I had really bad lower back pain years ago. Started going to the gym and doing weight training. Went from not being able to deadlift 80 lbs without pain to 495lbs for 3 reps. No back pain now. I also recommend "Starting Strength" by Mark Ripptoe. It works. I wish I could convince my wife to do back squats and deadlifts. She's also having back problems but she's stubbornly refusing to do anything about them.
Over 6 years ago I came across the same online resources about strength-training as you.
Without question, weight training has been the best outlet from my professional + social life. for decompressing and preserving my body's well-being, specifically with regards to posture and mental focus over 8+ hour workdays.
Many conservative training cycles later and I'm squatting/deadlifting over 200kg.
Like you, the only sad part about it is how hard it can be to persuade some men and women to take part in the sport. Some people have major hangups about their body image, injuries and discipline.
I really wish I was exposed to strength training during my school years. It's sad I only came across it randomly while doing Crossfit in my mid twenties.
I have the complete opposite experience. I messed up my lower back doing t-bars after a long break from the gym (very stupid I know) and haven't been able to workout much at all for almost a year now. I'd definitely suggest consulting with a personal trainer before seriously considering weight training. It's getting better now and I slowly start training my back again, but holy crap it's been very painful 6 months.
I've seen a handful of friends injure themselves weightlifting over the years, and almost every incident stemmed from poor form and/or too much weight.
I don't know if I'd recommend a personal trainer for anyone seriously considering it, trainers aren't cheap and most people aren't likely to stick with weight training. If we're talking weightlifting as a sport, yes you should definitely be working with experts whether trainers or fellow weightlifters.
I'd recommend anyone new to study up on form when you start working out, and maybe ask a trainer at the gym you go to to give you a quick form check.
For somebody who is new to weightlifting and not terribly frail, it is almost impossible to get injured if you just start with an empty bar and then progressively add 5lbs each session.
5 lbs each session quickly gets you to a pretty heavy weight, and you may not have proper form—I did this and I got to a point where if I continued the same way I would have almost certainly messed up my back doing deadlifts. I'd temper this advice with the warning that once it starts feeling pretty heavy (and long before that as well!), you should definitely get advice on your form, be it from a trainer or friends.
Couldn't agree more with your advice, but I'll just point out: once you hit weights where you can injure yourself, you're by definition no longer new to weightlifting. Plus you've already reaped most of the health benefits that being stronger bestow. Beyond that, you're no longer lifting for health.
That's not the exact opposite experience, that's just stupid. You have to work up to the weight. If I walk into the gym and try lifting my PR while cold, I will almost certainly fuck up my back. That's why coaches make so much emphasis on warm up, gradual weight progression, and leaving your ego out of it. And of course you have to know where your limits are. I'm never going to be a pro, so I set my training limit for deadlifts at 2.5x my body weight and for squats at 2x for 1 rep. I do go beyond that every now and then, but only when I'm feeling up to it. With proper nutrition and training those are realistic goals for an able bodied male to achieve over the course of 1.5-2 years starting from the untrained state.
I cannot agree more based on evidence of myself and my wife who do weight training. Now only if losing weight was as simple as gaining strength...it only takes discipline multiplied by weeks and months!
Losing weight is honestly just about developing good habits and being aware of what you eat. Over the past year I've lost 65 lbs calorie counting on an IIFYM-style diet, while lifting. Once the routine is established and you have a go-to set of foods you can hit, it becomes pretty easy.
The big thing for me was not having off-limits foods. If I want pizza, I'll have pizza, but I log it and adjust my intake for the rest of the day to get those macros balanced. This kills the "I want it because I can't have it" temptations and has the effect of pushing me towards more naturally-healthy foods, because I can have 2 gigantic chicken breast instead of a piece of pizza, and I know which one is going to satisfy me more.
I weight trained for a good 5 years. I then had a scaphoid wrist fracture and can't put much stress on wrists. Be careful, if you overdo it like me, then you may have to go years without lifting at all. I can't even do a pushup now.
Also doesn't help that Healthcare in US is so ridiculously expensive that a single mistake will cost you months of salary.
A variant of starting strength is "StrongLifts 5x5", which comes with a great app (regardless of platform). My morning back pain has evaporated. The only thing I'd say is to supplement basic strength training with a calisthenics (core) exercise & pull-ups after, say, a year-or-so. Personally, I don't think the basic strength training don't focus on functional strength enough, in the long run. I still stay away from things like CrossFit — I just know too many people who've hurt themselves doing that stuff, as they're really not strong enough to do these more advanced systems.
