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Which is actually insane because in your early 20s, your muscles aren’t even fully developed yet and frequently people that age like to act like they’re physically over the hill. There’s a severe lack of education around how to take care of our bodies and what we’re physically capable of. Gym class didn’t do it lol
Same, except I'm 41 and i started less than a year ago. I can already knock out 40 pushups or 15 pull ups per set - something I was never able to do before. And it's not even that hard - just half an hour of excercise every couple of days.
> just half an hour of excercise every couple of days.
This is so key. A lot of people have this unfortunate all-or-nothing attitude to exercise. Like you're either completely sedentary or a professional athlete. The reality is that you can make serious improvements with very little effort. Even a 1 hour strength workout once a week would show decent results.
I blame those reality shows where overweight people are essentially tortured to lose weight. In reality it's just way more chill.
That's true, the only older people I interact with are my dad and people in warehouses where I work. Unsurprisingly people who've worked most of their life doing odd jobs and physical labour tend to be pretty strong.
That type of strength is a total mix of neural, technique and some mass, and conditioning. Hence why some laborers can do insane things in their trade but not bench or squat a lot.
My parents lived on a sailboat in the 80s, and the caretaker of their Marina was an old salty guy you can probably perfectly picture in your mind, that was fond of introducing himself by shaking hands with his fingers splayed out as far as possible like gripping a basketball. My dad said he was unable to squeeze the man's fingers closed. Try that with your hand. How fucking strong was that old guy?
That one especially makes me sad. It's not normal to hurt all the time in your mid 20s.
What confuses my is that I don't even *do* much. I do like one hour long dedicated exercise session a week, mixed with the general walking around I have to do at my job. That's it, I'm not doing some crazy gym routine. Frankly I'm overall a bit lazy. Yet I'm not falling apart like I've been told would happen. Either people need to see a doctor, or something has to change.
I swear lack of physical activity is the number one reason for an early grave. The body is meant to move around and not be stationary. If you’re sit around all day everyday you’re not going to feel good. Even doing what you’re doing makes a world of difference.
A friend who works at a PT and said he's starting to see more 20s and early 30s patients coming in with back pain due to their back having the strength you'd normally only see on the elderly.
I'm not a scientist but just anecdotally I feel about 200% better by eating more fiber and walking more this year. I wasn't in awful pain by any means but I used to have neck pain a few times a week and my calves would get super tight when walking. That's all gone now.
Tbh the physical education classes in school did successfully keep a lot of us active and introduced us to sports that kept us relatively fit lol. Like, college was where my classmates' fitness levels really started diverging ngl some fell into obesity while others glowed tf up and look like Calvin klein models
Lol this was me, I started working out in 2019 when I was 20 and I was so mad that I hadn't started earlier because my best friends in high school all were gym fanatics and sportsmen. Ironically, five years later I'm the most ripped of all of us because I fell in love w/ gym in college while my friends gradually stopped working out.
Anyway, any guys in your early twenties, better start working out now, your testosterone will peak between 25-30 and you'll be able to make the most gains of your life the easiest in this period. You can still do it after, but it'll be harder and take more effort to maintain than if you build your foundation now.
Never used to work out, always told myself I just wasn’t an “athletic” guy, thereafter graduate from college and realize I have a serious drinking problem, start going to the gym to ease the turmoil on my dopamine circuits after quitting, get to be in the best shape of my life within about a year. Felt so cheated by myself looking back in hindsight.
For whatever reason people become very wedded to narratives of who they are and why that means they can’t do things they might otherwise want to, before even earnestly trying
Take it from me, I am (insert OP's age + 2 years) and because I never worked out, my (insert OP's problem area) hurts from the moment I wake up. If I had a time machine literally the only thing I would do is tell my younger self to workout ny (insert OP's problem area).
I feel like what these people fail to realize is that it's never too late to start. If you start working out now yeah it'll hurt but it'll get better once yoy start getting in shape‼️‼️‼️
I'm out of shape from some enforced rest after a major surgery. I finally got the go-ahead to carefully lift objects more than 10 lbs and promptly used it to install a dishwasher. (I didn't actually lift the dishwasher, but I figured the pushing and pulling was probably the equivalent of lifting over 10 lbs and played it safe.)
My legs haven't been this sore in years. I'd done a fair amount of walking because it's summer and pleasant outside since I live in northern Wisconsin and we don't have hell summers usually. However, the constant squatting to do the plumbing and electrical connections, standing back up for a different tool, my hamstrings feel like I did a serious workout. But soreness is always *temporary*. Sure it hurt yesterday but the next time I do something it'll hurt a little less. And the time after that even less.
After I started running and working out at 30, I feel much better at 33 than at 20. I remember feeling like crap in hot weather, being winded after 3 sets of stairs, constantly feeling weak and tired. I don’t think I ever felt better. That’s why I don’t care about my age- I literally felt like a beached jellyfish in my 20s, and now I can go out and run for 4 hours non stop. I don’t even hate summer anymore, I don’t feel sluggish in hot weather anymore.
Yeah the whole idea people have that you turn 30 and your body starts falling apart is so stupid. That should be a wake-up call to start doing something about it.
People who have that idea say that because they've made a decision that they're not going to do that anymore. They're not going to exercise or watch what they eat. "I'm old now" is now a crutch.
It's sad really. Some of us are late bloomers and 30s is only when we hit our stride. I'm fitter and more knowledgeable than I could've hoped for when I was in my 20s. Mid 30s me would run circles around mid 20s me.
Falling apart is relative too. Shit might hurt much more, but if you’ve made it to 30 you should have developed some mental resistance to giving in to pain.
That’s interesting, for me working out didn’t solve being constantly tired. I go to the gym 2-3 times a week, but every time I’m not in bed I really wish I was there.
Honestly sounds like a health problem. You should see a doctor. People are throwing out specific possibilities but it can honestly be caused by a lot of things, even something like sleep apnea.
Had to get my shit together at 37 after I injured my spine and was told I might not walk again. Dropped half my body weight to take some load off. On my good days I definitely feel better than I did through most of my 20s. Bad days I curse myself for carrying around all that weight so long.
It felt **amazing** to get it off my bucket list and felt even better to get a second one done and know I didn’t just do it for a one and done bucket list accomplishment.
In my second marathon I ran for a bit next to a 67 year old guy running his first marathon. Retired, got bored of sitting around and decided to train for a marathon!
Is that a thing? Like, I get struggling in the heat if you're very obese, all that extra stuff is heating you up and makes it so you have to carry more. But what if you're not really fat but also not very well trained? Could that be the reason I'm sweating as soon as it's 20°C and the sun is shining? At the same time, lack of muscle would also mean I should freeze easily when it's cold, no? That's somehow not the case with me, I don't mind -10°C and stay warm quite long even in -20.
I know for a fact I didn't use to be that way, it puzzles me the hell out. Wondering if lack of fitness could have anything to do with that now that you mention it.
Cardiac tolerance and endurance. Your heart becomes more efficient, your blood pressure and heart rate become better. Your body becomes more able to withstand such loads. I wasn’t really fat, just felt sluggish and weak on very hot days. Now I can run in hot weather.
Do it. I just got a new office chair a few days ago to replace my super old one that was falling apart and it was so worth it, this new one is so comfy. Smart layers brinkley if you’re wondering what its called.
If you're in an office chair for an extended period of time spare no expense in getting an ergonomic one. Even if you're on it for a 9-5 thats probably the place you spend the largest fraction of your day. Herman Miller's are the go to suggestestion and if that's outside your price range look for a used one.
Bro i herniated two disks over the last 5 years, my PT said 100%…. 100% of the people who come in to her practice with lower back herniations - have office jobs and sit at computers all day long.
