USAWA

Formulas have always irritated me. It always felt foolish whan you were the top lifter by hundreds of pounds only to lose on formula. However, when I an meets with awards by total pounds and by formula, it cost me more money, and almost without fail, the same guys were getting the same awards, whether it was based on formula or not. That told me that usually, the best lifter was winning. Not always, but usually. And without a formula of some kind, there is no way to compare lifters across the spectrum of weight and age. So, even though they often aggravate me, and will probably continue to do so, I do not think getting rid of them would do anything for our org. It does seem that the older the lifter gets after a certain age, the further they fall down the results lists, so maybe the way the Brits do it would be a correct move. And that would get us on the same page in another area.

I think we should go with the British system, as it gives old guys like me a better chance to compete against you young studs.

I think the whole waiting until the computer tells us who won thing is the biggest issue. But otherwise if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I find age formula frustrating and believe ET expressed this well enough.

On a personal level, I feel that the age formula gives me an unfair advantage. I feel that allowing me to compete against young people only takes away their thunder. Old lifters already had the opportunity to compete when they were young. Just because I missed out on competing when I was young, for whatever reason, does not give me the right to take away from their glory of lifting more sheer weight than me. It does not entitle me as an old person to insert myself into their division. I don’t understand why it is okay to create a formula to allow an old person to be compared to young lifters. There is a reason there is no formula for the young athlete to compete against the masters athletes. I feel the same about comparing me to men. I am what I am. I am not a man. I am not young. I only want to compete against others in my gender and age group or against everyone but where I naturally belong.

However, I believe others made a good point that it is not about me but about the organization. Thus, I would compromise by supporting a formula but one that is less generous to the masters lifters.

This is just my opinion.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by RJ.

Good post RJ!

I am 40 this year and just back from 4 years off due to multiple surgeries. I am new to the USAWA and doing pretty well in the comps. I attribute this to the years of strongman competing.

So I am curious if the formula, when first created was for an average person lifting or for someone who has been in the strength game throughout the years and are now just “older?” Fair for someone new but an advantage for someone experienced?

To be honest I like how you don’t know who is winning, I find it makes me focus more on what I’m doing rather than trying to keep score with everyone else and risk adjusting my numbers. I have my numbers figured out before the meet with the goal of the last attempt being a PR. Some play is done on the day depending how the lifts feel but I have goals in mind and if I get them I know its all I could do, win or lose.

I know for me, it is not the number of years put in, it’s the mileage. When I was still doing strongman, I felt as though I’d never lift in the masters class, as I would always be strong enough to do the open weights. As it turns out, I never lifted in the masters class in SM because my body was too broke down to keep doing the sport. Once toward the end of my career, I was told by a fellow competitor that I was 86 in strongman years. So, the experience only takes you so far, but for most of us, the body starts to break down at some point. I think that is where the formula comes in. Like I said, I will probably always be annoyed by it, but until we have enough lifters to have multiple guys competing in the same divisions, it is a way that allows us to compete against everyone else. Otherwise we all just get first place in our division, making us look like that kindergarten teacher that gentleman wrote so elegantly about in his Motorhead article.

The problem is that age corrections are based on fiction.

The first fictitious line of reasoning is that as people age, they get weaker. A boat-load of studies into this area shows us that this concept doesn’t hold true until one reaches the mid-60’s or so, which is mediated by various different things, predominantly how one has trained. As a matter of fact, the rate of strength gains in untrained young people (20’s) compared to older untrained people (70’s) is the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, several of you are going to think of your own, personal experiences, where over the years/decades you’ve lost strength. But at the risk of offending some of you, the reason you’ve experienced that is because you didn’t train based on scientific principles (like the subjects in all of those studies), rather myth and conjecture. This has resulted in your training taking a toll on your body, which has nothing to do with chronological age. And whatever injuries you’ve experienced that set you back are also due to poor training practices. Increases in chronological age do not cause ANY pathologies and injuries in weight training are only caused by doing too much too soon, poor technique, and being overtrained.