I have sciatica and life long issues with my back. It has come to a head that if I don't lift weights for a week my pain comes back. But like you I did the Starting Strength method and can deadlift 320lb without pain.
I had back injuries from weightlifting decades ago and found the only way to eliminate the pain is to "get back on that horse" and start lifting again.
I recently went to extremely low reps with the heaviest weight I can lift. My strength is now increasing rapidly, and it's far easier/shorter than slogging along with 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps each. Only downside: I need more rest. I _never_ hold my breath and go to great lengths to ensure my breathing is steady as I do every lift.
Before I tried this I did the best I could to ensure there were no tendon weaknesses and that my joints were in good condition.
Suggest ab exercises to her as well. It could be that her ab muscles aren't strong enough so her back is taking on more load than it should. Works the same with basically any front/rear muscle pairs (pecs & lats, biceps & triceps, etc.)
Have her try to stick with exercises that are more upright ab exercises. Roman chair is a better choice than sit-ups.
Also, gluteal exercises that don't put too much weight on the back help as well such as leg extensions pushing back with that foot strap on your foot work well.
The best ab exercise that I have found is a heavy ass deadlift. Barbell squats are good too. They actually train _core strength_ rather than just abs, which is what you need. The advice is: start with compound barbell exercises like squat and deadlifts, then incorporate others as needed. Don't ignore cardio.
Deadlifts and squats, properly performed (and in many instances, performed improperly) are not hard on the back. If you start with an empty bar and add a little weight each time, they will make every part of your back stronger and more resilient to the vagaries of life as a physical being.
I had minor back pain and also pickup strength training including doing "starting strength". The biggest difference though was reading "Becoming a supple leopard" and focusing on getting mobility and flexibility back to my lower body. Getting your pelvis back into a neutral position will do wonders for your back but that requires focusing on short hamstrings and hip flexors that comes with sitting all day.
It doesn't do anything for endurance though. I watched my weightlifter friend struggle to carry a 40 lb pack during a hike with 3,000 ft elevation gain. He looked like he was just dying the whole way, while his biceps bulged through his shirt. He got to camp about 45 minutes after I did, and I was at my comfortable, light breathing pace.
Not sure why you were down voted, I remember a weight lifter who were at the top of their field in an interview saying he was so out of shape he couldn't play with his kids.
Weight training is great, in moderation, like anything else.
Endurance is a different adaptation that strength. Somebody who is merely strong will only be modestly more "in shape" than somebody who does zero exercise. Expecting strong people to be adapted for endurance is like expecting marathon runners to deadlift 400lbs.
Strong people can get in shape, though. Take a look at crossfit athletes.
Of course. For endurance I got into the habit of doing daily HIIT cardio. Instead of "Netflix and chill" it's Netflix and cardio for me. Pro tip to those who would like to get into the habit: pick a tv show and only watch it while you're on your stationary bike.
> The first thing that surprised me was him saying it is a myth that machine exercises are less effective than barbell ones.
I found the guide useful, particularly the commentary about sleep and nutrition, but disagree with the author on that quote and relatedly on his exercise programming. The program is hypertrophy focused and the machine exercises are useful for targeting secondary muscles for hypertrophy work, but they're certainly not as good of an overall exercise as the compound movements one does with a barbell. Barbell exercises are more effective both for gaining strength and muscle mass.
"Going to the gym is the 2nd best thing you can do for your body, besides quitting smoking; if you don't smoke, you should focus on the gym" -Some guy on youtube
I always seen the gym as an investment into health as opposed to losing weight or getting fit, although those are nice secondary results.
I was a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) before I became a software developer, and I would just like to emphasize that the benefits mentioned can be realized from some pretty simple exercise routines. The keys are to perform them consistently and to progressively increase the training load so that you are constantly providing a stimulus that your body must adapt to.
I've always viewed weight-training like brushing teeth: spend a small amount of time each day for big payoffs in the long run. Now to be fair, I optimized for this by putting a squat rack in my basement along with second-hand weights.
My philosophy has always been, if I'm [in the gym/in the basement] longer than 45 minutes working out, I'm doing it wrong. For me personally this counts warm-up sets.