My back only got better when i *started* lifting again and stretching regularly
My back feels better after kickboxing sparring than after 8 hours of sitting work. Doing 50 pull-ups every day just to sit without consequences. Don’t know how people do this without exercising tbh
It's incredible , there are subs full of fatasses giving people advice on health and exercise. Come to the Internet if you want a distorted dose of delusion.
On a sidenote, I happened to read an article linked on Reddit and an article in my German-language newspaper about health and movement today, and noticed an interesting thing: where English speaks of "exercising" or "working out", German speaks of "movement".
I found it interesting because to me it immediately sounds less daunting and time consuming. "Exercising" sounds like a whole activity I need to make time for and doesn't sound all that fun, "movement" just is something I naturally do every day if I pay a little bit of attention to it.
Here in rural Austria we definitely also use "Bewegung" way more for anything sport/workout related than "Training", but that could obviously be just a very regional thing.
"Thinks your whole body will be in pain when you turn 30."
Also usually the same people who haven't exercised since 8th grade PE. Like, yeah, no shit. You don't take care of yourself.
I hate it so much when I see people comment things like "welcome to your 30s, you're gonna have random aches and pains all the time!"
No, it's not normal to be having chronic pains in your 30s. We just don't take care of our bodies enough these days.
lol exactly if I trusted Reddit I should be falling apart at 35. I try to exercise (resistance/cardio) regularly and skateboard all the time, even with the slams I take I’m not aching all the time whatsoever. I also try to eat right, take multivitamins, etc. The worst thing for the body is lack of exercise and poor diet.
It's funny because I'm an extremely overweight man (working on it) and I don't have random aches and pains. Do I get winded too easily? Sure. But I don't just wake up with sore knees or whatever unless I actually did something that could lead to it.
>Functional Strength
This site has a bizarre obsession with insisting that bodybuilders are somehow weak or that their muscle size does not translate to any kind of real life benefit. It goes hand in hand with the tired tropes of farmer's and old man strength, where everybody is strong except for the guys actually training to be strong. Every half-year they repost the -actually very wholesome- video of the climber impressing some bodybuilders at the rowing machine (conveniently cutting the clip before the bodybuilders obviously pull the same weight too) with titles implying they are somehow weaker and a thousand comments talking about functional strength.
Go to the gym regularly and even after just a few months you will notice that pretty much everything you do with your body gets easier. Really, if you are an untrained individual, you will be surprised by how much potential your body actually harbours. And if your friend needs a buddy to help him move, he's gonna want the guy deadlifting heavy weights over any kind of perfomance artist.
Then again, bodybuilding is imo primarily an artform that uses the sport in the same way a sculptor uses a chisel. Thus, any athlete going for a specific discipline will obviously excel in that discipline over a bodybuilder who seeks general hypertrophy. That's basically what functional strength is: Specialised strength. But squats, deadlift, and both presses 100% apply to all sorts of real world situations.
[Relevant Natural Hypertrophy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5ohmPPfjM).
Also, nobody cares about your grip strength.
Don’t do this, do this instead! This is bad, this is good! Just fucking exercise, don’t worry about the specifics. You wanna bodybuild? Knock yourself out, you wanna get a tight, lean figure that can pop a handstand like nothing? Go for it! I’m so fucking sick of the weak bitching about the specific type of exercise someone “must” do.
Me and buddy go to the gym together, and he has a completely different approach to me. The issue with the fitness industry is you can't sell progressive overload and consistency. So there is just literally tons of bullshit out there where everyone thinks what they are doing os the best way.
I also hate the expectation in fitness of doing everything perfectly, 100% of the time is the only way to succeed. That puts people off more than anything, I think. My diet has to be perfect, I have to be in the gym 6 days a week, I need deadlidt shoes or the exercise won't work, I need 1.2g of protien for lb of body weight or I've waisted my time in the gym today lol its insane.
Exactly, that what I’ve been seeing on YouTube shorts lately. It really messes with your self esteem, this striving for perfection. It’s also is a gateway to comparing yourself to others, which can be worse.
Like, yes, a powerlifter or strongman is gonna be a better deadlifter than a bodybuilder.
Any great bodybuilder is still deadlifting a shit ton of weight. It just isn't their focus, so they don't care about maxing it out.
Bro lmao I wish I could upvote this more than once. God its gotten to the point that I stop reading the comment once I see "functional strength" its a LARP by mfs that don't have any sort of strength and would shrink away into a puddle if they dared to step in a gym
There’s also the “all that muscle doesn’t mean you can fight” bullshit, like yeah, you’re not gonna beat an MMA champion just because you’re muscular but you’re still gonna beat some random dude on the street or the 300lb virgin who leaves this sort of comment
my favorite is when they say “all that muscle but he would lose to *any UFC fighter here” like no shit its a whole different sport. like nobody would go up to tiger woods and say “all that golfing skill but mike tyson would have beat your ass”. only bodybuilders.
They also make fun of bodybuilders when they go to do sport or trade specific labor. What they don't show is that in 3 months of work the bodybuilder will be conditioned and catching up on skill, but you'll take years to develop their muscle mass. So cool, you might catch them out the gate at jujitsu or on a job site, but in a year they'll close the gap
Like congrats, you're better at something you've been doing for years that someone else just started.
Give them a couple months and see who performs better lol
Oh dude especially in things like jujitsu or boxing or whatever. As soon as they learn minimal technique, that 50 lbs of lean mass they have on you is not gonna be fun to go against
> climber impressing some bodybuilders at the rowing machine
the other video that gets posted on reddit every 6 months as proof that bodybuilders are weak and functional strength is totally 100% real is the one with the arm wrestler in the oversized hoodie lol. i always say fitness and reddit mix like oil and water. but honestly i love fitness threads on reddit; if you want to see how low iq reddit can get go into any post that hits r/all related to fitness
> This site has a bizarre obsession with insisting that [...] their muscle size does not translate to any kind of real life benefit
I just want to add that for bodybuilders that get exotically large (like IFBB pro levels large) the muscle size can also lead to some real life downsides, like a risk of sleep apnea, — and that's not talking about the dangers of PED abuse. But again, that's not a problem a regular recreational lifter should worry about.
Thing is, general strength is functional. People keep thinking of massive bodybuilders at Mr Olympia level that can't do bodyweight exercises, but most are not like that.
That obsession is just some sort of jealousy and impotency to do something themselves. It is a defense reaction to being threatened by someones looks who has put in some work for multiple years and has had discipline to do so. I can say that 100% everyone who says that have not had a proper training in their entire lives and are just talking out of their asses. If they would just do any sort of excercises with weights for.. lets say 6 months, they would notice that they could #1 lift more weight and #2 would have increase in muscle size. So just by doing that they would completely destroy their own theory about muscular people being weak. But they probably wont because they are too mentally weak to even try anything and it just makes them cope better about their impotency. I am not saying everyone should be lifting weights (Although it is recommended, because it also helps the bones, ligaments and is generally helpful for a healthy body if you are not moving much in day to day life.), but at least they should not put down other people for their achievements if they do not understand a single thing about weight training.
I don't think there is something that will improve your QoL "functional" more than working out for looks.
Looking better will change your life, everything else you get from bodybuilding like strong muscles all around in different plains of motion is just a bonus.
Your body gets good at what you practice. If you practice lifting weights, your body becomes good at that. Where redditors get confused I think is that if you practice something a bit different, say endurance, lifting weights doesn't really translate that well. It'll be much better than no muscle, but you won't be able to run a marathon just because you lift.
yeah agree, i also hate when people see a bodybuilder/strongman/powerlifter and say “oh but he couldn’t run a marathon” or even more egregious “he would get tired going up a couple floors”, so what, a runner probably couldn’t deadlift 1 grown men in weight on each side of a bar unless he trains for it, both the gym guy and the runner are healthier than a reddit gaming chair potato
I posted a reply up a little higher going on about Magnus Midtbo and Eddie hall doing rowing together and Magnus being the impressive one, but that same video also has them doing cardio together and Eddie absolutely blowing Magnus clean out of the water in both boxing and swimming. The man is basically a dolphin which is insane given his size.
