I keep running into additional problems associated with being older and continuing to lift and one of them is something that might end up taking me out of the game to a certain degree and that is a nagging pain in my right wrist.
This is something that is quite common in weight-lifting and one that the longer you ignore it, the worse it is going to get over time. This is because the wrist is a very complicated part of the human body and when you lift, you will almost always use your hands in the exercises.
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I have said many times before that "I have made the mistakes so that you don't have to" and while this is an irresponsible way of me living my life, I hope at least that it can end up helping someone else out there in the future. I have identified some key problems in my lifting regimen over the year that I have been doing wrong for many years. I have corrected it, but it would have been better if I had someone to tell me that I was doing it wrong all of those years.
Your body is able to compensate for improper form in a lot of ways by transferring the strain to other parts of your body, even if those parts of your body was never meant to bear weights of this magnitude. Also, many of our weaker joints that were developed over tens of thousands of years of evolution, were never faced with repetitive motions the likes of which we all commonly use in the gym. Just think about a bench press: What kind of real-world situation would ever use that motion over and over with that level of weight? There isn't one. This is also true with many other such exercises commonly used in lifting.
Here is a major problem to look out for and this is especially going to be noticeable on heavy lifts.
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I see it all the time and was guilty of it myself for many years. You get under a bench press, usually on one of those combination cable machines and then put the grunt of the weight on your wrists to go through the motions. Sure the intended muscles are going to be doing most of the work here because very few people's lower arm muscles are strong enough to handle this sort of weight on their own. However, you will be putting a rather tremendous amount of strain on your wrists in the process.
This isn't something you are going to notice right away because your body is designed to take a huge amount of damage without letting you know about it. I would imagine that it took the fitness industry decades to actually realize how much damage people were doing to their wrists and by the time they figured it out it was too late to actually do anything about it. Another common exercise that I see almost on a daily basis is the famed "hammer curl" which is where a lot of people put a lot more weight on themselves than they normally would.
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While this guy is actually doing it correctly and has forearm protection in place, most people at the gym do not utilize this equipment and for some reason, the hammer curls are one of the few exercises that people decide to try to show off by overloading and using a "jerk motion" in order to be able to lift the weight at all. If this is something that you are doing for literally any exercise, let go of your ego and step back the weight a bit. Anytime that someone needs to use a thrust or jerk movement in order to get a weight to the top position, there is a really good chance that they are not actually strong enough for that weight, and are going to be transferring the work to parts of the body that were never intended to handle weights of that magnitude.
So that's great and all, but what is the solution?
Well that's the million dollar question isn't it? There unfortunately isn't a single answer to this but it kind of starts with learning proper form first, and then not ego lifting. When you get to the size that I am or bigger you have no choice but to attack the heavier weights if you want to achieve greater results and when it gets to that point I think it is very important to invest in some decent quality lifting gloves that stabilize the wrists.
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There are a lot of varieties of this sort of product and just like anything in the fitness world, there is a lot of bullshit out there as well. I have found that the best thing to do is to go to a sport store that will let you try them on and then try, on purpose, to move your wrists. A good set of wraps or gloves will make it very difficult or impossible for you to do so.
Some people think that wearing gear like this makes them look like a goon in the gym but what is better? Looking a bit odd or having nagging pain even when not exercising, in a certain part of your body for the rest of your life?
Look out for those joints folks, it is a lot easier to prevent the injury than it is to correct it once it is already broken.
I am not a trainer nor do I have any certifications to back up my expertise. What I do have is decades of experience of doing things the wrong way, then researching, and finding out answers that have worked for me. I believe others can learn from my mistakes