I have seen payoffs, mentally almost more than physically. Without going into details, I've been in a legal battle for a while (nothing criminal) and lifting is a great way to blow off steam.
Physically, if you "eat right" you see results very quickly at first, and then more slowly as time goes on. Diet is the most important part if you're looking for physical results. You could lift with proper form for years and years, following every program under the sun. If your diet sucks, you're wasting your time if aesthetics if your goal.
Personal anecdote: I used to get wrist and back pains a few years ago. The two big changes which I attribute to completely getting rid of these issue was 1) Switching to a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and 2) Regular weight training 3 times a week.
I also find weight training really helps me deal with stress. I highly recommend it.
For back pain, yes weight training definitely helped me too.
For wrist and elbow pain from computer use, however, weight training made it worse for me. At that time I did a bit of googling and for RSI seems like rest and stopping the repetitive motions is best. The exercises irritate the same nerves. To solve the issue, I switch to a trackball instead of a mouse. (To be clear, weight training was miraculous to me when I first started, but for RSI, fix the cause)
Unfortunately very many people casually lump a huge range of maladies under the umbrella of "RSI" and treat them as if they all have the same root cause and the same remedy. Wrist/arm pain could be carpal-tunnel syndrome, or it could be tendonitis, or it could be any of a bunch of other things all of which are technically "RSI". For some, strength training can certainly help; for others, as in your case, it may do more harm than help.
I totally agree. I never actually went to a Dr to get my wrist pain looked into so I don't know 100% that it was RSI. I just kind of assumed that it was based on RSI being an occupational hazard for many tech folks.
Changing my keyboard got rid of the immediate pain I had been experiencing for months. I started weight lifting at around the same time. The only reason I attribute lifting as being part of the solution is that I went back to typing on my laptop again after 6 months.
I now do quite a lot of typing on my laptop (90% of the software I write) and I no longer have any pain in my wrists.
This advise is probably not for everyone, I just offer it up as an interesting anecdote. If you have persistant wrist pain, its probably best to go see a specialist.
> If all that isn’t convincing enough to turn you onto weights, perhaps this is: maintaining strength later in life “seems to be one of the best predictors of survival," says Peterson. “When we add strength...almost every health outcome improves.”
This sort of thing is repeated a lot, but isn't this just a correlation? We don't know which way it goes. Maybe sick people get weaker, rather than weak people get sicker. That makes just as much sense.
The docs seem fairly certain the direction it flows is weakness leads to sickness. Apparently something to do with muscle tissue vs insulin response. Lower muscle tissue leads to lower BMR which leads to obesity related issues and insulin resistance issues. Its almost too trivial to point out the orthopedic issues like weak back muscles leading to back problems. Also the accidental injury issue is trivial obvious; when I was younger working on a home improvement project I dropped a solid wood (not hollow core) door and then caught it, wrenching my back, obviously if my arms were stronger I wouldn't have dropped the door to begin with, and if my back had been stronger (I had been taking a break from lifting) then my back wouldn't have been as messed up.
There's separate research as well into how much, if any, exercise can slow/reduce Sarcopenia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcopenia). So they are at least researching it separate from simple correlation as well.
"Exercise is of interest in treatment of sarcopenia; evidence indicates increased ability and capacity of skeletal muscle to synthesize proteins in response to short-term resistance exercise.[18] A 2009 Cochrane review also found evidence that in older adults progressive resistance training can improve physical performance (gait speed) and muscular strength,[19] which are two key components of sarcopenia."
I'm in my mid 50s and haven't been in a gym in almost 4 months after being religious about weight training for 40 years. I really don't care if I ever do another workout in my life, but I know the importance of weight bearing exercise so I guess I will go back eventually.
For those curious to get started, Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe is the gold standard in beginners programming. http://startingstrength.com/
It takes you through the basic compound exercises and talks about some important concepts in weight training, highly recommend it.
I worked on this basic program that requires you to go to the gym 3 times a week and basic linear progression got me up to a 400lbs squat for reps at the age of 28. It took about 18 months to get there.
My biggest regret is that I stopped going to the gym, if you do start, please keep going. It's better to go and do something easy than to undo the habit.
By the time you're looking at follow-up programmes, you should start reading about periodisation, and why sticking with any one programme indefinitely limits further development.
Stronglifts / 3x5 programmes are a good initiation. Once you're initiated, you want to understand the stimulus / response / rest / nutrition relationships, and identify what your specific training and fitness goals, needs, and limitations are.