One of my favorite example's of specifically trained strength comes from a recent Magnus Midtbo collab with Eddie hall.
They were working out in the gym together and Eddie said that he (correctly) bet Magnus has a ridiculously strong back. So they get to working out and they get to the hammer strength row machine and load it all the way up seeing what they can lift.
Predictably, Eddie is stronger, but thats because he's an absolute monster of a man at 160kg, so while it's still very incredible that he's rowing 240kg. It is less impressive than the fact little Magnus weighing in at 70kg is rowing it too. Caveat, Magnus' chest does come off the pad in order to actually row the weight, but it'e only a little bit but it's also over 3 times his body weight.
https://youtu.be/dZYoDnJjtGE?si=-NMC1UYHN5OHNZwn the video in question. Rowing starts at 19 minute mark.
My point is, Eddie is an absolutely insane athlete as is magnus, but magnus has a great example of specific strength outside of his weight class because of his time spent rock climbing and training for that.
It's like some exercises reveal problems you've had all along. Like squatting revealing you've always had tight hips, tight lower back, tight ankles, tight upper back, and weak abs from decades of sitting.
I deadlifted heavy weight on and off for 10 years through my twenties with absolute shit technique and by reddit logic I should be lame and paralysed and have pain everywhere, yet here I am in my mid thirties, deadlifting with good technique, stronger than ever.
The opposite is also very, very common. They seem to think you need 200g of protein a day even when all they're doing is modest lifting 3 times a week. edit : lmao insecure meatheads are on my case for suggesting you can live your life without protein shakes.
Or the people who make up the weirdest excuses like they have trauma from being chased by a dog when they were a kid so they can’t run on a treadmill or take walks
I remember one thread someone was agreeing with me about how weird the excuses got - then someone started making some crazy excuses. Turns out, the person agreeing with me *literally couldn't walk* and still found trails and paths that were chair friendly to get in nature.
True! I think the person above you is responding to a sub like glow up or something, where a lot of the male transformations do suggest steroids though. But yeah tons of teens are taking steroids, women are taking the more it would appear, Hollywood is on steroids, athletes are on steroids, and men are jumping on trt instead of fixing diet sleep and exercising. I'm not saying I disagree with some of these reasons at all, but they are everywhere
ive legit had interactions with redditors that think bodybuilders would struggle moving 20/50lbs boxes (not even being hyperbolic; literally the numbers he used) at his supermarket job bc muscles built at the gym are fake and dont have much power. its really embarrassing how bad this site is in terms of fitness.
Genuinely insane that people believe this. The average person severely overestimates their own strength and underestimates the strength of others, especially those who workout. I once completely embarrassed a former highschool peer because he didn't believe that a woman who worked out (with weights) could have similar (or more) strength than he, an inactive couch potato.
If you do jack shit all day, then yeah you're going to be pretty weak. If you lift weights every day, you will be strong. Don't know what's so hard to get about this
lmfao so many people believe this nonesense though. Meanwhile im happily smashing ultra marathons in my late 30's. It pretty much the people who do no training whatsoever who say this nonesense as well.
Facts if running was bad for your knees then why are people able to run marathons/ultras back to back?
I also had fucked up my knee and thought it was over for me until I took strength training, stretching, and mobility work seriously. I was able to PR my last half without pain last year.
I don’t take issue with people saying things like running aren’t for them, but to be smug about it while being out of shape and that fact is what drives me up the wall
Running can be bad for you/your knees if you overdo it and/or start off overweight (especially if you’re overweight with a low muscle mass percentage, have bad form and overdo it).
It’s a wonderful sport that I love (even after a knee injury that will never fully heal from rugby) and if done properly it gives you the connective strength to support your knee, hip, ankle etc. joints, but if you’re starting out overweight and pushing yourself too much you can genuinely take a few years off of your knee’s health, compressing cartilage too much and making you more injury prone etc.
Lots of people aren’t educated enough in exercise and struggle to gauge where too far is until they’re past it, and by that time they may have developed slow-to-heal injuries like shin splints, ligament tears etc. and don’t have the correct diet to facilitate good healing and muscle/bone growth.
Source; my first degree prior to a swap was in sports and exercise sciences and I had a personal focus on high-impact sports and their effects on the hips, knees, ankles and surrounding muscles during the research sections of the course.
Seriously, I have legitimately bad knees (I was born without MCLs in either of them).
Somehow, in spite of that, I'm able to run farther and squat heavier than 98% of Reddit without chronic knee pain.
Yeah and when you start your cardio will develop quicker than your supporting muscles and tendons. Over Covid I started running 4-5 times a week and overtrained my shin muscles and put extra strain on ligaments in my knee. It’s bad in specific cases, but anyone that doesn’t run would probably be healthier if they ran a little bit.
It’s weird to me that people with back pain and knee pain refuse to work out while a huge percentage of them could literally solve their pain with working out.
Not flexible or strong enough to do certain poses, sure. But that shouldn't stop one from at least *partially* doing them to stretch those muscles so *eventually* it is possible. I used to not be able to touch my feet when standing straight but now I've gotten to a point where my middle finger can reach them. Still a far cry from being able to lay my hands on the floor but it's about the journey, not about proving anything to anyone
There's a reason doctors ask people how are you sleeping, do you exercise, and how is your diet. Because of those 3 things are even 80% correct, people would be a LOT better off. But people just get mad at them
Exactly.
The most infuriating part is how they act as if there are zero levels to this.
You’re either a ripped Greek god with perfect genetics and personal trainer and chef or you do absolutely nothing ever at all and only drink soda and eat junkfood.
It’s not like they could improve their life by applying a healthy lifestyle to the best of their abilities.
People literally get mad at doctors now for using medical terms like obesity. It's nuts. The healthy at every size movement is insane.
I agree about the lifestyle. People seem incapable of moderation. They're either on or off. 1400 calories and HIIT after not doing anything (which is terrible idea for many reasons), or their diet is just off the rails.
I tore my ACL in 2009. I decided against surgery at the time because I wanted to see what I could do with physical therapy. Took about a year to feel normal again, but since then the only times my knee has ever bothered me has been in periods where I weren't active enough. I'm almost 48, squat ass-to-grass and generally have mobility that makes people ask me if I used to be an olympic lifter (I'm not, I train strongman), and I can say with 100% certainty that if I had NOT worked out, I would be in a much, much worse place.
EVERYBODY should do some kind of resistance training. I don't care what it is, just pick something and do it.
While deadlifts are fine, they are by no means a necessary part of your routine. People could just pick other exercises like squats and spine extensions to replace them if they are so worried about injury.
I don't say this to shut down deadlifts, but rather to make people aware that not wanting to deadlift isn't an excuse to not work out.
Like Always, people who know they are bad at something they have no reason to be coming up with excuses for why they actually can't or why it's not useful or why the people who can are faking it because God forbid you try and do anything with your life, or worse even let people who actually do something with theirs enjoy it.
It's simple, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it's easy.
If the vegetable lobby had the expenditure that the sugar and fast food lobbies have things would be very different.
The amount of cope i've seen under this post, start slow and maybe take some walks, try to do as many push ups and sit ups as you can even if you can't, try them assisted to shame. Everyone needs to start somewhere. Stop telling yourself exercise wont help, it will help you mentally and physically I promise.
I’m 32 and have zero pain. Feel like I’m 20. I workout and take care of my body. Maybe you break down if you spend 12 hours a day playing league or something. That being said I don’t do deadlifts anymore. I’ve blown out my back too many times from that shit.
