Solitary and meditative if you want it to be; social and uplifting if you don't.
It's healthy in a variety of ways (including bone density; physical activity; higher BMR and glucose metabolism; improved cardiovascular function). Also being strong is useful surprisingly often.
Unlike many things in life, your progress is almost entirely dependent on your consistency and the effort invested, with the exception of (hopefully) temporary setbacks like injury. Hitting personal records and milestones feels particularly good because you know you've earned it. It's hard! But it's also not so hard that I'm liable to get discouraged.
Lots of people prefer bodybuilding style training, but there's something magic about the barbell for me. Olympic lifts are also a lot of fun, but they're more technical and you need more gear and space.
Also it's much easier to quantify your strength progress (I have a literal spreadsheet), and it feels less vain than focusing on looks (not that it isn't a significant bonus).
Dunno. Feels good. I'm gonna keep at it. Two thumbs up.
I neglected strength training for a long time because every time I tried to get started I would feel overwhelmed. Then I tried StrongLifts and loved the fact that it's just 5 exercises, but provides pretty much a full body strength workout.
The guy who developed the program has put a ton of effort into making sure it's detailed and accessible so that pretty much any question you could have is answered.
Just find a human coach. An app is not a substitute.
> And if you are a beginner, any attempt to do these exercises will invariably contain so many mistakes that they are not worth doing any more.
I totally disagree. StrongLifts (and the Starting Strength book it derives from) starts you with the empty bar. Unless you have a serious medical condition, putting 20kg on your back / chest is unlikely to result in serious bodily harm or damage to musculature. As you slowly and steadily increase the weight on the bar, you discover places where your form needs improvement. At least, that's how it worked for me (I only made it to ~100kg squats though).
Of course it's great if you can find a good coach. But I think an app like StrongLifts is a viable+reasonable substitute for a coach.
> mistakes in your form that you do not even realize.
form is entirely overrated in lifting. There's little evidence that a particular way of moving in the gym is more or less injurious, even if it looks funny. Efficiency is another matter, but don't nocebo anyone into not touching barbells in fear of "bad form".
And while coaching is surely useful, it is entirely unnecessary for a beginner who just wants to get started. You can make plenty progress for years without a coach, but it might be faster with one.
> And if you are a beginner, any attempt to do these exercises will invariably contain so many mistakes that they are not worth doing any more.
this is also clearly untrue and way too generic. Even inefficient lifting is healthy. Youtube is all you need to get started. There's plenty dumb info there, but plenty good also
For someone seeking a better introduction to strength training, please take a look at the BoostCamp app
your joints and tendons can't do their jobs properly yet and you have no feeling for your skeleton and the correct positions of shoulders, hips and spine. your nerves will get pinched and your muscles will push to grow into their genetically intended position while you will bring nerves and tendons in bad positions due to habit.
joint strength, posture, bodyweight core training, 200 bodyweight squats in two sets, 200 pushups in 4 - 6 sets, 2 - 3 min hang from bar or rope (holding it as tight as possible all the time) and be sure you can roll forward and backward and wrestle with a big dog or young and strong child for fun on the ground without hurting yourself. now you can start lifting low weights.
This really resonates with me. Not powerlifting myself, but I have a strength training routine at the gym with the goal of improving my right knee pain. I have to take things very slow (increase by 1 rep each session, up the weight every ~2 weeks by the smallest possible increment) but looking at my graph this year is very satisfying. This little corner of my life feels a lot more under my control than anything else right now
Yes that's exactly it! It's something of a refuge from whatever other chaos I'm dealing with. I get to feel good about trying and even better about succeeding.
The body is incredibly resilient, and given enough stimulus and patient consistency, it's pretty amazing how strong average people are capable of becoming.
I'm reminded of this quote from Socrates:
"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeking the beauty and strength of which his body is capable."
I am not young anymore, but I'm not old, either, and I've come to the conclusion it's certainly better to start late than to never discover my limits at all.
Body progress is slow, but it feels wonderful to have something you can control, master, and is directly rewarding.
Kudos for sticking with it :) Good luck and keep building protections around that knee.
First of all, your statement is absolutely accurate. The weights involved can cause injury and can possibly be dangerous or even fatal when not handled correctly. On the other hand, exactly what is meant by "injury" can vary widely, so we have to be precise in our language.
Acute, serious injuries typically come about due to poor form, carelessness, failure to use safety mechanisms, or irresponsible selection of load. They are the most easily preventable type of injury, and unsurprisingly they are most common among novice lifters.
I address these risks by being deliberate about my form, consistent about my use of safety devices, and reasonable about loads and progression in my training. I also use a belt with proper abdominal bracing technique.
Chronic injuries, on the other hand, are much less preventable and much more common among experienced lifters. I've worked through several, including a soft tissue injury in my hips and a nagging tendonitis in my left elbow. Managing these types of injuries comes down almost entirely to sensible training.
Powerlifting in general is associated with a lower injury rate than other sports[1]. That's not to imply that injuries aren't a reality of powerlifting -- they are -- but more that I do not believe they constitute a good reason to forego the benefits of lifting.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07651...
It is ultimately a trade off. I don't know any long term powerlifter who doesn't have a ton of injury.
Ultimately, it isn't a good idea to load your spine with 400lbs+ over long periods of time. There is no mystery what is going to happen here regardless of "form".
Can you describe your hip injury a bit more?
citation desperately needed. Injury rates for resistance training is very very low. The far higher risk is in not training.
If you start juicing and compete to the absolute max, then maybe? Even then I am skeptical that the data supports this.
I don't know where this weird belief comes from, while the universal recommendation is to do both resistance training and conditioning to reduce a whole bunch of risk factors for health and longevity.
> What steps do you take to mitigate that risk?
Well, we train to make our tissues resilient, of course.
Not for beginners, but very good if you want to think a little bit less which exercises you take for the next 4-6 weeks.
https://startingstrength.com/get-started/programs
One the "newbie (strength) gains" are tapped out though 5/3/1 is an excellent programme.