That's what you end up building a programme around.
The problem with beginners -- in any field -- is that they tend to develop One True Religionism. If you've been doing nothing, then doing virtually anything is better. But that virtually anything can progress in response only up to a point.
That's where the complications come in.
The key point is that your goals determine your methods.
Though the basics remain, for strength: full-body, compound, freeweight movements, with training frequency, set, rep, and inter-set rest intervals selected to address your specific goals.
Similar principles drive other elements of fitness: cardio (if that's your thing), skill-based activities, etc.
They can even be generalised to other domains of life.
None of those are meaningfully different. At core, they're all the same program:
1. Basic compound lifts
2. Linear progression
3. 3x5 (StrongLifts also switches to 3x5 once the weights get heavy)
There are some differences, but they're pretty minor and people nitpicking them for beginners are mostly wasting time because it really doesn't matter that much.
They're meaningfully different in how they approach failure.
StrongLifts is worse off in this regard for the reason that they teach reducing volume once you start running into plateaus in order to artificially progress. "Benching that lift too hard? Well cut out 40% of the volume and keep going!"
Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology which is arguably a reason for the "spinning the wheels" approach you see from several lifters who claim to run the program for months on end upwards and beyond a year. It's also seen as a less ideal program for its poor split on upper/lower volume and really benefits from accessory lifts thrown in when the lifter is capable.... but at that point you might as well just run a better program.
They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term. Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
> They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term. Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
I think here I have to argue on the side of "done is better than perfect". StrongLifts/SS are both programs with tons of resources, massive communities and scores of Youtube videos with technique, tips and reviews. StrongLifts actually has a very high-quality, ad-free app (supported only by in-app purchases) that tracks your progress, tells you how long to rest between sets and handles the de-load and other programming quirks for you. In-app purchase also unlocks accessory lifts, which the app will then track for you.
Most importantly, StrongLifts/SS will keep the median person with no knowledge of lifting occupied for at least a year while they build up strength, confidence and knowledge about strength training. It gets them into the rhythm of lifting 3x/week, eating and sleeping right. At that point, they may be better informed and more able to separate signal from noise about all the other programs out there that might better suit their needs.
I'd much rather unlearn programming quirks than bad form. Both programs place strong emphasis on learning good form. That's what a lot of the deload and wheel spinning is often about in my experience; you get more training hours under your belt and improve your technique. IMO this is important for people who just haven't lifted that much in their lives and don't have the muscle memory and feel for body position and form that more experienced lifters have.
> They're meaningfully different in how they approach failure.
All 3 of these programs do deloads to handle failure. StrongLifts also starts dropping sets/reps, but that's after deloading repeatedly at which point Starting Strength just says to go do a different program. So no meaningful difference until you have outgrown the program.
> Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology which is arguably a reason for the "spinning the wheels" approach you see from several lifters who claim to run the program for months on end upwards and beyond a year.
That's not running the program. You can't deload and work back up to the same weight repeatedly. You can call that Starting Strength but it's not. You get some number of deloads (3? can't recall) and then move to a different program. Pretty sure Starting Strength coaches will also tell you you're not eating/sleeping/training right if you keep getting stuck at a novice weight.
> It's also seen as a less ideal program for its poor split on upper/lower volume and really benefits from accessory lifts thrown in when the lifter is capable....
Sure, but for someone untrained, this really doesn't matter much. Hence nitpicking.
> They're decent programs in that they get a untrained individual to put up enough weight to get themselves out of a horribly weak position but they don't teach anything meaningful for long term.
They teach you to grow muscle and to learn to push yourself in the gym. Not sure what else a beginner program is supposed to teach.
> Other programs achieve the necessary linear progression that is capable during your noob gains without having stupid programming quirks that lifters need to unlearn when they move onto intermediate programs.
> Starting Strength fails in teaches the idea of deloading by dropping weight then taking a run at it without changing any of the training methodology
No, starting strength tells you to take exactly two runs up until your failure weight and then move on to another program, which for many people works very well and allows them to progress far beyond weight they failed at. People who can run an SS linear progression for a year straight are rare, but they exist and they end up in the upper 3s, 4s and 5s for bench, squat and deadlift after their first year.