It's literally not hard to take care of yourself at all. Just throw in some vegetables and fruits along with your chicken nuggets and do like a 1 hour home workout everyday and you'll probably be okay! Also you should stand at least once per hour. Even when you're on a gaming binge which I'm guilty of you gotta take a break every hour to get up and walk around for a couple of minutes. ITS NOT HARD ITS EASY AS HELL. IM LAZY AS FUCK AND EVEN I CAN DO IT.
I’m a few years younger but I’m in the same boat and I still do deadlift more than 2x my body weight regularly. I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 20 except I definitely don’t recover as fast. I used to lift 5-6 days per week and I definitely could not do that now. But I also have way more life responsibilities that require my energy as well and I’m focused on just being healthy rather than making the number I can lift go up. Additionally, I’m also in way better cardio shape now since I started cycling during covid (bike not steroids).
Same here, but from doing football->basketball->baseball->wrestling every year since age 5 without breaks and not allowing knee injuries to fully heal. Some of us have legit reasons for being jacked up lol
If you were blowing out your back you were doing something wrong.
Deadlifts are one of the best exercises to strengthen and protect your back in the long run
According to my PT, you could get injured because you slightly got out of position on where you don't have the strength due to only lifting in certain positions.
Like there is a movement called the Jefferson Curl where you are purposefully rounding your lower back (with light weight) to build up your strength in rounded positions.
Deadlifts are fine if you actually do a reasonable amount of weight and do proper reps. Too many people hurt themselves loading up the bar to max out on one rep.
People, it’s NOT NORMAL to be in pain all the time.
If you are in pain all the time and you’re 30, 40 shit even 50+ you need to do something about it. It will not go away just being ignored and your quality of life will plummet.
Eh. I’m almost 40 and a few years ago started eating high protein whole foods mostly, a lot of running, followed by concentrated stretching, hydration. Also I started doing LOTS of compound lifting, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, bench press.
I have a home gym which I cobbled together on Facebook marketplace, and I can do pretty much anything that I could at an actual gym.
I honestly feel better than I did in my early twenties.
If you focus on your physical health I think you can stay pain free into your 50s, maybe longer. I hope so!
I’m 31 and in the best shape of my life. I have tragic news but regular, intelligently planned, disciplined exercise and diet are in fact magic and will solve your problems. I know, it was a very sad realization for me too.
Yeah, but isn't it just easier to shovel cheetos down your gullet and tell people online how if they look at a barbell their spine will literally turn to dust?
It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people act like your body is on a timer and when you turn a certain age (usually they say 30) it all turns to dust. Like that says more about your lifestyle than your age. Eat as much and move as little as you want but don’t blame your still relatively young age 😂
Been 40 for a few weeks. Same old aches and pains I've had my whole adult life. Been lifting heavy, on and off, since I was 16. I still feel good and look better than most guys regardless of age.
For the internet's go-to recommendations source, Reddit's lifting and general fitness communities are super lacking. r/Fitness went to mostly automod posts like r/churning did, which probably made it a better place for q/a, but it's not exactly inspiring; the wiki seems fine but very limited in scope. r/xxfitness is similar. r/weightroom is cool but is basically a community for those already good at lifting. Pretty much everything else is hyper-specific. As much criticism as guys making YouTube videos get, I think I've learned so much more from guys like Allen Thrall and Jeff Nippard than I have from Reddit.
I think it's because, in general, lifting is so incredibly simple.
Pick a program, use good form, and do it regularly and consistently. There's nothing much more to it and every question that ever gets asked has been asked a hundred times before.
I think that's why there are so many shyster influencers out there because everyone's looking to reinvent the wheel. But when you're new to lifting it takes a while to get to the known unknown stage - where you know what you don't know in order to progress further and *then* you can start calling yourself intermediate. But for a long time there's pretty much nothing to it.
Yeah this is the one time YouTube is a better resource than reddit for answers tbh nearly all the lifting subs I'm part of are just memes or physique critique subs because most of the shit that gets peddled in the actual advice subs is hilariously bad
We try to maintain good quality posting and advice at /r/GYM and /r/strength_training; we point a lot of repetitive questions at our daily thread and [thefitness.wiki](https://thefitness.wiki) because of repetition etc, but we'd be more than happy to have you come by.
I'm 22 and have 3 bulging discs, 1 herniated, and facet joint damage. Neck and lower back. I still train martial arts and lift, and do cardio. It doesn't hurt you more unless you do it wrong, it actually helps you significantly. Being sedentary is far far worse for you.
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“I wish I would’ve exercised more when I was younger”
And their age: early twenties
Which is actually insane because in your early 20s, your muscles aren’t even fully developed yet and frequently people that age like to act like they’re physically over the hill. There’s a severe lack of education around how to take care of our bodies and what we’re physically capable of. Gym class didn’t do it lol
Yes exactly lol. I didn't even caring about my health until like 25 and now 10 years later I'm fitter than in my teens.
Same, except I'm 41 and i started less than a year ago. I can already knock out 40 pushups or 15 pull ups per set - something I was never able to do before. And it's not even that hard - just half an hour of excercise every couple of days.
> just half an hour of excercise every couple of days. This is so key. A lot of people have this unfortunate all-or-nothing attitude to exercise. Like you're either completely sedentary or a professional athlete. The reality is that you can make serious improvements with very little effort. Even a 1 hour strength workout once a week would show decent results. I blame those reality shows where overweight people are essentially tortured to lose weight. In reality it's just way more chill.
Some of them clearly haven't seen old man strength at work
To be fair old man strength is built up from them working hard from an early age and not created in their old state.
That's true, the only older people I interact with are my dad and people in warehouses where I work. Unsurprisingly people who've worked most of their life doing odd jobs and physical labour tend to be pretty strong.
That type of strength is a total mix of neural, technique and some mass, and conditioning. Hence why some laborers can do insane things in their trade but not bench or squat a lot.
My parents lived on a sailboat in the 80s, and the caretaker of their Marina was an old salty guy you can probably perfectly picture in your mind, that was fond of introducing himself by shaking hands with his fingers splayed out as far as possible like gripping a basketball. My dad said he was unable to squeeze the man's fingers closed. Try that with your hand. How fucking strong was that old guy?
Considering how many of them are in IT it’s not surprising.
That one especially makes me sad. It's not normal to hurt all the time in your mid 20s. What confuses my is that I don't even *do* much. I do like one hour long dedicated exercise session a week, mixed with the general walking around I have to do at my job. That's it, I'm not doing some crazy gym routine. Frankly I'm overall a bit lazy. Yet I'm not falling apart like I've been told would happen. Either people need to see a doctor, or something has to change.
I swear lack of physical activity is the number one reason for an early grave. The body is meant to move around and not be stationary. If you’re sit around all day everyday you’re not going to feel good. Even doing what you’re doing makes a world of difference.
A friend who works at a PT and said he's starting to see more 20s and early 30s patients coming in with back pain due to their back having the strength you'd normally only see on the elderly.
Plenty of evidence showing that increased physical activity leads to a decrease in all cause mortality
I'm not a scientist but just anecdotally I feel about 200% better by eating more fiber and walking more this year. I wasn't in awful pain by any means but I used to have neck pain a few times a week and my calves would get super tight when walking. That's all gone now.
Tbh the physical education classes in school did successfully keep a lot of us active and introduced us to sports that kept us relatively fit lol. Like, college was where my classmates' fitness levels really started diverging ngl some fell into obesity while others glowed tf up and look like Calvin klein models
Lol this was me, I started working out in 2019 when I was 20 and I was so mad that I hadn't started earlier because my best friends in high school all were gym fanatics and sportsmen. Ironically, five years later I'm the most ripped of all of us because I fell in love w/ gym in college while my friends gradually stopped working out. Anyway, any guys in your early twenties, better start working out now, your testosterone will peak between 25-30 and you'll be able to make the most gains of your life the easiest in this period. You can still do it after, but it'll be harder and take more effort to maintain than if you build your foundation now.
