Injuries as you age?

I just turned 39 last month. Ligaments definitely rip instead of stretch like they did when I was a younger man. in 4 years of jiu-jitsu, I've sprained my elbows multiple times, both MCL's, ankle, neck, and toes. Wrestling in my teens & 20's, I had a few injuries but not as many... thinking back, over my 8 years of wrestling all I ever had was turf toes (still dealing with these), one popped elbow, and bursa sac in my knee....that's about it. My popped elbow is the only injury that ever caused me to miss a single practice.

The bigger differences are warm-up and sleep. I used to be able to go from 0 to fully warmed up pretty quickly. now, I seem to creak as I walk, things are sore and stiff, but once I'm warmed up, everything is fine and I feel young again. I don't remember needing such a warm-up before.

As far as sleep - when I was a younger man I could function just fine with 5 hours of sleep. Now, if I don't get 7 hours or more, I'm a mess.
 
I'm 32 but feel like I'm going on 45. More injuries/strains and recovery is tougher. On top of that, I'm busier than ever. Life comes at you fast, brah.
 
I got a herniated L5 disk at 23 from deadlifting wrong.
At 28, I had a freak accident of dislocating my right shoulder.
At 30 & I do mean that year, I started growing grey hairs on my chin. Then I got a inguinal hernia.
At 32 I had to get a motherfucking stapled hemroidectomy. Oddly, not from lifting.
At 34, I have tennis elbow in both elbows & golfers elbow in my right.

Ive had plantar fascilitis since my 20s.
 
TrueBias said:
I got a herniated L5 disk at 23 from deadlifting wrong.
At 28, I had a freak accident of dislocating my right shoulder.
At 30 & I do mean that year, I started growing grey hairs on my chin. Then I got a inguinal hernia.
At 32 I had to get a motherfucking stapled hemroidectomy. Oddly, not from lifting.
At 34, I have tennis elbow in both elbows & golfers elbow in my right.

Ive had plantar fascilitis since my 20s.
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But other than that, you're fine?
 
ironwolf said:
It dosent matter what you claim, you got caught in your massive web of lies so it's really impossible to believe anything you say or any claims you make. You did this to yourself and have nobody else to blame for the downfall of our sherdog reputation.
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do you happen to have a link to where he got caught? i like watching a train wreck.
 
After six surgeries and serious deformities from arthritis I've really gotten into bodyweight type work. I add a weight vest but it's a lot less taxing on my joints. The only thing I use a barbell for anymore is for squats. I've lost a lot of weight too. I used to be 265 in my strongest days and now I rarely get above 210-220.
 
Youth's still on my side. One of the few things I got going for me after all.
 
nephel said:
do you happen to have a link to where he got caught? i like watching a train wreck.
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Go to the "standup technique" sub forum, theres a thread (probably on the 2nd page down) "is it ok to spar hard every sparring session".

The op "skribble" is in fact goldenboy. The thread goes on for awhile, then gets resurected and the callout with proof begins. We had a good time on that one lol.
 
I've been lucky to recover well from all of my major injuries but I get some aches and pains. Speaking of recovery and getting banged up, I notice that 50 mile trail runs are much much easier on my body than 26.2 mile road marathons.

I actually had a double inguinal hernia repaired almost exactly a year ago, i recovered pretty quickly and got back to previous levels within a few months of the surgery.
 
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Broke my elbow at 16.

From 17-23 I had a bad back culminating in herniating a disk on the right side at 24 while working as a stage hand. Bedridden for a week, healed eventually.

Started lifting once healed and doing BJJ. Lost weight, started stretching, doing cardio training. Back flared up a couple of times, usually due to bad form, but been getting better year by year.

Any injuries I've had doing BJJ are the standard, jammed up toes/fingers, a sprained ankle which has healed 100%. Right now I have a weird thing going on where I can pop my knee out, but it's never been injured - think that's just tightness and can be corrected.

I'm 29.

Basically, I'm getting more resilient as I get older. I attribute this to the fact that I started sports later than most, and have always done warmup/prehab work.

