Lifting Longevity and Its Impact on Injury Rates

[Oldman]

A question for elderly lifters and all you younger guys who've been at it for a long time.

As an elderly lifter (54; 5’8”; 220), relatively new to the sport (1 year, 3 months), I am wondering about the impact of long-term lifting on the rate of injury. I know that lifting heavy shit leads to adaptations beyond the muscular, including tendons, ligaments, bone, and other physiologic systems. My experience in lifting has included three groin pulls, each in a slightly different place, while doing LBBS. Each time I used the Starr Rehab Protocol, and came back to lift heavier than before. Most recently (yesterday), I seemed to have tweaked, pulled, or otherwise fucked up a muscle or tissue under my left rib at the top and outside of the abs, while doing a 225 lb. warm up set on my way to a 405 lbs deadlift.

This got me to wondering: do injury rates slow down due to the adaptations from heavy lifting, or do injury rates stay roughly the same because lifters continuously add weight to their lifts? What have your experiences been regarding lifting longevity and injuries?

[Mark E. Hurling]

Tendons, ligaments, and bones all get thicker and stronger under load as an adaptation. I've read that the x-ray has to get turned up a little on older lifter's bones to get to what needs to be seen. As for injury rates, I think you become less prone to some kinds of injuries. My lower back has had fewer problems in the last 6 months or so and it was a source of intermittent discomfort for 20+ years until I started squatting and deadlifting heavy again.

As I type this my right knee is unhappy, I don't know specifically why other than that old judo injury from age 19 just deviling me because of the Winter "weather" here in CA. But that's just anecdotal.

[Oldster]

Tendons, ligaments, and bones all get thicker and stronger under load as an adaptation. I've read that the x-ray has to get turned up a little on older lifter's bones to get to what needs to be seen. As for injury rates, I think you become less prone to some kinds of injuries.

What Mark said. I have personal experience with what I put in bold.

Be smart about your lifting, don't get in a big hurry, think years and years rather than weeks or months even and you'll be fine. Try to be a little stronger in 6 weeks than you are now and in 6 years you will be so much stronger you won't recognize yourself. Think foundation foundation foundation work. Get stronger at the biggest 5 or 6 movements and you'll be stronger than 99% of the public.

[Oldman]

Tendons, ligaments, and bones all get thicker and stronger under load as an adaptation. I've read that the x-ray has to get turned up a little on older lifter's bones to get to what needs to be seen. As for injury rates, I think you become less prone to some kinds of injuries. My lower back has had fewer problems in the last 6 months or so and it was a source of intermittent discomfort for 20+ years until I started squatting and deadlifting heavy again.

As I type this my right knee is unhappy, I don't know specifically why other than that old judo injury from age 19 just deviling me because of the Winter "weather" here in CA. But that's just anecdotal.

Thanks, Mark, for the benefit of your experience. Knees and shoulders seem to be what I hear about most often. It is good to hear about the x-ray on older lifters' bones: as I age, I would prefer to be one of those guys whose posture is upright, rather than humpbacked, if you know what I mean. Have your injuries over the years tended to be focused on the smaller joints and muscles?

[Oldman]

What Mark said. I have personal experience with what I put in bold.

Be smart about your lifting, don't get in a big hurry, think years and years rather than weeks or months even and you'll be fine. Try to be a little stronger in 6 weeks than you are now and in 6 years you will be so much stronger you won't recognize yourself. Think foundation foundation foundation work. Get stronger at the biggest 5 or 6 movements and you'll be stronger than 99% of the public.

Oldster, this is the very thing I have been working on. It is hard to cultivate the patience for this orientation to the sport, because most activities seem to encourage the exact opposite: quick gains and big jumps in performance. I am in this game for the long haul.

[Oldster]

I would prefer to be one of those guys whose posture is upright, rather than humpbacked, if you know what I mean.

I may have told this story before but if I have, don't stop me.....

When I was growing up I used to work for an old guy that was all bent over and had a big hump in his back. He was very muscular, very active but he was bent over so bad that I swore I wouldn't let that happen to me. So I started standing very erect with my shoulders pulled back a bit. I overdid it as everything else I do in life and ended up without a curve in my neck from standing so straight for so many years. But between lifting, chiropractic and posture, I have been able to keep good posture over my life.

As I got older I found out something about my old bent over employer. Because he was so muscular and I was so young, I naturally expected he was fairly young. Turns out he was nearing 80 years old at the time and was bent over from years of using a shovel and wheel barrow!

[Mark E. Hurling]

Thanks, Mark, for the benefit of your experience. Knees and shoulders seem to be what I hear about most often. It is good to hear about the x-ray on older lifters' bones: as I age, I would prefer to be one of those guys whose posture is upright, rather than humpbacked, if you know what I mean. Have your injuries over the years tended to be focused on the smaller joints and muscles?

As a kid and ever since, I have had problems with my ankles. Mainly my right one which was broken twice as I said in another thread in high school football and college judo. But that was probably the result of being a fat kid with overloaded feet. I frequently have problems with my arches and insteps since my 30's. I have no idea why, because I was a more or less "normal" 185 back then.

