Long term effects of weight lifting.

[RobCor]

A good question, but...

You failed on 145 so shut the fuck up you weak bitch

This just makes you an asshole.

[Mr.City]

Like I said in Rip's thread, injury is always there because your body has an expiration. I'm not saying you're going to need a wheelchair in 10 years, but you will most likely have some marks on you on.

[thefinalsql]

No one has mentioned bone density yet. That would be a positive effect of long term weightlifting. Less of a chance slipping in the shower and breaking a hip later in life comes to mind.

[Les Hahn]

This is an interesting question. I have worked out with a couple of older powerlifters, both of them have never had serious injuries. The one lady is 49 and she has been competing since 1984. She did retire in the early 2000's but came back in 2008. I think she plans on trying to win the Worlds next year since they are in America... after that she might retire at 50. Her best competition lifts in one meet were 700/400/500. She has done more in the gym and even benched 407 at the APF nationals this last weekend for a new world record. So she is on the high end of the sport, with 13 national and 5 world titles. She has never been seriously injured, but she has seen people come and go with major injuries all the time.

The other guy I trained with was 50 at did something like 800/500/650 in competition. I think he too plans on doing it for a few more years and then quitting. He has never been seriously injured, but again he knows people that have died or been injured and never came back.

Both of them have similar ideas when it comes to training. A big thing is if their head is not in it, they will back off the weight and just do the work. If you aren't mentally/physically ready to do it... do it next time! They also warm up quite a bit, which probably has something to do with their age as well. They both preach the "slowly but surely" method. If you gain too fast, especially on drugs, it can lead to future injuries. I'm still new to all of this, but what they say makes sense.

No matter what sport you play, there is always a chance of getting injured. Someone posted some injury stats a while back, and weightlifting was pretty low on the list. I imagine powerlifting might even be a little lower, depending how you train.

[Marotta]

If you're gonna lift, shut the fuck up and lift, if not, leave the people who are alone.

[Brodie Butland]

I recently mangled my left shoulder, to the point where I will be off SS for about two months, give or take. I've posted that up in another thread. I'm pretty sure the bench press eventually got me, because I was putting up 220 lbs for 3 sets of 5 (a bit above my bodyweight) when I started noticing things go south really fast. I doubt the bench press caused the shoulder problem, but it likely helped reach the breaking point of something latent that was already there. So, there's the risk--a beat up shoulder that puts me out of commission, possibly (though unlikely) to the point where I won't be able to bench press heavily ever again.

Here's what I got during my lifetime as a result of pushing weights hard, even if it meant injuries or embarrassing fails (like the time I set the squat safeties too low and literally got stuck between the bar and the floor):

--A fiancee I'm marrying in less than three weeks, who said that if I looked the way I did in college (before lifting), she never would have gone out with me on a second date.
--A much stronger immune system
--The ability to take hits and falls
--Being able to carry objects around the house without straining muscles
--Better sexual performance
--Better overall health indicators, esp. LDL cholesterol levels and triglycerides
--Better athletic performance with family (e.g. basketball, touch football, playing tag with nieces)
--Significant confidence boost and beating chronic depression (without drugs)
--A lot more energy
--More respect from others


So why did I push myself to go to 220 lbs on the bench instead of stopping at 200 or 185 (which likely would have been safer)? Why am I trying to become a member of the 1,000 club by November? It's not like I'll ever compete--a max 250 lbs bench in competition will never cut it, nor would a 1,000 total lift. It's because lifting heavy and pushing for new records has made my life better. I'll gladly take injuries in exchange, even chronic ones that are yet to come.

Some members on this forum will gladly make much greater tradeoffs than I have made, and probably will make. And some will settle for "good enough" to avoid injuries due to weightlifting. Neither is objectively right or wrong--it's about choices. Choose what you can live with.

And by the way, I don't do steroids because in my view, it's cheating. I like it to just be me and the steel.

[jgh]

I personally don't see anything wrong with just exhausting novice gains and then maintaining them. I figure if someone does that, they're far ahead of the curve of average folk and will reap many benefits of every day life strength. Sure, it's not an ambitious "champion" attitude, but some people prefer to focus on other aspects of their life.