The second fictitious line of reasoning is that it’s fair and accurate to use the formula to compare an older lifter’s total to that of a younger lifter’s. It would only be fair if the formula was based on factual thinking. First, since there’s no difference in the amount of strength a 25-year old can demonstrate compared to a 55-year old, there can’t be any accuracy in the math generated to provide age corrections. And this leads into the next problem, which is the math for the corrections is not only based on fictitious physiological thinking, but also mathematical fiction, which, by definition, would lack accuracy.

In the end, applying the age corrections results in unfair competition…you might as well tell ET that because he’s younger than Al he has to break parallel in the squat but Al only needs to “approach” parallel–whatever that’s supposed to mean (ambiguity added purposely because, well, the whole thing is just nonsense). After all, common thinking holds that when you squat less deep, it’s better for your knees. Of course science tells us the exact opposite, that shearing forces upon the knees are greater in a partial squat than a full squat. And now I’m starting to sound like a broken record (remember those?)…

I’m in a bad mood now. This nonsense raises my blood pressure. I’m going to go train…and with any luck, since I’m older today than I was yesterday, the raised blood pressure won’t explode my heart….

I dont need a study to see what I can see with my own eyes every day. Your rhetoric does resemble a broken record, only a rather insulting one. Maybe you are just trying to argue against formulas, but it come off as Dan the Scientist is all knowing and you guys are a bunch of fools who have trained in an ignorant idiotic way. It is tired.
I dont know about chronological age, but the miles put in certainly take their toll. I wish you would have written me a science based approach to wrestle that would have prevented my opponent from twisting my knee and shreading my meniscus. Or one that would have prevented both my shoulder labrum from tearing in my last wrestling match. While better form would have prevented by back injury, I dot know if there is any science based method of walking that would have prevented me from stepping in that hole and severely spraining my ankle. Or one that would have prevented me from severely spraining it again by chasing that cow.
See, it’s not just weight lifting that takes a toll on a body. My grandpa was the toughest guy I ever knew. Strong as heck, but never trained weighlifting. Though he never participated in a scientific study in the confines of a laboratory, I could see with my own eyes his body and strength deteriorate with age. I dont think he was pulling any smoke and mirrors. Back then they did not have any science based methods of bucking hay or any of the other labor intesive activities he engaged in all his life. Maybe they do now. But I saw it, dont need a study to tell me that.
That being said, I have no idea how the formula was developed or what exactly it was based on. So, while it may or may not be mathematically correct, you are not going to convince me that the vast majority of people, weightlifters or not, do not experience a deterioration of their bodies as they age.

I may be crazy but I don’t think I’d enjoy the journey as much if someone showed me a more scientific way. I’ve evolved a lot as a lifter, from back when I was 16, lifting 3 sets of 10 on everything possible, leaving the gym and walking across the street to the corner shop for my post workout feeding of a pint of milk, two bags of square crisps and a ripple to these days where I train less lifts. Use percentages in a cycle and lie to myself and say I’m not going to max out on the events during Saturdays training lol (the diet is still the same).

As ET mentioned, life happens. My left shoulder was bad since I was in my teens (doctor said there was nothing wrong) and I only found out my rotator cuff was tore all that time a few years ago after I tore my right. Before then I just lived with it as a weird thing I had. My mother has never lifted, was a stay at home mum and now has arthritis in her neck and bad hips. This is always my Ace in the hole when she tells me I’m lifting too heavy and will be hurting when I’m older lol.

Bodily toll is inherent to being alive so I disagree with Dan that whatever injuries you’ve experienced that set you back are due to poor training practices. I also disagree that age is not a factor, and that an increase in age does not increase the chance of injury. That would be like saying the 20th time a VHS tape has been recorded over the quality is still the same the first.

I have no better suggestion on the formula though, other than now that I’m 40 lets reduce a members total by 1% per year under 40 for using youth as a PED.

Well I have to support Dan. For one, I am biased because I took an upper division Exercise Science course from him and thought he was an excellent teacher. Some of the students in that class were weightlifters from the Olympic Training Center to include one of the current national record holder.

Second, I have been training under him for over a decade and never been injured. Instead, I get injured doing a what is considered far more safe activity, riding my bike to work but not from weight lifting.

