Complete Lifting Reset

Red-Curious · 2019-10-01T04:05:23+00:00

For your age, height, weight, and body fat you should NATURALLY be lifting way more than this. Something sounds seriously off here. Most guys with those base demographics could walk into a gym after having never lifted in their lives and be pulling off more than this. I'm very confused here.

What it sounds like is that you probably do have the capacity for higher lifts, but you have a psychological block due to the history of pain. Chiropractors feel great, but they're addictive and do not offer any permanent solutions. As soon as you stop seeing them, the problems will recur - at least until you're pretty built. I used to have lots of pain in my upper and lower back as well, plus my neck. I saw a chiropractor for a while and had no real long-term benefit from it.

Know what did fix me and make all my pain go away? I got buff. Once my bench went from 145 to 225+, all that pain went away. I'm guessing it's because your body is designed to be muscular. When you don't have muscle, your bones and joints are carrying more load than they should, and not configured properly. When you gain muscle, it forces your body to rest in its proper shape so you're not posturing yourself weird all the time, and it also lets the muscle carry the load of your body around rather than your bones.

Best advice I can give, without being a doctor, is to find non-painful ways to build muscle mass as quickly as possible and hope that the peripheral effect of the muscle you can build will help self-correct the areas where there are pain so you can begin focusing on those areas sooner. But you have to at least start getting your body in a proper shape first.

OsmiumZulu · 2019-10-01T07:44:27+00:00

This is my own personal experience, so take it with whatever spoonful of salt is appropriate, but I have found that my form sucked until my lifts were heavy enough that I couldn't get away with fudging my form and still progress.

For example, when I got back into lifting after high school my bench form was abysmal. I decided I would start with the bar. Guess what? I could lift the bar with horrible form, so my form didn't improve. Steadily I increased my weights. Eventually I stalled and realized that not only was flairing out my elbows unsafe, it limited my ability to push through the lift consistently. So I dropped the weight a little and fixed that part of my form. I progressed but stalled again shortly after. I was stuck for months until I realized that my shoulders were flat and not pushed back, so I fixed it and started progressing again. Then I stalled again and realized that I wasn't driving through my legs at all, then progressed. Then I realized I needed to arch my back and not lay flat. Guess what? I broke through my plateau. To put this in perspective, I started with the bar and the last time I tested my 1RM I was at 255.

Here's the point: the weight you are lifting isn't enough to likely injure you nor is it enough to give you meaningful feedback about your form.

Now, that's not to say you should follow in my footsteps. It took me a stupid amount of trial, error, and research to improve my form to what it is today (and it still needs work. Form improvement never ends). Here's my advice:

1) Start lifting in the 3-6 rep range so you are taxing your muscles enough to get valuable feedback 2) Hire a coach if you can afford it. Make sure they actually know their stuff and aren't just gym bros. 3) Research to learn what good form looks like. Jeff Nippard and Mark Rippetoe put out incredible content for this on YouTube. 4) Video yourself lifting regularly. Now that you've researched and watched videos on proper form, you can watch your awkward self and see where your deficiencies are. You'll spot them. You'll cringe. You'll improve rapidly. 5) Track your progress religiously and don't hop from program to program. Stick with one long enough to see if it works. Write your lifts down every workout, even if it was a bad day. If you don't, you won't know if you are truly improving over time. Lifting is a marathon, not a sprint.

Title	Complete Lifting Reset
Author	htownbounce
Upvotes	2
Comments	7
Date	October 1, 2019 12:00 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askRPC
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/askRPC/comments/dbkpsw/complete_lifting_reset/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askRPC/complete-lifting-reset.304666 https://theredarchive.com/post/304666