Agreed. The reason I would recommend Starting Strength for beginners is the tremendous detail in written instruction, forums with free feedback on form, and zero ambiguity about training program, which act together to remove the barriers to entry for many beginners.
Sorry, but I'm legitimately curious what that image was meant to be and it looks like you linked a thumbnail.
Mid-post edit as the Google Image Search result comes in [0]. Amazing how I was able to find it with a reverse image search. I hadn't heard of the Greyskull variant, and I do 5x5 Stronglifts.
Yes and no. In a scientific sense you may have a great point. In a pragmatic/popularity and also anecdotal/conversational sense, I think Rippetoe can be comfortably called the gold standard.
I think that for most people any (safe) strength training is the best programme. I'm also a bit sceptical about monstrous squats - enough of those and you'll compress the discs in your spine and end up shorter! I recall a Polish friend telling me that when Polish blokes came back from their military service they were generally a couple of inches shorter and a foot wider from all the intense lifting.
Blatant self-promotion. I just finished initial development of a web app [1] for tracking your reps, and have just submitted an iOS / Watch app to the App Store (currently in review).
I had my DEXA test a couple months ago and found out I have 3.5x the bone density of others my age due to my heavy weightlifting. It's probably why I've had 3 motorcycle crashes and never broke a single bone. Furthermore, the technician told me that I will probably never have problems with osteoporosis as a result!
TL;DR - keep your squats low and your standards high
It's surprising that no one has mentioned Body by Science[1], SuperSlow from Ken Hutchins, Arthur Jones and Nautilus, and other research based programs from the last forty years. Free weights can be very dangerous as you approach muscle failure, and all sorts of momentum, breath holding, etc. are problematic. Unless hypertrophy and/or bad time management are your goals, I prefer the system of deep muscle inroading in 12 minutes a week, and then I work on sport skills, not building muscle mass, the rest of the week. I have a median genotype, not the genetic makeup of a muscle magazine.
perhaps the best exercise for bone strength, but is it the best thing you can do for your bones?
assuming a moderately active lifestyle (e.g. an hour of brisk walking a day), we're skeptical that exercise has any significant advantage, if any, compared to improved nutrition and non-exercise lifestyle changes (more and better quality sleep, better friendships, etc.).
FYI, there is a guy in the Starting Strength community who had pins throughout his legs as a result of falling off of a roof. His bones became so much more dense as a result of lifting heavy that he had to have surgery to have the pins removed; they were literally being pushed out of his bones. I don't think any amount of nutrition is capable of something comparable.
If you stop to consider what's going on, it makes a lot of sense. Your body is adaptive. This includes bones as well as muscles. In the same way that you need to add muscle mass in order to lift progressively heavier weight, your bones, too, need to become stronger to support lifting heavier weight. They do this by becoming denser.
Brisk walking [every day even] doesn't qualify as a moderately active lifestyle, sorry.
If it doesn't raise your heart rate to at least 100+, it's nearly useless as an exercise. Sure, you'll burn slightly more calories than sitting at a desk, but the benefits are nowhere near actual exercise.
> more and better quality sleep, better friendships, etc.
Sleep quality generally improves with exercise, as long as you're still getting 8 hours. Better friendships are completely orthogonal to exercise/weightlifting.
My parents are 67 and 65 years old; I would say say that daily brisk walking is possibly much more suitable for them (their body) in comparison to weightlifting -- irrespective of your personal definition of "exercise". And I'm damn sure their heart rate easily exceeds 100+ if that's the main variable to control.
Weight training is like magic for me. I've slipped into some bad habits over time and am struggling my way slowly out of them and back into training. The difference when I'm training is crazy. It supercharges my body and lifts my mood from all the extra hormones and so on. Recently I had had a weird pain in my back for months every time I breathed in, and it disappeared with a single back workout! I now wonder whether something was out of alignment and the weighted stretching pulled everything back into place. Certainly seemed that way. I've been banging on about weight training to anyone that will listen for years!
My special tip: get some cheap bulk whey concentrate (cheaper than isolate and not really that much more calorific in the wider scheme of things) and bang down enough protein shakes to get your protein up to a reasonable level. I used to do 1 gram per pound of bodyweight per day, but looking back I think that was excessive. You also have to make sure you drink plenty of water whilst on a high protein diet, and obviously don't go into it if you have any history of kidney trouble. But seriously though - training vs training + protein is incomparable. Combine the two and watch your muscles expand.
