Your Surgeries, Your Lifting, and Causality.

[Andres Onu]

Firstly, I am coming up on one year since I've started a barbell program (SS). It’s been great and I intend to continue. My question/concern is perhaps anecdotal, based on clips and articles featuring the SS Coaches.

Lifting is supposed to be a great and safe way to train, but then why do so many of you pros and coaches seem to have multiple surgeries on shoulders, knees and hips?

At age 29, I hope to still have a long time to get better before I get worse. But I have this idea that I’m doomed to end up under the knife for something related to lifting sooner or later. Already, I’m experiencing some lasting knee discomfort. I haven’t asked about it here because “What does the MRI say?” seems to be the themed response when searching the board. I haven’t had an MRI scan, yet.

Mark and team, are your joint problems completely unrelated to lifting? Does it go with the territory? Is it avoidable? Genetics? Circumstantial? Whatever happened to strong people being harder to kill than weak people?

Hold me. Say it will all be OK.

[dun08032863]

Genetics play a big part.

For example you have those guys benching with sloppy form for 30 years with no shoulder injuries or niggles, I see it all the time in my local gym.

All injuries are avoidable, but when you push yourself to the limits of strength, some times the weaklink in your body gets injured.

[Kyle Schuant]

Push yourself close to your limits, you will occasionally stumble past your limits and hurt yourself.

Do you imagine that sedentary people are never injured? I see sedentary newbies start up in my gym every day. They're mostly fucked. Rotator cuff impingements, patellar maltracking, rolled ankles, herniated lumbar discs. And the obese ones have ground-up cartilage and bursitis in their knees and hips, usually they get replacements in their 50s, and face a long rehab process where they put on another 10kg. Some get spinal fusion surgery, very very painful, even longer rehab, many never recover previous function.

Plus, as we age, whatever we do things start falling apart. Something's going to kill you eventually, and before it kills you it fucks you up. That's life. At some point you will be in pain.

You can be in pain and strong, or in pain and weak. Up to you.

[vanslix]

I can attest to seeing plenty of people in the clinic daily with arthritis (knee and hip, especially) who rarely exercised or only golfed, jogged, swam, etc. Of course, my sampling is biased because people don't call the doc when they feel well, but take it for what it's worth.

And disk issues often seem to be related more to genetic susceptibility than flat out over use. When I see a white male in his 30s to 40s with disk issues, one of the first questions is male family history. And I tell them it's better to be strong with back problems than weak with the same.