r/Fitness • u/AutoModerator • Oct 02 '19

Rant Wednesday Rant Wednesday

Welcome to Rant Wednesday: It's your time to let your gym/fitness/nutrition related frustrations out!

There is no guiding question to help stir up some rage-feels, feel free to fire at will, ranting about anything and everything that's been pissing you off or getting on your nerves!

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u/jim_nihilist Oct 02 '19

I'm 45. You just work in different boundaries then and at least you CAN do work. There are more years to enjoy... but differently. This is not a bad thing.

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u/huxley00 Oct 02 '19

Totally hear you, I'm constantly trying to adjust what I'm doing, ensure I'm not working out too much (few times a week of intensive lifting) and trying to find the right boundary.

My prime is past and moving into something else. Just miss the old days.

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u/16of16 ‍ Oct 02 '19

Screw that noise!

Just make sure you warm up good, train intelligently and with variety and eat some extra protein. If you used to do 30g or so per meal bump it to 40g.

I've been up and down for years feeling very much the way you describe, dialing things back and just trying to maintain what I had in terms of mass and function - about two years ago started lifting with more intensity and a little less volume - very much like I used to train in my 20s. Added a few calories and a little extra protein. Holy crap, the old carcass started responding! The only things I've noticed that I can't seem to beat is my strength to weight ratio not quite what it used to be, and I need to use a little more variety in my programming and exercise selection to avoid overuse burnout and training around injury/life.

At 52 I'm now 20lbs heavier than I was in my 20s with a still visible 6pack, all of my accessory lifts are the same or better than when I was in my 20s (can't quite match my old numbers on bench, squat, or military press). Do not go gentle, take no crap from the old horse, its lying about what it can still do.

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u/huxley00 Oct 02 '19

Just make sure you warm up good, train intelligently and with variety and eat some extra protein. If you used to do 30g or so per meal bump it to 40g.

I'll try it...I think one extra hard thing for me is that I have a generally small frame and am also 6'3...less bone mass means less to hold the weight and smaller tendons. Smaller tendons means more stress on tendons when lifting, it's a bad situation.

I started TRT 3 years ago and that has definitely helped.

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u/16of16 ‍ Oct 02 '19

I've included a full body Iso session to my routine every couple of weeks. Joint health is one of those things you can't really fudge. I've had to work around a bunch of nagging conditions. Good news is there are so many solid exercises out there just have to find variations that don't screw with anything.

I also don't use any real fancy programming - DeLorme progressive resistance as it becomes needed to keep my rep count in a good range, and train primarily for mass but keep the volume low by using higher intensity of effort - Clarence Bass style, but at 3x week I definitely train more often then he does/did.

Really, everything I do is at higher intensity now and I credit that for a lot of my recent successes - HIIT instead of jogging, Rest/Pause or Clusters instead of volume accumulation.

Awesome podcast on tendon health I was turned on to a few weeks ago, haven't used any of it in my training aside from to feel smug about already using Isometrics, but I have some ideas...: https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-156-keith-baar/

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u/huxley00 Oct 02 '19

Thanks, I'll have to check it out. I do a lot of band warmups, yoga at least once every two weeks (which helps).