There is always room for improvement! 💪🏼

bluemax_1 said:
Another factor for pushing the way I am, is knowing that at some point, I won't be pushing for gains/progress anymore, and simply trying to hold off the decline. The further I can get before that point, the more room I'll have to play with.
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I'll never be as strong as I once was...but I'll be a lot stronger than I'd be if I didn't do what I'm doing.

Judging from most of the thirty somethings I see by and large, I think I can hold my own. How long that will last...who knows?
 
Blues said:
I'll never be as strong as I once was...but I'll be a lot stronger than I'd be if I didn't do what I'm doing.

Judging from most of the thirty somethings I see by and large, I think I can hold my own. How long that will last...who knows?
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That's what's kind of sad, to me. I know I'm not normal (people who've known me will probably attest that they've never thought I seemed normal 🤣), but it's sad to see what IS normal, nowadays.

At your age, still deadlifting 300lbs is phenomenal. I know several coworkers who are a decade or more younger than I am, who probably can't deadlift 300lbs (all sorts of reasons and excuses for why they lift, but don't do deadlifts).
 
bluemax_1 said:
all sorts of reasons and excuses for why they lift, but don't do deadlifts
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Too difficult. Same with squats. Yet these same folks, if they halved their bench pressing frequency and subbed in squats and deadlifts, would almost certainly increase their bench press strength even more.

I can't remember the last time I deadlifted. Thankfully for me, kettlebell swings with lower weight can supply much of the posterior chain stimulation and grip strength training that deadlifts with heavier weight do. That being said, I miss deadlifts and thanks to your comments today, I have decided to do a session of them before dinner. I don't even know what I can do any more, given last year's back tweak. Who knows, maybe deadlifts are just what I need...
 
David Mary said:
No kidding. I knew the Blues was the real deal but wow. Maybe not elite, but 300 pounds is good at any age.
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Hey, don't shortchange me. I was doing over 300 for reps...not as a single. Sheesh, give a guy a break.

(And there are lots of geezers who do way more than I was doing. But since I workout alone in the basement, I didn't want to end up needing "Life Alert". I know my wife would just say she never heard my cries for help. LOL.)
 
Okay, so here's what happened:

155 x 6 - back felt funny. Form was good, so I knew everything was fine, but I could tell if I let form deteriorate I would not be happy.
205 x 5 - actually felt great
245 x 3 - not bad but I could feel that tweak whispering sweet nothings again.
275 x 1 - also felt good. But felt heavy. And still minor whispers.

Loaded the bar up to 295 and decided upon setting up that it wasn't worth the risk to hoist it up, not today.

However, I have decided that I will be adding GTG deadlifts back into my daily activities. My 1RM was 425, and heavy rep max was 315 x 13. Can I get back to that? Maybe. It's good but not elite, so even with my age and injury history, I should be able to get back there and surpass it a bit.
 
There is no such thing as "elite" for those of us who are not participating in competitions. You do what you can do...what someone else can do is irrelevant. If there's a competition, it should only be with yourself to do what you can do, in the safest fashion you can do it. To my thinking, that would be elite.

As someone with scoliosis, nodes on discs / vertebrae, and climbing induced rotator cuff issues, I'm way past worrying about trying to meet standards at this point. When I was in LE academies or competing in karate back in my twenties and thirties it was important for me to finish in the top tier.

I'm a firm believe in "good enough".
 
Agreed. All I meant was the limit of individual performance potential, and whatever mine was at birth, I have not, nor will I ever come close.
 
David Mary said:
Agreed. All I meant was the limit of individual performance potential, and whatever mine was at birth, I have not, nor will I ever come close.
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Dude, you are so far beyond the norm already, there's no sense in worrying about it. Strive to make small gains on a consistent basis, and hold on to what you build for as long as you can as you get older.
 
Blues said:
Dude, you are so far beyond the norm already, there's no sense in worrying about it. Strive to make small gains on a consistent basis, and hold on to what you build for as long as you can as you get older.
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Yup. And listen to what your body is telling you.

My goal 35 years ago was getting bigger and stronger, and my priority was, "As much progress as possible, as soon as possible".