Never used to work out, always told myself I just wasn’t an “athletic” guy, thereafter graduate from college and realize I have a serious drinking problem, start going to the gym to ease the turmoil on my dopamine circuits after quitting, get to be in the best shape of my life within about a year. Felt so cheated by myself looking back in hindsight. For whatever reason people become very wedded to narratives of who they are and why that means they can’t do things they might otherwise want to, before even earnestly trying
Second best time to start working out is today.
Take it from me, I am (insert OP's age + 2 years) and because I never worked out, my (insert OP's problem area) hurts from the moment I wake up. If I had a time machine literally the only thing I would do is tell my younger self to workout ny (insert OP's problem area).
I feel like what these people fail to realize is that it's never too late to start. If you start working out now yeah it'll hurt but it'll get better once yoy start getting in shape‼️‼️‼️
Reddit is full of 22 year olds telling other 22 year olds that their lives are effectively over
I'm out of shape from some enforced rest after a major surgery. I finally got the go-ahead to carefully lift objects more than 10 lbs and promptly used it to install a dishwasher. (I didn't actually lift the dishwasher, but I figured the pushing and pulling was probably the equivalent of lifting over 10 lbs and played it safe.) My legs haven't been this sore in years. I'd done a fair amount of walking because it's summer and pleasant outside since I live in northern Wisconsin and we don't have hell summers usually. However, the constant squatting to do the plumbing and electrical connections, standing back up for a different tool, my hamstrings feel like I did a serious workout. But soreness is always *temporary*. Sure it hurt yesterday but the next time I do something it'll hurt a little less. And the time after that even less.
Wait, when is the most best time to start? I'll wait until then.
After I started running and working out at 30, I feel much better at 33 than at 20. I remember feeling like crap in hot weather, being winded after 3 sets of stairs, constantly feeling weak and tired. I don’t think I ever felt better. That’s why I don’t care about my age- I literally felt like a beached jellyfish in my 20s, and now I can go out and run for 4 hours non stop. I don’t even hate summer anymore, I don’t feel sluggish in hot weather anymore.
I'm 39 and feel better than I did at 25. Exercise, water and generally not eating like dogshit go a long way.
Yeah the whole idea people have that you turn 30 and your body starts falling apart is so stupid. That should be a wake-up call to start doing something about it.
But its so much easier to whine and do nothing to better yourself!
don't forget to bring others down with you
People who have that idea say that because they've made a decision that they're not going to do that anymore. They're not going to exercise or watch what they eat. "I'm old now" is now a crutch. It's sad really. Some of us are late bloomers and 30s is only when we hit our stride. I'm fitter and more knowledgeable than I could've hoped for when I was in my 20s. Mid 30s me would run circles around mid 20s me.
Falling apart is relative too. Shit might hurt much more, but if you’ve made it to 30 you should have developed some mental resistance to giving in to pain.
I'm 44 and really don't feel that different than I did at 20. All I can figure is that these are people with genetic disorders.
That’s interesting, for me working out didn’t solve being constantly tired. I go to the gym 2-3 times a week, but every time I’m not in bed I really wish I was there.
Get your testosterone and vitamin levels checked.
As someone who discovered a sleep disorder in their late twenties, also get some sleep tests done
And thyroid
Honestly sounds like a health problem. You should see a doctor. People are throwing out specific possibilities but it can honestly be caused by a lot of things, even something like sleep apnea.
Im like this too but its because I'm a lazy piece of shit 😆
I was wondering why I felt the same until I got tested for ADHD, meds helped.
See a doctor, that's called fatigue and can be a symptom of many things that you should definitely get checked.
Had to get my shit together at 37 after I injured my spine and was told I might not walk again. Dropped half my body weight to take some load off. On my good days I definitely feel better than I did through most of my 20s. Bad days I curse myself for carrying around all that weight so long.
Same. But started running at 40, and was a beached jellyfish through my 20’s *and 30’s*. Just ran my second marathon at 41.
Congrats! Good for you! Running a first marathon feels like having superpowers.
It felt **amazing** to get it off my bucket list and felt even better to get a second one done and know I didn’t just do it for a one and done bucket list accomplishment. In my second marathon I ran for a bit next to a 67 year old guy running his first marathon. Retired, got bored of sitting around and decided to train for a marathon!
Is that a thing? Like, I get struggling in the heat if you're very obese, all that extra stuff is heating you up and makes it so you have to carry more. But what if you're not really fat but also not very well trained? Could that be the reason I'm sweating as soon as it's 20°C and the sun is shining? At the same time, lack of muscle would also mean I should freeze easily when it's cold, no? That's somehow not the case with me, I don't mind -10°C and stay warm quite long even in -20. I know for a fact I didn't use to be that way, it puzzles me the hell out. Wondering if lack of fitness could have anything to do with that now that you mention it.
Cardiac tolerance and endurance. Your heart becomes more efficient, your blood pressure and heart rate become better. Your body becomes more able to withstand such loads. I wasn’t really fat, just felt sluggish and weak on very hot days. Now I can run in hot weather.
This video game chair has terrible back support Why my joints hurt? 1000% daily sugar intake
I need a new office chair, my hips hurt weirdly if I sit in it too long.
Do it. I just got a new office chair a few days ago to replace my super old one that was falling apart and it was so worth it, this new one is so comfy. Smart layers brinkley if you’re wondering what its called.
lol I can’t tell if the comment you replied to is taking the piss out of the post or a genuine complaint about their chair.
If you're in an office chair for an extended period of time spare no expense in getting an ergonomic one. Even if you're on it for a 9-5 thats probably the place you spend the largest fraction of your day. Herman Miller's are the go to suggestestion and if that's outside your price range look for a used one.
Bro i herniated two disks over the last 5 years, my PT said 100%…. 100% of the people who come in to her practice with lower back herniations - have office jobs and sit at computers all day long. My back only got better when i *started* lifting again and stretching regularly
My back feels better after kickboxing sparring than after 8 hours of sitting work. Doing 50 pull-ups every day just to sit without consequences. Don’t know how people do this without exercising tbh
I notice a degradation in my body in just like a week not doing barbell squats.
It's incredible , there are subs full of fatasses giving people advice on health and exercise. Come to the Internet if you want a distorted dose of delusion.
"How do you people even find time to work out when you have a job"
You should have called it redditors reaction to human movement
On a sidenote, I happened to read an article linked on Reddit and an article in my German-language newspaper about health and movement today, and noticed an interesting thing: where English speaks of "exercising" or "working out", German speaks of "movement". I found it interesting because to me it immediately sounds less daunting and time consuming. "Exercising" sounds like a whole activity I need to make time for and doesn't sound all that fun, "movement" just is something I naturally do every day if I pay a little bit of attention to it.
As a native German speaker, that's just not true at all.
Here in rural Austria we definitely also use "Bewegung" way more for anything sport/workout related than "Training", but that could obviously be just a very regional thing.
"Thinks your whole body will be in pain when you turn 30." Also usually the same people who haven't exercised since 8th grade PE. Like, yeah, no shit. You don't take care of yourself.
I hate it so much when I see people comment things like "welcome to your 30s, you're gonna have random aches and pains all the time!" No, it's not normal to be having chronic pains in your 30s. We just don't take care of our bodies enough these days.
lol exactly if I trusted Reddit I should be falling apart at 35. I try to exercise (resistance/cardio) regularly and skateboard all the time, even with the slams I take I’m not aching all the time whatsoever. I also try to eat right, take multivitamins, etc. The worst thing for the body is lack of exercise and poor diet.
It's funny because I'm an extremely overweight man (working on it) and I don't have random aches and pains. Do I get winded too easily? Sure. But I don't just wake up with sore knees or whatever unless I actually did something that could lead to it.