Lastly I have to say that I am so glad I did not get my degrees in Exercise Science. I don’t know of any other field where people disregard someone’s years of researching, training, competing, and earning of the highest academic degree. Or maybe this is why I study native plants.

John, I enjoyed your videos and looked up your records. Impressive. I wish I could have watched you lift.

Totally agree that training under the tutelage of an experienced coach will limit injuries and extend the training career.

I agree with the Exercise Science, Mark Rippetoe has a good video ranting about CSCS certs. lol

Thanks RJ! I’m scratching and clawing to get back where I was pre surgery. Its going well so far and I’m glad to be back competing. USAWA allows me to work around some issues. Strongman just beat me up too much, probably mostly my fault.

Another note on the formula.
An co-worker once said to me when I turned 35 and I was talking about getting weaker as I age. She told me that the strongest years are ahead, a man is stronger in his late 30s-40’s. I don’t know how true this is, if its a myth, if its the often talked about “old man strength” but I think I do feel stronger. So maybe the formula should even start later than 40? It seems another issue is trying to get everything even between us and IAWAUK, I think someone mentioned they use a different formula that used to start at 35?

I agree exercise science would help most if not all lifters, but how many lifters lifting today have had access to it? I learned my training systems from reading Strength and Health and Iron Man and watching the lifters at York Barbell train. Many older lifters, like me, especially if they have trained since they were young, have had joints wear out and injuries, like torn muscles, which limit what they can do. I also have seen my strength go down much faster when I hit the mid 60’s then it did before then. I do not expect to ever win a best lifter award again, but the age formula at least gives me a chance to be competitive.

Dan – What are the scientific principles of weight training? While I have not reviewed the entire literature, the studies that I have read are time limited, and do not follow a lifter(s) over the life span.

ET, I argue with you guys based on scientific findings because I’d like to see y’all perform better, regardless of your age. I’m sorry you find that tiring. At the risk of tiring you even further, let me repeat a quote from the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson: “Science is true whether or not you believe in it.” At the end of the day, though, your rejection of scientific results only hurts your performance and you’ll never know how strong you could really be. So any personal attacks on me for telling it the way it is are of no consequence.

DENNY, you raise a great point. At the time when Saxon wrote his book, or Louis Abele, or several others, it was nearly impossible for them to know what was going on in terms of exercise science, a field that actually didn’t exist back then. They’d have to go to the Library of Congress and look up Ben Franklin’s writings to know that he was one of the first individuals in America to talk about dumbbell training, how training intensity is more important than volume, and what he called the “quantum” of exercise (in a letter to his son, Aug. 19, 1772). Not until 1932 did John Capretta from Ohio State Univ. look into the commonly held belief that large muscles make you muscle-bound, something I’m pretty sure ol’ Ben would’ve laughed at, but then again, even 150 years ago he was smarter than all of us 21st century men put together. In 1961 Bringham Young Univ. researcher Vermon Barney looked at three different training programs in a controlled experiment to find out which one was best. In 1962 Richard Berger from Texas Technological Clg. looked at what the optimum number of repetitions might be. That particular work was expanded upon over the decades until my Editor was able to perform a meta-analysis on all of the studies ever done on that topic to come up with the proverbial bottom line; we published his findings in Journal of Pure Power after they appeared in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

I’m sharing this with you because the history of weight training research goes way back, but like you said, until the advent of the Internet getting a hold of this information was nearly impossible unless you had access to a university library. All you were left with were muscle mags that were purely based on conjecture. But today, it’s very, very different…and still difficult in different ways. First, here are some tips:

A good starting point are the American College of Sports Medicine Position Stands. Click on the one that you find interesting and don’t forget to look at the references for research the Position Stand was based on. This is not, however, necessarily easy reading, even though the language is generally for non-scientists. Click here: https://www.acsm.org/acsm-positions-policy/official-positions/ACSM-position-stands

Another good resource is PubMed. At the top of the page type in your search term. When the results appear, on the left side you can modify the search parameters. This will give you access to only peer-reviewed research and the abstracts/summaries of those studies, although for some of them you can also download the entire study for free (it’l tell you). I do have to tell you, though, that only going off the summary of the research can be a dangerous proposition as you’ll miss out on a lot of important information contained in the study itself. But it’s a start. Click here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

