I think Punisher does have a point that Lee was a little disingenuous with this passage…
“In the case of strongmen, powerlifters and Olympic lifters, it’s easy to forget their age because their physical size is often so imposing that we just assume they’re older than they are. Think of Hossein Rezazadeh, who was winning gold in Athens, his second Olympics, at the tender age of 25.”
…when many of the world’s best strongmen and powerlifters (not as much OL’s) are into their 30’s, even their late 30’s and early 40’s.
But putting that aside, I think the article is trying to let people know that if your body keeps breaking down, these are some ways to adapt your training. @EyeDentist is a superb example of a guy that’s built and maintained a very impressive physique with, as far as I can tell, mostly high-rep exercises using pink dumbbells and a bunch of other stuff that I have no patience for (now), but might get into if my back goes out on me repeatedly or my knee explodes or whatever other calamity awaits me as I approach 40…
For sure. There are lots of little bits of good information to pick out from the writing, it’s just intertwined with some pretty silly, outlandish or just plain wrong info. I actually think a lot of that info woulda been good for lifters in their 20s. I know that, when I was younger, I trained pretty stupid, and more time spent building and less time spent testing woulda put me in a much better position TODAY, where I could actually start testing what I built.
The article is not that terrible. I’ve got nearly 30 years of competitive strength sports under my belt… you most certainly WILL pay a price for pushing the envelope. Yes, there are outliers who defy the odds… but many of them, if you know them personally, are just tough fuckers who push through it and are dealing with a laundry list of aches & pains. Now, being 30 isn’t that big of a deal in strength sports… depending on which ones. You don’t see a lot of great Olympic lifters past 30… the explosive nature of the movements will wear your ass out. (as will competitive sprinters, football, etc). But being 30 as a powerlifter or strongman… many are just reaching their prime (which is correlated to the years it takes to build quality muscle & mass).
40 isn’t terrible, but 45 is much different, and 50 is pretty fucking awful if you’ve ever discussed with real lifters. Yes, there are outliers. Many of the older ass-kickers though, aren’t '“lifers”. They did some sports in their youth, life/family took over for a decade or two, then they get back into it later in life… they avoided tremendous amounts of wear & tear. If you’ve been competing & training hard for decades without a break… i.e a “lifer”… whole different ball game.
One thing I’ve noticed pretty much across the board, is that age is hell on your shoulders. Only a handful of guys mid 40’s have highly functioning and strong (who cares if you’re weak & healthy) shoulders. Couple minor rotator cuff tears over the years, impingements, maybe a separation when you played sports in your youth… the shit adds up and your mobility & strength is garbage.
No, getting older is not the kiss of death, but it is an inevitability and always wins. Nothing to whine & cry about, but don’t be too quick to dismiss it… because you will lose against age, every time. Taking a long term & intelligent approach isn’t a bad idea.
Shoulders are important, and squatting with a barbell is Ruthless on my shoulders. Cambered Bars, Duffalo/Buffalo Bars, Saftey Squat Bars make a huge, huge difference. I don’t have to reach so far back and it’s way less shoulder abuse. I need to be able to squat down in my life, I don’t need to IPF legal squat in my daily life.
I’ve been doing high, high reps with low, low weights for my joints. High reps leg extensions, leg curls, band tricep extension, band resisted hip spreads. Not to “pump up” my muscles (even lighter weights than that) but to work the ligaments and tendons. Louie Simmons says this is the way to so it, because connective tissue has a poor blood supply. Stan Efferding said he cured quad tendinitis this way, and it kind of almost sounds like the Bill Starr rehab protocol. Is anyone else doing light weight, high rep, “joint work.”
I do this whenever something is bothering mine. Every time I got a buggy shoulder, I’d do 50-100 reps of partial presses with some 2.5lb plates or something silly and just focus on moving through the ROM. Same thing with hamstring tweaks.
I can’t remember the latest article I read on here. Probably one from ‘10 or earlier. Most the new ones are trash, gimicky bullshit written to push plazma and dumbbell kickbacks.
If anyone in heir thirties reads this and says “ Well, Lee Boyce said it, so I guess I’ll stop training hard,” then they probably should. Actually, if they read any of Boyce’s stuff, they should probably quit anyway.