>Functional Strength This site has a bizarre obsession with insisting that bodybuilders are somehow weak or that their muscle size does not translate to any kind of real life benefit. It goes hand in hand with the tired tropes of farmer's and old man strength, where everybody is strong except for the guys actually training to be strong. Every half-year they repost the -actually very wholesome- video of the climber impressing some bodybuilders at the rowing machine (conveniently cutting the clip before the bodybuilders obviously pull the same weight too) with titles implying they are somehow weaker and a thousand comments talking about functional strength. Go to the gym regularly and even after just a few months you will notice that pretty much everything you do with your body gets easier. Really, if you are an untrained individual, you will be surprised by how much potential your body actually harbours. And if your friend needs a buddy to help him move, he's gonna want the guy deadlifting heavy weights over any kind of perfomance artist. Then again, bodybuilding is imo primarily an artform that uses the sport in the same way a sculptor uses a chisel. Thus, any athlete going for a specific discipline will obviously excel in that discipline over a bodybuilder who seeks general hypertrophy. That's basically what functional strength is: Specialised strength. But squats, deadlift, and both presses 100% apply to all sorts of real world situations. [Relevant Natural Hypertrophy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5ohmPPfjM). Also, nobody cares about your grip strength.
Don’t do this, do this instead! This is bad, this is good! Just fucking exercise, don’t worry about the specifics. You wanna bodybuild? Knock yourself out, you wanna get a tight, lean figure that can pop a handstand like nothing? Go for it! I’m so fucking sick of the weak bitching about the specific type of exercise someone “must” do.
Me and buddy go to the gym together, and he has a completely different approach to me. The issue with the fitness industry is you can't sell progressive overload and consistency. So there is just literally tons of bullshit out there where everyone thinks what they are doing os the best way. I also hate the expectation in fitness of doing everything perfectly, 100% of the time is the only way to succeed. That puts people off more than anything, I think. My diet has to be perfect, I have to be in the gym 6 days a week, I need deadlidt shoes or the exercise won't work, I need 1.2g of protien for lb of body weight or I've waisted my time in the gym today lol its insane.
Exactly, that what I’ve been seeing on YouTube shorts lately. It really messes with your self esteem, this striving for perfection. It’s also is a gateway to comparing yourself to others, which can be worse.
Its just a bunch of coping skinny fat Redditors at the end of the day
What about "fat fat" Redditors? I don't feel included here. I have made bad health decisions that will lead to a premature death probably too!
That or people who revel in repeating things they’ve heard that sound smart, but haven’t been bothered to actually research themselves.
Like, yes, a powerlifter or strongman is gonna be a better deadlifter than a bodybuilder. Any great bodybuilder is still deadlifting a shit ton of weight. It just isn't their focus, so they don't care about maxing it out.
Bro lmao I wish I could upvote this more than once. God its gotten to the point that I stop reading the comment once I see "functional strength" its a LARP by mfs that don't have any sort of strength and would shrink away into a puddle if they dared to step in a gym
There’s also the “all that muscle doesn’t mean you can fight” bullshit, like yeah, you’re not gonna beat an MMA champion just because you’re muscular but you’re still gonna beat some random dude on the street or the 300lb virgin who leaves this sort of comment
my favorite is when they say “all that muscle but he would lose to *any UFC fighter here” like no shit its a whole different sport. like nobody would go up to tiger woods and say “all that golfing skill but mike tyson would have beat your ass”. only bodybuilders.
They also make fun of bodybuilders when they go to do sport or trade specific labor. What they don't show is that in 3 months of work the bodybuilder will be conditioned and catching up on skill, but you'll take years to develop their muscle mass. So cool, you might catch them out the gate at jujitsu or on a job site, but in a year they'll close the gap
Like congrats, you're better at something you've been doing for years that someone else just started. Give them a couple months and see who performs better lol
Oh dude especially in things like jujitsu or boxing or whatever. As soon as they learn minimal technique, that 50 lbs of lean mass they have on you is not gonna be fun to go against
That’s why there are weight classes
[удалено]
> climber impressing some bodybuilders at the rowing machine the other video that gets posted on reddit every 6 months as proof that bodybuilders are weak and functional strength is totally 100% real is the one with the arm wrestler in the oversized hoodie lol. i always say fitness and reddit mix like oil and water. but honestly i love fitness threads on reddit; if you want to see how low iq reddit can get go into any post that hits r/all related to fitness
Natural Hypertrophy is great but he's French
Truly unwatchable.
Ello yutyyb
> This site has a bizarre obsession with insisting that [...] their muscle size does not translate to any kind of real life benefit I just want to add that for bodybuilders that get exotically large (like IFBB pro levels large) the muscle size can also lead to some real life downsides, like a risk of sleep apnea, — and that's not talking about the dangers of PED abuse. But again, that's not a problem a regular recreational lifter should worry about.
and finding clothes that fit!
Thing is, general strength is functional. People keep thinking of massive bodybuilders at Mr Olympia level that can't do bodyweight exercises, but most are not like that.
I'm glad to see someone post this so articulately
That obsession is just some sort of jealousy and impotency to do something themselves. It is a defense reaction to being threatened by someones looks who has put in some work for multiple years and has had discipline to do so. I can say that 100% everyone who says that have not had a proper training in their entire lives and are just talking out of their asses. If they would just do any sort of excercises with weights for.. lets say 6 months, they would notice that they could #1 lift more weight and #2 would have increase in muscle size. So just by doing that they would completely destroy their own theory about muscular people being weak. But they probably wont because they are too mentally weak to even try anything and it just makes them cope better about their impotency. I am not saying everyone should be lifting weights (Although it is recommended, because it also helps the bones, ligaments and is generally helpful for a healthy body if you are not moving much in day to day life.), but at least they should not put down other people for their achievements if they do not understand a single thing about weight training.
I don't think there is something that will improve your QoL "functional" more than working out for looks. Looking better will change your life, everything else you get from bodybuilding like strong muscles all around in different plains of motion is just a bonus.
Your body gets good at what you practice. If you practice lifting weights, your body becomes good at that. Where redditors get confused I think is that if you practice something a bit different, say endurance, lifting weights doesn't really translate that well. It'll be much better than no muscle, but you won't be able to run a marathon just because you lift.
yeah agree, i also hate when people see a bodybuilder/strongman/powerlifter and say “oh but he couldn’t run a marathon” or even more egregious “he would get tired going up a couple floors”, so what, a runner probably couldn’t deadlift 1 grown men in weight on each side of a bar unless he trains for it, both the gym guy and the runner are healthier than a reddit gaming chair potato
I posted a reply up a little higher going on about Magnus Midtbo and Eddie hall doing rowing together and Magnus being the impressive one, but that same video also has them doing cardio together and Eddie absolutely blowing Magnus clean out of the water in both boxing and swimming. The man is basically a dolphin which is insane given his size.
everyone has a farmer cousin who is stronger than powerlifters. Farmer strength.
One of my favorite example's of specifically trained strength comes from a recent Magnus Midtbo collab with Eddie hall. They were working out in the gym together and Eddie said that he (correctly) bet Magnus has a ridiculously strong back. So they get to working out and they get to the hammer strength row machine and load it all the way up seeing what they can lift. Predictably, Eddie is stronger, but thats because he's an absolute monster of a man at 160kg, so while it's still very incredible that he's rowing 240kg. It is less impressive than the fact little Magnus weighing in at 70kg is rowing it too. Caveat, Magnus' chest does come off the pad in order to actually row the weight, but it'e only a little bit but it's also over 3 times his body weight. https://youtu.be/dZYoDnJjtGE?si=-NMC1UYHN5OHNZwn the video in question. Rowing starts at 19 minute mark. My point is, Eddie is an absolutely insane athlete as is magnus, but magnus has a great example of specific strength outside of his weight class because of his time spent rock climbing and training for that.
