurate.

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The stuff that screwed me up the most happened relatively early for me, I’m not even old yet

  • tore my MCL on a failed squat. This was a combination of 1) using a low bar position with the bar so low on my back that I can’t actually dump it, and 2) pushing myself hard on the 5/3/1 BBB accessory work for about two years straight and finally landing on a day when my entire body just crapped out in the middle of a 225x10 accessory squat set. So as you can imagine, I was in the hole on like rep 5 or 6 when suddenly I couldn’t get up, but I couldn’t dump the bar either due to my bar position, and eventually my knee caved in and my MCL popped. Took six months of rehab, with no lower body lifting, during which I shed like 50lbs of bodyweight since I didn’t have a reason to be heavy weight if I couldn’t lift heavy weight. Then as soon as rehab finished I felt amazing and started running in the treadmill for fun because it felt good, that quickly aggravated my MCL and then I had to go back for like 3 more months of rehab. All of this completely killed my motivation and enthusiasm for PL. Oh yeah and I almost lost my job because of this injury too.

  • After that injury I still kept lifting aimlessly for years until I moved to NYC. One of the big culture shifts moving from the suburbs to the city is that in the city you don’t drive, you walk everywhere. Well somehow the combination of 10k - 25k+ steps of city walking per day combined with squats and DL in the gym didn’t agree with me and I quickly developed sharp shooting pain in my glute every time I tried to squat or DL. I tried to work through it but that was a bad idea and eventually it progressed to sharp pain constantly in my ass muscles to the point where I couldn’t walk OR lift. Not walking wasn’t an option so I gave up squatting and DL. It was the only way to get the pain to stop. It took about 3 years for that “injury” to heal, and that pretty much put the nail in the coffin for me for a while in regards to lifting. I revisited it a again a few more years later and was able to get through an impromptu six-month PL training block without issues but then COVID happened and I lost interest again.

At this point other stuff has happened and I’m lifting again without issues but in general I’m trying to take everything a lot slower than I ever did before.

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Geez, some tough tests and fantastic shows of resillience in this thread. I want to comment on them all - but will try not to!

I fully hear you on that. My gut has long been a massive problem. It still is despite managing it however best I can. Foul taste in mouth, IBS just like you describe, acid reflux feeling like it’s burning a hole in my chest etc unresponsive to meds. I try and see the positives though, I quit alcohol and smoking due to my gut problems and eat a whole lot healthier than I would do otherwise. I can’t play down how much it’s got me down over the years, but we cope, and continue to move forward!

I think I’m kinda dealing with that now, not because of too much bench (although a pec strain probably contributed), but bad desk posture, bad sleep posture, time off, avoiding vertical pulls after an armpit tendon injury etc. Eventually my rows turned into shrugs with humerus still forward. I’ve solved much of it reconnecting to scapular depression and doing a ton of pull-aparts, external rotations, face pulls, all that fun stuff! My bench still feels shruggy at the bottom, which is a current struggle I’m trying to figure out.

This is so vital. I was a classic start gym because of insecurity and a fragile ego kind of guy. Too much volume, too much intensity, got strongish, got biggish, gym was my life and would always come first despite it making me miserable. Feeling buried and irritable all the time due to overtraining, guts in hell because of the forever bulk. It just wasn’t sustainable. Eventually I exploded and punched a wall over something so trivial I can’t even remember what it was. Destroyed some stuff in my wrist - worst thing ever at the time, best thing to ever happen in hindsight. I’ve had worse injuries and worser moments since but every single one has taught me something that makes me better. “The gift of injury”.

I know dem feels. I have a 100% torn/retracted adductor longus, not fun!

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I was mostly “real” injury-free until I turned 30, then it all piled up at once. Fell skiing going like 8 MPH (tried to throw a 180 the opposite of my normal direction) and I fell so slowly that my elbows locked before I hit the ground. Right humerus popped backwards about 2", so assuming I tore my labrum and I damaged the nerve bundle so bad I had TV static in my pinky and ring ringer for over a month. Had to relearn how to play guitar and did a whole bunch of self-rehab, but I was able to keep lifting - very light on the upper body - and got back to full strength and stability in a couple months.

Then, sprained my ankle stepping in a hole on a shitty softball field. Hurt, but didn’t affect lifting much. 2 months later did a full front/back split trying to get back to first base on a hard line out and my left hip came out of the socket. Probably the worst one I’ve had, it’s been 2 years and it still sounds like a dog chewing a chicken bone with certain movements. I lifted around it but it held me back for several months, and I’m still going narrow stance on squats and deadlifts to protect it.

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More silver linings! I was a functional alcoholic (2-3 beers a day plus I’d throw down and have 5-15 at least twice a week) until I started Adderall. The meds alone were the finishing touches on getting my stomach to a bearable level, but the side effect is that one beer now hangs me over like a 12 pack used to. So in 2025 I probably had <20 drinks and am at a total of 4 so far in 2026. Dropped 45 pounds just from that.

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