My #1 priority now, is, "Avoid training injuries". It took me a long time to accept/admit that in the quest to push to the limit, training injuries not only resulted in delays to progress, they usually set me back anywhere from days, to weeks, and even months (and that's not counting longterm/forever after effects).

It's not always possible to avoid training injuries. They can happen out of the blue, but the simple fact is, a lot of times, they happened when I pushed myself past where I should have gone, "Nope".

I have zero intentions of ever trying a 1rm again. That's too close to the edge, for me. Even for the heavier stuff (as mentioned in earlier posts), I stick to 5 reps.

When the 5th rep on the heaviest set feels easy enough, that I KNOW I could do a 6th, and possibly even a 7th rep, I don't. I just increase the weight the next time I do that exercise. Following this particular methodology may not produce gains as quickly as pushing to the limit, but what it HAS allowed, is making slower, but overall greater gains over time, simply by reducing/eliminating layoff periods due to injury/recovery.

And I KNOW I don't recover as quickly (or fully) as I did 30+ years ago.

The other benefit of pushing for strength gains this way, is that I rarely have soreness levels I used to, in my younger days. I realized that I used to drastically overtrain back then, which actually slowed my progress. I was just fortunate that in my youth, my body was able to handle the stupidity. I equated the level of soreness with how good a workout was.

Getting older, and more educated, taught me the difference between stressing the muscles enough to force the adaptation to get stronger, vs stressing the muscles so much, that a lot of calories and nutrients (and time) was wasted just recuperating from the toll on the body.

In this last respect, the Garmin watch's HRV (Heart Rate Variability) measurement while sleeping, has also been a good aid for keeping tabs on my training. It's actually been a pretty good gauge of overtraining (when I went on a cutting cycle and began adding more cardio, I could see when I was doing more cardio than my body could handle on top of my regular workouts, when my overnight HRV began dropping).
 
I'm 53 this year and have always been a 6'4" string bean. I'm all elbows and angles. In high school the thickest part of my leg was my knees. You could see my ribs through my pecs.

My best friends were power lifting football players and they decided they couldn't be seen with me like that. The got me in the gym and put 26 lbs of muscle on me over my senior year. It was a lot of work and a million calories and protein.

Since rehabbing my shoulder I've stuck with the weights. All dumbbells, so none of this 1 rep max stuff. But I'm once again feeling like I did in high-school. I am having fun with it and enjoying the physical transformation.
 
Blues said:
Hey, don't shortchange me. I was doing over 300 for reps...not as a single. Sheesh, give a guy a break.

(And there are lots of geezers who do way more than I was doing. But since I workout alone in the basement, I didn't want to end up needing "Life Alert". I know my wife would just say she never heard my cries for help. LOL.)
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You've got plenty of time to catch up to Joe. He can still pull 400+ in his 90s.
He used to judge a lot of meets and was proud of being the toughest judge. Everyone called him red light Joe. I'd have been happier if he earned that nickname in Amsterdam...
barbend.com

Training at 90 — The Immortal Strength of Powerlifter Joe Stockinger | BarBend

Joe Stockinger has been powerlifting for seven decades, holds multiple powerlifting world records, and shows no signs of slowing down.
barbend.com barbend.com
 
bluemax_1 said:
At your age, still deadlifting 300lbs is phenomenal. I know several coworkers who are a decade or more younger than I am, who probably can't deadlift 300lbs (all sorts of reasons and excuses for why they lift, but don't do deadlifts).
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I love deadlifts.

When I first started doing them, it was weird and awkward. Once I was able to achieve good form though, it became a fast favorite. There is something about deadlifts that make you feel powerful - I dig 'em.
 
So today before the shop I pulled 185 x 5 cold. And at the end of my coffee break I did a couple hill repeats after a warmup.

Just now while making dinner I pulled:

185 x 5
225 x 5
255 x 5
275 x 2 - this set is where I felt some magic happen. My back tweak last year affected my erector spinae right above my left hip more than anywhere else. This set felt restorative in a way I cannot articulate.
295 x broke the floor but so heavy and I bailed before I did some damage.


Wasn't sore today. Might be tomorrow.
 
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