> and the advice to aggressively gain weight is also not appropriate for everyone (GOMAD etc.).
Yeah, don't do GOMAD unless you're a 17-year-old teenage boy with a BMI of 18.5 who wants to be a linebacker or something. Some of the Starting Strength advice is... very situational, to put it politely as possible.
Their coaching certification, however, means more than 95% of the "personal trainer" certifications you'll see in the average gym.
> When you say "powerlifters", are those people who compete or just people who train? I can imagine this to make a difference.
The oldest powerlifer I knew well who wasn't dealing with chronic injuries was a 40-year-old women's masters competitor. She competed around 135 or 139 lbs bodyweight, I think? She was absolutely a beast, with near flawless form and an excellent coaching eye.
Besides her? Almost every other long-term powerlifter I met was nursing some injury. But what really stood out to me was the absence of old powerlifters in my local gyms. There were old lifters in amazing shape. But none of them were grinding out the really heavy squats and deadlifts.
But don't take my word for it. All I'm recommending is that when new powerlifters max out their newbie gains, they take a good hard look around their local gym, and see who has decades of happy lifting under their belt. Ask those folks about their training plans and injury histories and PED use. You may see different patterns than I did. But for lifelong fitness, avoiding chronic injuries is everything.
It’s a very interesting shift in fitness culture as you age. In my teens and twenties I was adoring people like Ronnie Coleman and thinking that’s the life. Now I see him in clips often in a wheelchair - still with a great attitude but obviously not healthy.
Seems like in your 30s you start to realize the limits and tradeoffs and by your 40s most have accepted that longevity is the main goal - if it’s not too late and they destroyed a knee or back or something else.
How does one know when newbie gains are maxed out? I mostly do calisthenics because I actually got into working out because it was part of injury-recovery. I'm enjoying my gains and would like to push myself to get bigger gains, but lifelong fitness maintenance has always been #1 in my mind. I'd like to figure out how to identify what the "maximum maintenance point" is.
This depends on lift frequency, the lift itself, etc.
In general, for a compound lift (squat/bench/deadlift/overhead press) most would consider newbie gains exhausted once you can no longer linearly add weight/reps on a weekly basis (assuming a normal weekly schedule). This is the point when various forms of periodization (waving weight/reps/frequency up/down in many possible ways) need to start to support the increase of weight/reps over time.
> most would consider newbie gains exhausted once you can no longer linearly add weight/reps on a weekly basis
This is likely to happen after about 3 months.
I don't really agree that the kind of weights you can achieve after 3 months pose a meaningfully elevated injury risk, unless your form is terrible or you have some existing condition.
Yeah, don't do GOMAD unless you're a 17-year-old teenage boy with a BMI of 18.5 who wants to be a linebacker or something. Some of the Starting Strength advice is... very situational, to put it politely as possible.
Their coaching certification, however, means more than 95% of the "personal trainer" certifications you'll see in the average gym.
> When you say "powerlifters", are those people who compete or just people who train? I can imagine this to make a difference.
The oldest powerlifer I knew well who wasn't dealing with chronic injuries was a 40-year-old women's masters competitor. She competed around 135 or 139 lbs bodyweight, I think? She was absolutely a beast, with near flawless form and an excellent coaching eye.
Besides her? Almost every other long-term powerlifter I met was nursing some injury. But what really stood out to me was the absence of old powerlifters in my local gyms. There were old lifters in amazing shape. But none of them were grinding out the really heavy squats and deadlifts.
But don't take my word for it. All I'm recommending is that when new powerlifters max out their newbie gains, they take a good hard look around their local gym, and see who has decades of happy lifting under their belt. Ask those folks about their training plans and injury histories and PED use. You may see different patterns than I did. But for lifelong fitness, avoiding chronic injuries is everything.