But my second point would be that there’s a definite downside to the Internet in terms of every self-proclaimed guru being able to publish his/her nonsense for the world to see. And some of them are really good at doing this which makes it very difficult to weed out the gem from the chaff. I remember one guy who made a video about a science-based injury testing method. He took you through it really well. But I had never heard of this approach. So I looked it up and found the researcher’s original work on developing these tests. The researcher outlined in detail what the testing approach was for and how to execute it properly. The guru misapplied the tests in their entirety, rendering the whole thing he did utterly worthless. But the moron made himself sound really professional and smart—to the peril of those who listen to him.

LANCE, I’m not sure I completely understand your question. Let me have a stab at it. In terms of scientific principles for weight training, that’s a question that people spend years in graduate school to learn about. No easy answers. Suffice to say, in an effort to continue to make gains into high age, it’s important to manipulate all training variables—not just volume and intensity—over time in an effort to allow for maximized adaptation. How to do that, however, depends on many variables such as, and not limited to, a person’s goals, what they’ve done in the past, what injuries they may have sustained, what life limitations they might have (work hours, taking care of rug rats…), etc. As the research advanced from the first look into what the optimum number of reps might be, scientists learned that different variables can contribute to what the correct answer is. It takes a deep understanding of exercise physiology and sport psychology to be able to be targeted and effective in providing an answer. So if someone tells you, “Lance, for grip work, do this…”, you couldn’t go wrong with rejecting the advice.

Regarding aging, there is some work that has been done longitudinally. But it’s very difficult to draw conclusions based on those findings because there are a lot of confounding variables to consider, not to mention to what degree YOU match the status of the subjects. As an example, while in the weight room you can only get injured due to one or a combination of the three reasons I listed in my first post, you could also suffer a rotator cuff tear from tripping over a dumbbell and landing on your shoulder. How do you account for that? You’d probably agree that when this or something simlar happens, maybe equipment failure, that doesn’t mean “weight training is dangerous.” So the progression of research into aging and strength is mainly not longitudinal and also didn’t start to take off until the 1980’s. Basically researchers had a pretty good idea of how the neuromuscular system works and what it looks like. But then, based on common beliefs the population holds, they started to ask, “What’s the difference in muscle, if any, in older people compared to young ones?” A study titled “What is the cause of aging atrophy?” from 1988 is fascinating to me. But then the research continued to advance and build upon itself to the point where researchers would then ask, “What effect does lifting weights have on aging muscle?” And many more research-based answers to commonly held beliefs have been offered. Look at recovery, as an example. How many times have you heard from guys in the gym, “I just can’t recover the way I used to.” It’s a common belief in weight lifters that as you age your recovery abilities decline. So in 2017 a study looked at the differences in recovery from pumping iron between young (early 20’s) and middle-aged guys (late 40’s). Bottom line—no difference. And consider that this study was done with high-volume isokinetic exercise. High volume was done to seriously stress the subjects and an isokinetic exercise was done because it’s easy to have each subject perform the exercise exactly the same way. So although this was done “in the lab,” it’s far more predictive than what you would be able to learn from a ”gym” study because they controlled for confounding variables, etc.

So you see, rather than being offended by what I stated earlier, it should be considered as a valuable tip when I state that if you experience injuries from training, or if you find yourself being 40 and weaker than you were when you were 27, it’s a solid indicator that your training approach is the culprit.

I hope I was able to address y’alls questions adequately.

I have no problem with your training or your scientific approach. Where my problem lies is the manner in which you present it. It often comes off as very condescending. Maybe I should have just left it alone. But, fact of business is that sometimes your posts come off as offensive (you knew that or you would not say “But at the risk of offending some of you.” That is not unlike the guy prefaces an insult with “No offense, but…”)
I do know their are scientific approaches that would have been beneficial and still could be. But to pretend that a body does not deteriorate with age just does not make any sense. I aint looking forward to it, but I reckon some time I will kick the bucket. And if it is not from accident or disease, it will be because the machine simply wore out over time. There are things I can do to slow this down, but the aging process is an inevitability. That was my argument.