Lifters over 30: duh!
But being less silly, I imagine a regular lifting crowd, rather than anyone that competes in anything.
To the concept about longevity, I think @T3hPwnisher brings up a solid point: how many years you’ve been doing the activity has got to matter as much (or more) as chronological age.
A running back should expect (based on averages) a 6-year NFL career whether he was a redshirt freshman that graduated or drafted after his junior year, if that makes sense. It’s not that his 27th birthday shows up and takes his legs, it’s that 6 seasons of abuse took its toll.
That’s my uneducated guess anyway.
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Well yeah…I question if the author isn’t projecting .
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I’m 36.
Too much volume is one thing that will beat you up fast, and also it looks like most people can make good progress on less volume. Maybe slower (but maybe not), but this is a marathon and not a sprint.
Dave Ricks normally does only one heavy work set for each lift, once a week. He has light days for squat and bench where he’s doing a couple sets of 8 with 50%, and he does high rep assistance work that he doesn’t push hard, he says going too hard on assistance work will take away from the competition lifts. He’s been doing this for over 30 years too. There is an article about his training on a site called mystrengthbook.
That’s totally different than lifting weights though, we aren’t getting slammed into the ground over and over.
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I don’t think the concept of cumulative trauma is different, though. 8 years of wear and tear on your knees from squatting, for example, is 8 years whether you start at 20 or 28.
I think there is also an impact of chronological age, because life’s wear and tear as well as impact to your hormonal cascade comes with, but I don’t think it’s the sole factor.
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If it’s any consolation, I completely got the point you were making.
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It actually is - thanks
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I mentioned it above, but I’ll clarify. I follow Lee Boyce on social media. His target audience seems to be the average adult who’s sedentary but trying to get in shape. He posts a lot of good stuff that we all ignore. It’s prehab/rehab stuff. He also spends a lot of time reminding people to have realistic expectations. For example, you don’t need to sprint at 100% effort from starting blocks to get back in shape. You can use a falling start and run at 70% until your body adapts.
That appears to still be 300-400+ lbs. I don’t know if the body’s joints care how strong you are; that’s still a lot of weight pushing bones into cartilage while moving.
If he’s elite, then it’s part genetics, part work ethic, and part luck.
Joints and connective tissues actually get stronger from lifting. The problem is when either technique is bad or you do a ton of volume, and worse when it’s both combined. Ricks doesn’t do much volume at all, which I would assume is a major factor in his longevity.
Of course he doesn’t have average genetics, just look at him. How any 60 year old are in that kind of shape? He’s far from a normal guy, but the takeaway is that if you train smart and don’t overdo volume then you can keep progressing for a long time.
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Spoiler alert: The clock wins.
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That makes perfect sense. I have less than awesome joint structure. I imagine I have X amount of reps with (insert exercise here) until it does damage. Less reps per session means I might get more sessions. Less sessions per week might mean more weeks, months, etc.
It’s intensity, frequency, and volume applied to a lifetime instead of a week.
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Basically, if your training outpaces the rate at which your connective tissues and joints can recover and adapt then that is when you will run into problems. See these recent studies showing that 5 or 10 work sets actually result in more hypertrophy than 15 or 20? On top of that, 5 sets gave about the same results as 10, but the cumulative wear on the joints and connective tissues would be half.
The numbers there aren’t too important because it was all to failure and within a certain template, but the point is that even if more sets could give you faster gains in the short term it might not be sustainable for long.
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my apologize … I didnt look back far enough
So… This means I only have one week left then… Goodbye PRs, 1 RMs, RPE 11…
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The trick is knowing when you’re overdoing the volume, especially if the number on the bar is still moving up, you’re recovered enough to complete workouts, etc. Equally important I think is paying attention to how joints and connective tissue subjectively feel.
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Someone better tell Will Barotti to start getting real
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For what it’s worth, I will comment. I am 40 years old. I was never a “serious lifter” untill my mid 30’s. I have worked a very physical job (urban large tree removal) for the last 18 years, so I climb trees, cut them down, and carry away the parts, as in logs. It doesn’t get much more physical. I never made much progress lifting in my younger years for various reasons. In my mid 30’s I started to try making progress lifting again, with no knowledge of how to do so except to go in and kick ass. My idea was, if I work as hard as I can, I will get bigger and stronger. What happened is I would hit a plateau, work even harder, then get burned out or injured. I started reading t nation and didn’t know the difference between strategies for enhanced lifters and naturals. Learned my lesson there.
See, I love beating the shit out of myself and I am very good at it. I am not very good at knowing where to draw the line of “thats enough, stop now”. I need to balance my lifting and my work, and I feel like I have a limited amount of time to reach an arbitrary goal of my best possible level of attainment. I know I will never be an elite level lifter, but I want to be the best I can be. I really do need to “get real”! But I will push that line as far as I can because that is just my nature.
Anyway, I feel like I have almost figured out how to not push too hard.
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I did this too for quite a while, primarily in the south hills.
Very tough. You seem to have weathered it well.
32 and only really feel like I’m just getting warmed up…but maybe I should get real?
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I’m in the south hills. Tree work can beat you up. I have a long list of damaged parts, lol.