Long term effects of weight lifting.
There's a thread in Mark's Q&A section called "Rips shoulder" which has turned into a discussion of the long term effects of weight lifting. I decided to move the discussion here since I think Rip has said all he wants to on the topic and my further questions won't be directed at him.
I am curious about people's educated guesses (or if you have evidence that would be sweet) about the following info:
-What % of competitive power lifters have significantly below average mobility or strength after 50 years old and how does this compare to that of the normal population? Does it matter if they only lifted competitively for 2/5/10/15 years?
-What about people who squat about 2x their weight and deadlift 3x their weight several times a week over a period of Y years, recreationally?
-What about people who lift at an 'intermediate' level for 2/5/10/20 years?
Apparently scientific studies haven't been done to precisely answer those questions, but I would expect people for whom weightlifting is a significant part of their lives to have some sort of educated guess about this stuff. For instance maybe you know about 30 former competitive lifters and 50% of them are hobbling around like Phil Jackson and could now easily be beaten in a fight by an average computer programmer.
Over in Rip's Q&A thread, it almost seems like everyone there thinks getting as strong as possible should be my life's ultimate goal regardless of the long term effects. If all some of you care about is being as strong as possible in the short term, why not do steriods too?