If this starts to change I'll start taking testosterone and growth hormone. Growing old isn't a death sentence, and if you listen to Dan John(you should) then older guys can be beasts.
 
I.just strained my shoulder moderately bad OHPing about two hours ago.. Can't get it through my head that I'm not 21 anymore.
 
^^

Extreme detail to form has taken over brute force in picking weights up in the last 3-4 years. I'm not lifting as much but lifting smarter and still seeing results. Plus less worry of what's going to hurt tomorrow.

Instead of going to failure with heavy load, started drop setting, or finishing off with body weight exercise.
 
p4p503error said:
^^

Extreme detail to form has taken over brute force in picking weights up in the last 3-4 years. I'm not lifting as much but lifting smarter and still seeing results. Plus less worry of what's going to hurt tomorrow.

Instead of going to failure with heavy load, started drop setting, or finishing off with body weight exercise.
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This is good practice at any age, nothing to do with being old.

Honestly I think a lot of people who think they were indetructible in their early 20's were just getting lucky that their bodies could handle the bad form they were using on exercises.
 
scandibro said:
Up until I turned 30, I had never had a serious injury, never broke any bones or barely pulled something despite playing lots of sports.

Since turning 30, I have know had a degenerative disc, neck pain and latest to add as of today is a torn meniscus and (if lucky) partial ACL tear.

I ask: Is this just unlucky or does most above 30 begin having injuries frequently? I admit I was a fatass for almost 2 years and I think most of it comes from that very inactive period but still cant stop thinking that lifting played a role.
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Man I sure can relate. It's one injury after another for me nowadays. I'm currently 43 and I swear every other week something new aches and hurts. Before age 35 I never had any injuries of note. The occasional strained muscle in the back or something but other than that nothing. I also got lazy and fat for several years and I do think that plays a part as much as the age thing because I have some friends near the same age as me and they never stopped or got out of shape and they seem to be holding up better than me.

For me I also have issues with proper rest and nutrition so that adds to it I know. But in general not falling a apart these days is kind of hard lol. But I keep on plugging away. Despite all my various hurts and whatnot I am doing pretty good.
 
I'm 29 and notice my metabolism slowing down a bit. Now I catch myself reading the nutritional info and trying to be conscious of the stuff I eat. Where as before, I'd eat whatever I wanted. Other than that, my body is still going strong.

One other thing that I'm trying to do is transition into the sports that I'll continue to be able to do when I'm older. Tennis, swimming, golfing. Might as well get good at them now, therefore when I'm older, I can be the stud in the old man group.
 
p4p503error said:
When I was 15, the highschool baseball coach put us in power lifting. My back stayed in pain for 2 years. Never went over form with us (being there were 25-30 people in weight room) Just paired a freshman-senior and sophomore-junior and blew the whistle.

15+ yrs later I see how stupid it was trying to lift weight to keep up with classmates instead of taking weight off and keeping proper form.
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See that's the thing. I feel if I had taken preventative measures early on, I'd be less hurt now. I don 't think people should wait till their 30's to stretch, etc.
 
Strained my shoulder a bit today doing weighted dips.
 
Fought some killer tennis elbow/tendonitis for the past 3 months (finally broke down and bought some Elbow Revive with cissus and i'm back to like 90%). just as i recover from that, i'm doing heavy squats and I think i slipped a disc in my lumbar, lowar back. i swear, it's like one thing after another.
 
I'm 33 and definitely notice a longer recovery time for everything. Being more mindful of diet, less frequency at gym (2 to 3 days max), and doing proper warmups, especially with the shoulder has helped a lot.
 
My ankles have some wear on 'em doing all those sprints for boxing conditioning. Also just boxing training in itself has put wear on my ankles. Shame really, I never actually competed because I couldn't ever commit to making weight. Managing diet and supplementation, proper warming up, stretching, correcting imbalances, all that junk has helped. I'm turning 27 this month but man I wish I was 19 again.

EDIT: I just remembered why I started boxing in the first place: because my back was gone after playing basketball for most of my youth up to about when I was 19, had to get off the court and tried boxing.

God dammit I am a frail human being.
 
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