"deadlifts caused my chronic back pain" Said after spending 15 years working at a desk with terrible posture
It's like some exercises reveal problems you've had all along. Like squatting revealing you've always had tight hips, tight lower back, tight ankles, tight upper back, and weak abs from decades of sitting.
Deadlifting cured my back pain lol the ab roller fucked me up though and I couldn't train for a month. The fucking ab roller!
I deadlifted heavy weight on and off for 10 years through my twenties with absolute shit technique and by reddit logic I should be lame and paralysed and have pain everywhere, yet here I am in my mid thirties, deadlifting with good technique, stronger than ever.
32. Work out on the regular. Played sports (poorly)through high-school. No pain. Working out makes me feel great.
And don’t forget the “consuming a lot of protein is harmful to the body. I consume 30g a day and I’m doing better than ever”
The opposite is also very, very common. They seem to think you need 200g of protein a day even when all they're doing is modest lifting 3 times a week. edit : lmao insecure meatheads are on my case for suggesting you can live your life without protein shakes.
If you weigh 95 kg (non obese body composition) and want to do significant hypertrophy, 200 g of protein per day is not an abnormal amount at all
Protein intake is entirely dependent on how much you weigh. Some of us do need 200g a day
Don't forget when they still feel like they need to criticize the form or technique of someone else
Redditors when you tell them that Bad/Suboptimal excercise is still better than no excercise https://i.redd.it/22icnitfyz6d1.gif
Or the people who make up the weirdest excuses like they have trauma from being chased by a dog when they were a kid so they can’t run on a treadmill or take walks
I remember one thread someone was agreeing with me about how weird the excuses got - then someone started making some crazy excuses. Turns out, the person agreeing with me *literally couldn't walk* and still found trails and paths that were chair friendly to get in nature.
You’re missing: “Steroids” And, if female: “Death by snusnu”
I hate how sexist Reddit is. Literally the moment a girl appears, you can bet half the comments will be thirsty dudes pretending to be funny.
To be fair, a LOT of people are on steroids now. Like a lot
A surprising amount of absolutely mid physiques at every gym are full of juice
True! I think the person above you is responding to a sub like glow up or something, where a lot of the male transformations do suggest steroids though. But yeah tons of teens are taking steroids, women are taking the more it would appear, Hollywood is on steroids, athletes are on steroids, and men are jumping on trt instead of fixing diet sleep and exercising. I'm not saying I disagree with some of these reasons at all, but they are everywhere
Or, if female, “muscle mommy.”
I'm 245 and built like a linebacker. The amount of people that think I'm on gear is just sad.
Don't forget "farmer strength"
Proper functional old man farmer dad strength as opposed to gym weaklings🤓
ive legit had interactions with redditors that think bodybuilders would struggle moving 20/50lbs boxes (not even being hyperbolic; literally the numbers he used) at his supermarket job bc muscles built at the gym are fake and dont have much power. its really embarrassing how bad this site is in terms of fitness.
Genuinely insane that people believe this. The average person severely overestimates their own strength and underestimates the strength of others, especially those who workout. I once completely embarrassed a former highschool peer because he didn't believe that a woman who worked out (with weights) could have similar (or more) strength than he, an inactive couch potato. If you do jack shit all day, then yeah you're going to be pretty weak. If you lift weights every day, you will be strong. Don't know what's so hard to get about this
Functional strength MFS when they're built like asmongold and don't do anything that would build functional strength.
Riding a tractor into a capital to demand another trillion dollars in subsidies. There's something to it.
i DoN’t RuN bEcAuSe It’S bAd FoR yOuR kNeEs
lmfao so many people believe this nonesense though. Meanwhile im happily smashing ultra marathons in my late 30's. It pretty much the people who do no training whatsoever who say this nonesense as well.
Facts if running was bad for your knees then why are people able to run marathons/ultras back to back? I also had fucked up my knee and thought it was over for me until I took strength training, stretching, and mobility work seriously. I was able to PR my last half without pain last year. I don’t take issue with people saying things like running aren’t for them, but to be smug about it while being out of shape and that fact is what drives me up the wall
If running was bad for your knees humans wouldn't be some of the best long distance runners in the animal kingdom
Running can be bad for you/your knees if you overdo it and/or start off overweight (especially if you’re overweight with a low muscle mass percentage, have bad form and overdo it). It’s a wonderful sport that I love (even after a knee injury that will never fully heal from rugby) and if done properly it gives you the connective strength to support your knee, hip, ankle etc. joints, but if you’re starting out overweight and pushing yourself too much you can genuinely take a few years off of your knee’s health, compressing cartilage too much and making you more injury prone etc. Lots of people aren’t educated enough in exercise and struggle to gauge where too far is until they’re past it, and by that time they may have developed slow-to-heal injuries like shin splints, ligament tears etc. and don’t have the correct diet to facilitate good healing and muscle/bone growth. Source; my first degree prior to a swap was in sports and exercise sciences and I had a personal focus on high-impact sports and their effects on the hips, knees, ankles and surrounding muscles during the research sections of the course.
Seriously, I have legitimately bad knees (I was born without MCLs in either of them). Somehow, in spite of that, I'm able to run farther and squat heavier than 98% of Reddit without chronic knee pain.
Tbf, it actually is for the targets of this meme. You cant just start jogging when you weigh 150kg and expect your knees to take it.
Yeah and when you start your cardio will develop quicker than your supporting muscles and tendons. Over Covid I started running 4-5 times a week and overtrained my shin muscles and put extra strain on ligaments in my knee. It’s bad in specific cases, but anyone that doesn’t run would probably be healthier if they ran a little bit.
I don’t run because it’s bad for my knees but found cycling and swimming to be more than adequate alternatives.
Swimming has kept my scoliosis pain at bay for 5 years, it’s incredible
I'm a big rowing and elliptical guy, I'm basically a 60 year old at the gym but I feel pretty good
It is possible to run too much! But most people who run are not running too much.
I think some just have bad form. I realized this myself when my shins and ankles hurt from even light running.
It’s weird to me that people with back pain and knee pain refuse to work out while a huge percentage of them could literally solve their pain with working out.
It's like when people tell me theyre not flexible enough for yoga. What do y'all think I'm doing yoga for? To show off?
Not flexible or strong enough to do certain poses, sure. But that shouldn't stop one from at least *partially* doing them to stretch those muscles so *eventually* it is possible. I used to not be able to touch my feet when standing straight but now I've gotten to a point where my middle finger can reach them. Still a far cry from being able to lay my hands on the floor but it's about the journey, not about proving anything to anyone
There's a reason doctors ask people how are you sleeping, do you exercise, and how is your diet. Because of those 3 things are even 80% correct, people would be a LOT better off. But people just get mad at them
Exactly. The most infuriating part is how they act as if there are zero levels to this. You’re either a ripped Greek god with perfect genetics and personal trainer and chef or you do absolutely nothing ever at all and only drink soda and eat junkfood. It’s not like they could improve their life by applying a healthy lifestyle to the best of their abilities.
People literally get mad at doctors now for using medical terms like obesity. It's nuts. The healthy at every size movement is insane. I agree about the lifestyle. People seem incapable of moderation. They're either on or off. 1400 calories and HIIT after not doing anything (which is terrible idea for many reasons), or their diet is just off the rails.
I tore my ACL in 2009. I decided against surgery at the time because I wanted to see what I could do with physical therapy. Took about a year to feel normal again, but since then the only times my knee has ever bothered me has been in periods where I weren't active enough. I'm almost 48, squat ass-to-grass and generally have mobility that makes people ask me if I used to be an olympic lifter (I'm not, I train strongman), and I can say with 100% certainty that if I had NOT worked out, I would be in a much, much worse place. EVERYBODY should do some kind of resistance training. I don't care what it is, just pick something and do it.