I joke of course, only to ruffle @Frank_C ‘s feathers.
Yeah, I haven’t read the articles on a longtime. I tend to jump straight to the forums, but I ended up misclicking, seeing the title and thinking “Hey; I’m a lifter over 30. Maybe I need to get real!”
I’ve never had something serious enough to warrant this course of action, but I’ve always kept the portion of Dave Tate’s Iron Evolution series in mind where he talks about things like this.
I do all of this as a 24 year old. It’s important. You get all caught up in sets of 3-5 and only doing the powerlifts and shit when you’re young. Most of the people I know still only do all of it. It works, but it beats the fuck out of your body over time.
Back squatting kills me, so I front squat most of the year and do a TON of posterior chain work.
You have to find what works for you and move from there and destroy this dogma that you have to do powerlifts, lift like a bodybuilder, etc. If you do not/do not wish to compete, do what pushes you towards your goals, and gets you where you want.
The only thing that accurate is your better Olympic lifters are in their 20’s. After which there is a decline in explosiveness … which is not as important in strongman and powerlifting too a extent.
Speed/quickness/explosiveness is the first to go for sure. In a lot of sports, skill and strength can compensate, and keep the best athletes in the game for longer than seems “normal”.
Usually, the brain goes last, and that’s the issue for old farts (raises hand) who injure themselves because they think they can still do stuff that they can’t, and shouldn’t…
As I always research and explain when someone makes this made-up claim… you’re simply wrong. Of the 60 articles and tips that’ve been published so far this month, only 11 of them contain any link to a product, and 9 of those are casual mentions within context, not any kind of belabored point.
And the jab about kickbacks is equally imaginary. The crux of training advice is still hard conditioning/smart cardio and big lifts like squat/deadlift/press variations.
As for Boyce’s article, I believe the title itself should be a non-issue because, yes, it’s often editor-chosen either for clicks or to perk interest or sometimes as a succinct way to explain what the article discusses. Editors are an absolute necessity, especially in the fitness world. Not going to name names, but I once edited a training article that was four or five pages but consisted of three paragraphs.
So yeah, you don’t want to, and probably couldn’t, read most unedited stuff anywhere. That said, if you tend to read too much into titles, it’s probably best to imagine every article as just “New Training Article by This Coach” or “New Nutrition Article by That Coach”.
For sure, 30 is an arbitrary and arguably young line to draw in the sand, but he says throughout the piece that it’s not anything close to an excuse to train easy or set low goals, it’s simply about training smart and planning to lift for the long-term. I’m not sure how that’s debatable advice.
I will state again my issue is regarding his commentary on the age of strongman/powerlifters, rather than the title of the article. It seems like a lot of fabrication to make a point that wasn’t necessary at all.
I think the advice in the article has a place and can be implemented when needed, and a lot of it would be even better for the 20 year old crowd, but he took a step well outside his wheelhouse at the very beginning and it makes reading through the rest without bias difficult.
right. he could have said from the beginning, ‘professional strength athletes are often an exception to this, for all kinds of reasons, but for most amateur athletes, we have to adjust our training around the age of 30 to preserve our quality of life’. That would ring very true for me.
Of note in Strongman: The top 4 guys in the world right now are all 29 and over, and the winner from last year is 30. Average age between them is 34ish.
Strongman is one of those sports that people don’t often get into before the age of 20+ in the first place. The best in the world are definitely getting in late because they’re playing real sports in high school and college. Shaw played college basketball, I think Thor played at a high level for his country as well (maybe pro? IDK), Eddie Hall is a record-holding junior swimmer, and Z is a mysterious Lithuanian who appeared out of nowhere with a 500 lbs log press, he was never born and will never die.
Too true. And on that note, the notion that you’re only going to hit big lifts in your 20s as an amateur makes even less sense, simply because said amateurs will in no way have built up the necessary volume in that time to be able to hit any sort of big lift. The maturation simply takes time.
The part about real sports is also why we see this divide in weightlifting compared to powerlifting/strongman. Countries will sponsor athletes in weightlifting, and it’ll be super competitive to take a topspot, meaning youth will play a role and someone will get to the podium in there 20s and STILL have almost 2 full decades of training under their belt to hit those lifts.
