237: Injuries! Weightlifting vs. CrossFit vs. Powerlifting vs. Traditional Strength Training

Hey, Athletes! Injuries! Weightlifting vs. CrossFit vs. Powerlifting vs. Traditional Strength Training - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up! 

• Injuries! Weightlifting vs. CrossFit vs. Powerlifting vs. Traditional Strength Training

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IN THIS 44-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe discuss training and injuries
• First they give some quick updates
• They dive into a study that discusses injuries
• They give their own anecdotal observations on injuries
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you: 

• Which resistance training is safest to practice? A systematic review

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

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Injuries! Weightlifting vs. CrossFit vs. Powerlifting vs. Traditional Strength Training

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared Moon, and with Jill Courtney, we are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into Garage Gym Athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe? Let's go, man. Going pretty well today. We're going to be talking about the safest forms of strength training. So really cool systematic review. Recently it came across my desk. I've always wanted to say [00:01:00] that.

You can't say stuff like that anymore. It's all like on a computer screen, but anyway, staying on point they covered traditional strength training weightlifting, powerlifting, high intensity, functional training slash CrossFit in strongman to determine which one of these is the safest form to follow based off of all these other studies, because a systematic review is a study of studies, looking at what the consensus is from scientific literature.

But before we dive into that, I always want to get an update from Joe here about how he's training, how you're doing, how's life how's it all going? It's not great, Bob training wise

Joe: a new injury. Every time we new injury, my shoulder has been really, I think I've got a rotator cuff injury and I think it's due to my wrist injury that I was having problems with because I noticed when I was pressing, this is I was still trying to do some sort of pressing pushup, even with a wrist strap and I had my PT test, [00:02:00] so I had to do it.

But I noticed as I was doing the form wise, my elbow was coming out. So it was changing the angle that how my wrist was bending so that it didn't hurt my wrist much. But I think that my elbow going out was internally rotating my shoulder. And that sort of pressing motion was, is causing the back of like my deltoid to be hurting a lot, especially any sort of like rotation.

So I think it might be a Rotator cuff issue, which I've never really had before. It's been bothering me for about two weeks now making pressing and even just like reaching for things very uncomfortable. But I'm finally going to go to the doctor and get that sorted out. Maybe

Jerred: today's study will help out, tell you what to do, what not to do, what to focus your time on.

Joe: They did say, spoiler alert, that most of the most common injuries were shoulder injuries for pretty much all of those. And lumbar spine, right? It's like the two. Yeah, two main ones. Yeah, so what's going on? We're going to be

running right here. Yeah.

Jerred: Yeah. It's just

Joe: another thing.

Jerred: I am not injured.

[00:03:00] Just trucking along. Feel great. And I just want to rub it in. I just feel amazing. Top 10 I've ever felt in my life. No, I'm kidding. It's I'm just enjoying the training. I do want to talk about it

Joe: together.

Jerred: Yeah. 95 percent Yeah, I'm like all the way. I don't have a rack right now.

But to be honest, I don't do much stuff that requires a rack anymore. So you're saying that a rack is only 5 percent of your gym? Yeah, because I don't I've never been a big tower rack guy. I've always had. I've always wanted I've always thought I'm like, Alright, I'm gonna get one. And then I'm like, it takes up so much space.

I just don't want it. The space, because I have that fold away rack from rogue. That's still like really solid steel and you can get the spotter arms that are removable. So if you need the extra safety for going heavy or something like that, but, and this is something I want to talk about. I just don't really go that heavy.

And to be honest, I'm not doing a ton of barbell. Stuff right now i'm doing a little bit [00:04:00] And i'll talk about that as we dive into this study and kind of how things have changed for me And i've been talking about some of it on the podcast, but yeah I'm 95 of the way there if I have a pull up bar some kettlebells and like my conditioning machines jump rope Like I don't need much more.

I think I am going to invest in a few new pieces of equipment. And i'm gonna Again, not sponsored but like I know marco has one but I think i'm going to get one of those freak athlete Things have you seen those like

Joe: yeah, the ghg combo thing.

Jerred: It's like everything.

Joe: Yeah The nordic curl and

Jerred: yeah, like I think i'm gonna get one of those and what pushed me over the edge is I don't think it's a good reverse hyper.

I think I've said that on the podcast before. It's not a legit reverse hyper, but I already have a reverse hyper. But I do want, I've always wanted a GHD and it's this is a GHD and does a lot of other things. But what pushed me over the edge is I just got hit by one of their Instagram ads that coming out in September is going to be, you can just add to it.[00:05:00]

It's a leg curl or leg extension machine. So like to focus like specifically on quads or hamstrings, you just attach this thing and then you put plates on it and then you can do leg extensions or you can do leg curls. And that's one thing I've probably missed the most as like, when I hurt my back, when my back was like really hurt trying to get your, a good workout from the legs without doing some sort of specific isolation movement is very challenging.

Trying to not get your back involved, should I say? Cause like when my back was messed up, can't deadlift, can't squat, can't, I can lunge, but like with body weight, can't lunge with a barbell. Like I couldn't do a lot of things. And so I was doing some isolation movements with one of those. I didn't know what they're called, but it was like a, you could strap a dumbbell to your foot and do leg extensions, but you can eat

Joe: or whatever.

