They say with all this grip training I will have painful arthritis in wrist and hands
They say with all of the round back lifting I will destroy my spine
They say all of the Friday nights, early Saturday and Sunday morning workouts are ruining my social life
They say competitions are wasted time and resources and that money would be better invested else where
What THEY always forget is I AM WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE, whatever it is, to achieve my goals.
Tonight I want you to ask yourself, are you willing to pay the price?
Are you willing to ignore everything “they” say and do what you love?
Those who are will get whatever it is they want.
{ 18 comments }
I spent 3-5 hrs a day 5-6 days a week in the gym to get my chops
gave up bars,friends, movies, all the stuff that wasn’t getting me closer to my goal
and I still do whatever I have to do
I’d roll shit with my tongue to be who I am
fuck yeah I’m willing
show me the bill and I’ll proceed to mug the u of m for tuition
wow….comments. love to see it.
my ultimate goal is optimal health. that is first and foremost. i set physical goals that coincide with this.
i believe in your training philosophy of not grinding out reps. if people would just adhere to this, they would avoid injury and continue progression.
Its always the same thing, I hear it all the time. No, training for grip won’t make me any money. Yes,my last 20 dollars could be better spent then competing in a grip contest. No, bending steel and tearing cards doesn’t amount to anything productive. Maybe all this deadlifting and swinging will hurt my already damaged spine. But like few things in this world THE SH*T MAKES ME HAPPY. It’s sad some of the people that just don’t get that.
Who cares about old age and wrecking your body? By the time we are old they will have cyborg bodies to put our brains in!
Anyway I think if you really want to achieve something then you should just go do it, some of the most awesome people do things most others would never dream of trying. Why be boring when you can be awesome?
Yeah, well I didn’t do ANY of that stuff when I was younger and I STILL have “painful arthritis in wrists and hands”, degenerative arthritis in my mid-back and horrible knees.
Maybe – just MAYBE – if I had started exercising like you guys do now earlier in my own life, the support from the well-developed musculature would have PROTECTED my joints instead.
But the “Bad-News-Bettys” don’t get any joy out of thinking that way …
Chris
that is exactly what I love to see.
I hear it all the time “exercise will break me” BUT most people I know who are older who NEVER exercised are HURTING way worse then the ones who did.
BTW I hope you feel better, have you tried introducing any hand and grip training to see if it helps??
chris:
i always find it interesting how osteoarthritis is viewed as a wear and tear ailment. the first place it show up in people is their hands even when they haven’t done much with their hands all their life. i suspect it is caused by something other than wear and tear. you may be interested in reading this article:
http://escapetheherdblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/kiwi-experiment.html
notice how many people have joint pain relief after a diet change. and they didn’t lose a ton of weight to blame that.
Adam,
I am starting to work on my hands and grip – slowly and mainly by doing pull-ups or hangs since I am starting from practically zero and that way I get to work multiple muscles at once. I DO have The Gym Movement Protocol so I think I can keep things headed in the right direction (grin).
Chuck,
I agree that osteoarthritis is NOT a mainly “wear-and-tear” disease but is most likely the result of long-term inflammation in the body – often from years of poor diet. Eating primal/paleo has helped in a lot of ways and is something I will definitely continue. In my case, I believe there was a hereditary predisposition, but also the severity and early onset (in my forties) were exacerbated by untreated Lyme disease, i.e., “Lyme arthritis”. But, all this also means that I DON’T have to accept the prevailing beliefs that I can’t DO anything to make it better.
I lost track of how many times THEY were wrong. The longer I’ve lifted the way I do after the dvd and eclass, the better I’ve felt, moved and improved. They think its a gimmick, their way helped break me. I laugh when they slam training methods used by lifters that trained till deaths door while they are walking like an unfit octogenarian by forty.
I lost track of how many times THEY were wrong. The longer I’ve lifted the way I do after the dvd and eclass, the better I’ve felt, moved and improved. I laugh when they slam training methods used by lifters that trained till deaths door while they are walking like an unfit octogenarian by forty. They try to force food changes away from from what my ancestors ate until they died after ninety, but are later found out to be poisonous to the body over time causing the weak bones, obesity, cancer and hormonal changes they are discovering in more people and at earlier ages. If i feel better, it stays until it does not without a thought to what they think. Results are all that should matter, they are irrelevant.
See how you feel when you are broken down and decrepit later in life and get back to us.
Lyle I have a membership at a community center where most of the members are over 60 years, all move horribly, none of them lifted. Is that supposed to be the better option?
plus bro you will have already been dead for a while by the time I am old
At 33 years old, I have two bulging discs, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic asthma etc. I worked an insanely rigorous job for years with all this. I continue to lift, swing, snatch, bend and tear shit near daily nowadays. Doctors don’t know how I keep doing it, and say I shouldn’t. But the reason I can still do it is BECAUSE I do it. When I don’t, I’m in far more pain.
I’ve heard a few anecdotes similar to that, where doing exercise outside of work allows you to continue to do the demanding job. Seems a bit counter intuitive, with greater loads resulting in better performance, which is where the doctors are probably coming from, as it more likely than not doesn’t fit their worldview.
If I remember right, I believe that Adam had a post not too long ago (4/7/12) sort of about this and having built a body where the “work loads now are both the product and requirement of someone who does this every single week.”
i believe strength training should be a life long activity. there are many safe ways and many more dangerous ways to approach it. find a safe approach that works for you and roll with it. if i were to pick weight training or classic cardio, i would pick weights 11 times out of ten.
It looks like it is an appropriate time for a Russian anecdote:
A Little Girl is sitting on a bench in the park and drinking glasses of vodka.
A Man approaches the Girl, takes away her bottle of vodka and says:
“Little Girl, aren’t you drinking too much? You are going to burst!”
The Girl look at the Man with contempt and says:
“Old Man, pour me another glass and step aside”.
Haha, nice. That sums it up. I just won’t let “them” decide what I can or can’t or shouldn’t do. My body knows best, an I’ve learned my limitations from that. I’m gonna always find a way to do what I love and believe in regardless of what anyone says or thinks. If someone says I’ll have deformed hands from grip, then I’ll roll the dice because I’m willing to pay that price. People say I shouldn’t deadlift heavy and I say bs, watch me. Now when my body tells me otherwise I will listen. Till then I keep pushing.