The Priority for the Master Lifter
by Thom Van Vleck
Recently I got to visit with a college friend. We went to college in the 80’s and he had dated my wife’s roommate and they married. While his wife and mine had kept in touch, I had not seen him in a couple decades. He had played football in college and then become a Physical Education teacher as well as a high school football and wrestling coach.
As our wives caught up we talked about our lifting and training as he obviously was still in great shape. He made a comment that really caught my attention.
He said, “Ya know what? I still lift pretty close to what I could 20 years ago but I don’t go heavy any more. Seems like I can hurt myself just by trying to lift my hardest. I was benching the other day and thought it felt easy so I threw some more weight on and the next thing I know I pull my pec! I probably won’t be able to bench for months!”
Then there was this comment from Olympic Gold medalist Adam Nelson.
“The same groin pull that would put me out for 5 days at age 25 will now put me out 5 weeks at 40”.
So what’s the point? When we are young we are mentally WEAKER than our bodies. We strive to push our bodies and really we can’t often hurt ourselves doing that when we are young. As we get older we become mentally STRONGER than our bodies and we can literally hurt ourselves in the simple act of working out.
Couple that with the fact that when we do get hurt we take exponentially longer to heal as we age then the priority for the master lifter isn’t getting stronger. It’s avoiding injury. Sure, you want to get stronger but the things we did when we were young now take a back seat to staying healthy.
Think about it, if you trained really hard for a couple weeks then injured yourself and was out 6 weeks would you have been better off to train a little easier for a solid 8 weeks. So for the master lifter the focus should first be avoiding injury and when you get injured healing up. You will find yourself much better off in the long run. This doesn’t mean take it easy, it just means to be smart!