I also got my right shoulder dislocated (specially for me and free of charge!) in judo. It has deviled me ever since on and off, but less so now that I use less volume and have dropped bad exercises like presses and pulldowns behind my neck.

Then there's my right knee, but you already know about that.

As I have taken up jujitsu in the last 8 or so years my wrists, fingers, and elbows hurt every week or so. Because of some of the arm bars, wrist locks, and finger bars we do. Like for instance my left index finger's outermost knuckle hurts a lot right now and won't bend. Master Bellman used me as a crash dummy yesterday for how to deal with an attempted grab. It involved some rather forcible bending of the fingers in directions God did not intend for them to go.

So it comes down to what kind of hazards you subject yourself to.

[Kyle Schuant]

It depends.

I find that lifting at all will flare up old injuries you'd forgotten about. In most cases you never cure these issues, you just manage them.

Lifting heavy and often, or progressing quickly, will sometimes create new injuries. This gives you new things to manage.

Lifting moderately heavy and often, or heavy and less often, progressing slowly - well, this seems to minimise injuries, both in lifting and life in general.

I think of it this way: a 20yo car with 250,000 miles on it will have more problems than a 30yo car with 50,000 miles on it. But your car with more miles on it will have taken you to more interesting places.

Of course, the analogy is imperfect because as Oldman says, the body adapts. But there's a limit to how quickly it can adapt, and the speed of adaptation varies from one individual to another, and declines as we age. My 64yo client asked if she could ever lift 100kg. "Of course," I said, "assuming no major injuries along the way."
She laughed, "You're always so optimistic! You always say I can do more."
"You always can do more. The only question is how much work and time it'll take to get there. If we underestimate the time and work, you get injured and because you spend that time recovering it ends up taking longer than if we overestimated."

I think you also have to be clear on your goals. Physical training can change how you look, feel and perform. If you maximise one you may have to sacrifice another one. Jim Wendler writes about this in his introduction to 531, that he was not "fit" in his mind, he could only "waddle out to the monolift and squat 1,000lbs". Now he doesn't waddle, but also he doesn't squat 1,000lbs. He still squats a shitload more than any of us are likely to, though!

Top athletes are not healthy. People with sixpack abs are not healthy. It may be that you can lift X lbs and be really healthy, but if you push to Y lbs you'll hurt yourself. Unfortunately you can only discover this by hitting Y and getting hurt. If your goal is to lift the most you can - performance - then you accept injuries - impact health, how you feel. If your goal is health then you'll go easier, sacrifice performance for health.

[jimk]

A question for elderly lifters and all you younger guys who've been at it for a long time.

As an elderly lifter (54; 5’8”; 220), relatively new to the sport (1 year, 3 months), I am wondering about the impact of long-term lifting on the rate of injury.

Although I am a long way from a 405 deadlift, I did want to comment on the "relatively new to the sport" part of your question. As someone who's only discovered the barbell sport only a few years ago, I've rued a misspent youth training for marathons in the time I could have more productively been adding some muscle mass. On the other hand, I've also speculated that maybe there is a silver lining to the cloud in that these 58 year old knees have not been subjected to 40 years of squats. To paraphrase Brooks Kubic quoting Tommy Kono, "These knees only have so many squats in them." I did my first barbell squat at 55, and while I may be fat, old, slow, inflexible, weak and gray, I think my previous athletic career of 12 oz curls and jogging may have spared my knees and the rest of my joints some strain.

Yeah, sometimes somethings hurt, in particular when I attempt to learn a new lift (I've found a great coach and have been playing with Oly lifts for the last 3 months, my shoulders are killing me.) Like talking to yourself in your backswing, I've discovered that trying to adjust the angle of the lumbar spine during the descent of a 275 lb back squat is a really bad idea. But I think there may be a benefit to being relatively new to the sport as well, we may just have less sand in the gears. I PRed a bench yesterday, up 1.25 lbs; I've found the small victories, slow and steady progress, have helped me avoid more severe damage by going too heavy too fast.

[Oldman]

As a kid and ever since, I have had problems with my ankles. Mainly my right one which was broken twice as I said in another thread in high school football and college judo. But that was probably the result of being a fat kid with overloaded feet. I frequently have problems with my arches and insteps since my 30's. I have no idea why, because I was a more or less "normal" 185 back then.

I also got my right shoulder dislocated (specially for me and free of charge!) in judo. It has deviled me ever since on and off, but less so now that I use less volume and have dropped bad exercises like presses and pulldowns behind my neck.

Then there's my right knee, but you already know about that.

As I have taken up jujitsu in the last 8 or so years my wrists, fingers, and elbows hurt every week or so. Because of some of the arm bars, wrist locks, and finger bars we do. Like for instance my left index finger's outermost knuckle hurts a lot right now and won't bend. Master Bellman used me as a crash dummy yesterday for how to deal with an attempted grab. It involved some rather forcible bending of the fingers in directions God intend for them to go.

So it comes down to what kind of hazards you subject yourself to.

So, Mark, does some of your weight training focus on driving your martial arts work? I have been reading yours and Sully's logs and am interested to know if you have to emphasize certain lifts to drive your martial arts work. Squat Queen and I did some karate when we first met, but we left it off, maybe, 30 years ago. Also, do you find that certain programming helps keep the injuries at bay?