At the very least, the BW bench, 1.5 BW squat and 2x BW deadlift are good short term goals. I doubt there are many folks who get there and say "okay, this is enough, I'm just going to chill here." First, if you get there, you will have enjoyed lifting enough to do so, so why stop now? Second, those goals are totally arbitrary and I bet most would feel like they can go a bit farther.

Regarding injuries, rock climbing has fucked me over more than weight training has (so far). At the non-competitive level, I think of weight training as advanced prehab, i.e. you're doing all of the stuff that physical therapists tell injured people to do. So as long as you maintain a sane balance of things, it seems intuitively hard to argue that weight training is something to be concerned with injury-wise.

I also think that a lot of weight training injuries are attributable to fucked movement patterns. Squatting isn't something that should be mind blowing and theoretically we can all do it just fine when we're little. Somewhere along the way we lose our ability to squat, tumble, stand up properly, and even walk well and all of the little errors accumulated over the years in movement patterns get amplified during weight training, resulting in injuries that are generally solved by fixing fucked movement patterns. I don't consider this a bad thing since I'd like to red flag and fix my movement patterns now rather than when I'm 70.

Apologies if the above seems oversimplified but you can think of it as more of a philosophy than something to be taken literally. I'd like to be able to move well and strong through all movement patterns well into old age, and I think weight training is a great way to get there.

[Jefferson]

On the other hand, my non-lifting but physically active friends in their mid 30s all have already collected things like torn ACLs and other knee damage, dislocated shoulders, a torn Achilles', back pain from various known and unknown causes, etc. (myself i have a somewhat tweaked knee w/ a replaced ACL from a skiing accident, a slightly tweaked back from a low speed car accident and some loose and occasionally hurting ankles that i sprained (badly) multiple times in middle school and hs) .

This is the thing. Weightlifting isn't really any worse for your body than any other form of exercise. Joggers, soccer players, whatever, they all get injured too. The longer you live an active life the more injuries you will build up.

5) Being heavy is hard on your knees. I don't see why this would vary based on muscle vs fat.

Most people on this forum are just too fat. If you keep your bodyfat low you need never be very heavy.

The thing about Rippetoe, is he just trains through his injuries. He never lets them heal properly, in one of those round table things Jim Wendler commented that lots of powerlifters did that, and that he made a point of letting his injuries heal. He gave an example of having a bad case of tendinitis in his teens, he reacted by just not lifting for 3 months and came back to lifting and it's never come back for him - prioritized his health over progress in the gym. Rippetoe or Dave Tate on the other hand would just have trained through it - they prioritize progress in the gym over health.

[LimieJosh]

Rippetoe or Dave Tate on the other hand would just have trained through it.

Shut up

[Symmetry]

I'm curious, Symmetry. Are you just trying to find excuses not to do the program? Or what?

Nope, I actually really enjoy the program. In fact I've gotten greedy and have been going to the gym more than it calls for (every other day) and doing more lifts than it calls for (deadlifts every time I go -- although I haven't deadlifted more than 145lbs yet so I tell myself I'm just working on my form and it shouldn't be too straining). I'm going to scale back to the real novice program now though (substituting pullups for power cleans, since my wrist is messed up). I just see how easy it will be for me to want to get really into weightlifting and want to know what the side effects will be.

@veryhrm: I'm pretty into anti-aging research and have been kind of concerned about some of the points you bring up about excessive calories / higher metabolism too. It would suck to die before they cure aging just because I wanted to be strong in my 30s.

Thanks to everyone who gave sincere replies. I agree that if I do reach the intermediate goals that I specified I'll probably not want to just take it easy after that. We will see what happens when I get there.

Regarding the study that supposedly shows stronger people are "harder to kill", I think it's this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...3/?tool=pubmed. It doesn't look like an actual randomized study where they have a control group and a treatment group. They just noticed an inverse correlation with strength and mortality. It's interesting, but doesn't seem very conclusive because of possible hidden variables (someone recently posted a video explaining what was wrong with these studies in another thread).