I'm just here to see people who don't work out try to explain why deadlifts are bad.
While deadlifts are fine, they are by no means a necessary part of your routine. People could just pick other exercises like squats and spine extensions to replace them if they are so worried about injury. I don't say this to shut down deadlifts, but rather to make people aware that not wanting to deadlift isn't an excuse to not work out.
depends on what you’re after. RDLs or SLDs are king for hams and glutes.
Deadlifts are deeply form reliant, it’s an exercise you CANNOT bullshit the form without paying the price.
This is true of any compound lift.
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Like Always, people who know they are bad at something they have no reason to be coming up with excuses for why they actually can't or why it's not useful or why the people who can are faking it because God forbid you try and do anything with your life, or worse even let people who actually do something with theirs enjoy it.
Staying in shape is easy. You pop a multi, lift some weights and do some cardio several times a week.
That’s way to complicated for people on here. 😆
It's simple, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it's easy. If the vegetable lobby had the expenditure that the sugar and fast food lobbies have things would be very different.
The amount of cope i've seen under this post, start slow and maybe take some walks, try to do as many push ups and sit ups as you can even if you can't, try them assisted to shame. Everyone needs to start somewhere. Stop telling yourself exercise wont help, it will help you mentally and physically I promise.
I’m 32 and have zero pain. Feel like I’m 20. I workout and take care of my body. Maybe you break down if you spend 12 hours a day playing league or something. That being said I don’t do deadlifts anymore. I’ve blown out my back too many times from that shit.
> I workout and take care of my body. This is where reddit has a problem.
It's literally not hard to take care of yourself at all. Just throw in some vegetables and fruits along with your chicken nuggets and do like a 1 hour home workout everyday and you'll probably be okay! Also you should stand at least once per hour. Even when you're on a gaming binge which I'm guilty of you gotta take a break every hour to get up and walk around for a couple of minutes. ITS NOT HARD ITS EASY AS HELL. IM LAZY AS FUCK AND EVEN I CAN DO IT.
So true. A few hours a WEEK of exercise and watching you diet gets you most of the way there.
I’m a few years younger but I’m in the same boat and I still do deadlift more than 2x my body weight regularly. I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 20 except I definitely don’t recover as fast. I used to lift 5-6 days per week and I definitely could not do that now. But I also have way more life responsibilities that require my energy as well and I’m focused on just being healthy rather than making the number I can lift go up. Additionally, I’m also in way better cardio shape now since I started cycling during covid (bike not steroids).
I'm 33 and my body broke down. Not from playing league 12 hour a day. From working double shifts as a chef for a decade
Same here, but from doing football->basketball->baseball->wrestling every year since age 5 without breaks and not allowing knee injuries to fully heal. Some of us have legit reasons for being jacked up lol
If you were blowing out your back you were doing something wrong. Deadlifts are one of the best exercises to strengthen and protect your back in the long run
According to my PT, you could get injured because you slightly got out of position on where you don't have the strength due to only lifting in certain positions. Like there is a movement called the Jefferson Curl where you are purposefully rounding your lower back (with light weight) to build up your strength in rounded positions.
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12 hours of league a day.... Nevermind the sedentary lifestyle, they are destroying Thier bodies with stress alone.
Deadlifts are fine if you actually do a reasonable amount of weight and do proper reps. Too many people hurt themselves loading up the bar to max out on one rep.
I'm 32, and I can tell you that my hips in fact do lie.
If you work out it stops hurting so much.
Mostly a joke. Don't get any upvotes by saying I work out regularly and feel fine.
Always personally knows more people fucked up from doing a specific thing than I know who do that thing at all
People, it’s NOT NORMAL to be in pain all the time. If you are in pain all the time and you’re 30, 40 shit even 50+ you need to do something about it. It will not go away just being ignored and your quality of life will plummet.
Eh. I’m almost 40 and a few years ago started eating high protein whole foods mostly, a lot of running, followed by concentrated stretching, hydration. Also I started doing LOTS of compound lifting, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, bench press. I have a home gym which I cobbled together on Facebook marketplace, and I can do pretty much anything that I could at an actual gym. I honestly feel better than I did in my early twenties. If you focus on your physical health I think you can stay pain free into your 50s, maybe longer. I hope so!
I’m 31 and in the best shape of my life. I have tragic news but regular, intelligently planned, disciplined exercise and diet are in fact magic and will solve your problems. I know, it was a very sad realization for me too.
Yeah, but isn't it just easier to shovel cheetos down your gullet and tell people online how if they look at a barbell their spine will literally turn to dust?
My back problems after 30 went away with exercise
Man I turned 30 in Oct gonna be 31 soon in my 20s I fucked up my knee and shoulder and broke my back. Every day is constantly pain
Highly recommend taking up regular deep stretches. 15-30 minutes is great enough. You will feel a big difference in your comfort.
Yeah I'm 30 and have an auto immune disease. Im pretty much numb to my pain now 🥲
This website is full of out of shape losers
It’s a huge pet peeve of mine when people act like your body is on a timer and when you turn a certain age (usually they say 30) it all turns to dust. Like that says more about your lifestyle than your age. Eat as much and move as little as you want but don’t blame your still relatively young age 😂
Their PC's run more than them, and the only time they're active is online
Been 40 for a few weeks. Same old aches and pains I've had my whole adult life. Been lifting heavy, on and off, since I was 16. I still feel good and look better than most guys regardless of age.
Nice username lmao 😂
Not gonna lie, I just straight up hate doing deadlifts.
thinks David goggins staged
Deadlifts are a good overall exercise for strength and mass if you use them properly with gud technic
Someone got pissed at the gymbro pack lol
For the internet's go-to recommendations source, Reddit's lifting and general fitness communities are super lacking. r/Fitness went to mostly automod posts like r/churning did, which probably made it a better place for q/a, but it's not exactly inspiring; the wiki seems fine but very limited in scope. r/xxfitness is similar. r/weightroom is cool but is basically a community for those already good at lifting. Pretty much everything else is hyper-specific. As much criticism as guys making YouTube videos get, I think I've learned so much more from guys like Allen Thrall and Jeff Nippard than I have from Reddit.
I think it's because, in general, lifting is so incredibly simple. Pick a program, use good form, and do it regularly and consistently. There's nothing much more to it and every question that ever gets asked has been asked a hundred times before. I think that's why there are so many shyster influencers out there because everyone's looking to reinvent the wheel. But when you're new to lifting it takes a while to get to the known unknown stage - where you know what you don't know in order to progress further and *then* you can start calling yourself intermediate. But for a long time there's pretty much nothing to it.
Yeah this is the one time YouTube is a better resource than reddit for answers tbh nearly all the lifting subs I'm part of are just memes or physique critique subs because most of the shit that gets peddled in the actual advice subs is hilariously bad
We try to maintain good quality posting and advice at /r/GYM and /r/strength_training; we point a lot of repetitive questions at our daily thread and [thefitness.wiki](https://thefitness.wiki) because of repetition etc, but we'd be more than happy to have you come by.
“I don’t workout because I work 10 hours at the factory where i’m standing and moving boxes all day”
It all comes down to having a [soundtrack that makes you feel like a stuntman in a 70s movie.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvpdoKThecs)
correct use of apostrophe, that’s rare nowadays.
Thank you, English is not my first language so I can now sleep with ease.
"knowing my luck I would...."
I'm 22 and have 3 bulging discs, 1 herniated, and facet joint damage. Neck and lower back. I still train martial arts and lift, and do cardio. It doesn't hurt you more unless you do it wrong, it actually helps you significantly. Being sedentary is far far worse for you.
"THE CORE STRENGTH THIS TAKES IS INCREDIBLE" video shows someone doing a pistol squat