Jerred: I don't think that was the brand I use. I think I did some other brand, but it was, it's similar in idea, but that was all I could do. And that thing was super cumbersome to use in all honesty. It would take me like 30 to 45 seconds to get it [00:06:00] attached to a foot. And then after my set was done. And I'd have to sit up on top of my reverse hyper because like I didn't have a bench that was like tall enough where I could extend my leg, but also have a dumbbell, the extra foot, like the extra four or five inches beneath your foot.

So anyway, I just didn't really enjoy it. I was like, this is a cool idea and it's cheap, but like it's, it wasn't very functional. So anyway, I started looking into leg extension machines and like curl machines and Titan fitness has a good one that's like in a six to 700 range. And I was like, okay, maybe I'll get this one.

But then I was like, then I got hit with an ad for that. And I'm like, oh, it does all this other crap. And it's going to be able to do that. And it's about the same cost as just the leg extension, like curl machine from Titan. I think I'm going to grab one of those. And then my gym will pretty much be complete.

I'll get my rack set up next week or

Joe: so. It's funny that you bring that up because I was just thinking, I'm going to go, I'm going to try and do squats and do legs tomorrow, but holding a barbell like [00:07:00] tight against my back that I remember a couple of weeks when I was squatting, it was like really hurting my shoulder on that rotator cuff or whatever.

And I was like, really having a hard time because when I'm very active when. Back squatting. You hold the bar, you hold the bar into your back. You really pin it in there. And that was really hurting. So I either have to do only a couple of reps or I'm glad I have the belt squat, but I don't have any iron plates.

I only have the bumpers and bumpers. I can only put three bumpers on there and then it's pretty much maxed out for how much it can hold. I can, I gotta like Jerry rig eat to get even more. So I actually get, I have to get like thin iron plates if I want to actually belt squat a decent amount of weight.

But Yeah,

Jerred: I love that belt squat thing, which is what I started using for to get a good leg workout. But yeah, I have to, I need to still buy a bunch of like you're saying, thin iron plates for it to be used more useful because I'm putting like every plate I have on there in a kettlebell on top and I'm still doing like sets of 15 to 20 and yeah so yeah.

Joe: Yeah, and then I was thinking like, okay I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna do this [00:08:00] workout on base tomorrow. I could for the first time in years use the leg extension and the hamstring curls. I was like, man, that's just be such a throwback to go back to the circuit of machines that I've cursed for a while, but out of necessity, it might be nice.

They serve a purpose. And I think

Jerred: as long as you're getting the only problem with isolation and all honesty, isolation movements is if that's all you do, like if, and. And I don't want to say it's even a real problem. It depends on what your goals are, but if you want to be more powerful or train for a sport or be more athletic, there have to, there has to be compound movements involved.

You have to. Train the lower back. You have to train the glutes and the hips to be able to be explosive and truly be strong. Where isolation comes in is a problem. Is it like, if all you're ever doing is like bicep curls and tricep extensions and like leg extensions and leg curls. That's great for some of those muscles, but you're just missing a lot of the big movers like that.

Get your posterior chain, strong, your [00:09:00] hips strong. Like that's where the issue comes in. If you're hurt or limited. They're perfect. Like isolation is like ideal because you it's fairly low risk. It doesn't cost you much in the terms of injury.

Joe: Yeah. So that'll be interesting tomorrow. I probably will.

I'll probably be really sore from it just because I haven't done it in a while. Oh

Jerred: yeah.

Joe: And I think, I feel like I read, we read somewhere, it was a part of a study or something that like one of the good ways to, to use those type of machines is like a very explosive like it's one of the good thing about this is you can be very explosive and not really need that much spill your form.

Because you're in a machine. And then after that, you do a very slow negative on the down and then explode up. So I'm gonna try that out and see how it feels.

Jerred: I'd say that's a good strategy. Since we're already talking about injury, let's get into this study done in 2023. The name of the study is which resistance training is safest to practice a systematic review.

And I actually want to read their background from [00:10:00] the abstract because I think it was an interesting paragraph that they had. But just so everyone knows my plan for this, we'll go over it and what the results are. Joe, I know you have some stuff you want to touch on, but after we hit on what the study was and the results, I really want to talk about my experience, how my views have changed around resistance training and how I've changed my training and just having experience with everything they're talking about, just.

My thoughts and opinions. So we'll get to the science and then we'll step outside that and just talk, put on the coaches out about some of our opinions. So background statement, the combination of resistance training and aerobic training is believed to achieve the best effects. Several different aerobic training methods have emerged in combination with, or as a substitute for traditional resistance training.

This study wished to verify which resistance training is safest in terms of injury prevalence and incidents. Also, it ascertained the characteristics of the injured subjects, the [00:11:00] level of severity of the injuries, and what definitions of injuries the available studies use. So again, it's a systematic review, so it's pulling all these other studies.

The initial literature search resulted in 4, 982 studies, and they went down 28 articles were selected for data extraction. So that's normally how they do it. What meets the inclusion criteria, and then it goes, it whittles it down. And if you want to get into all the details and the weeds of that, you can go read the study.

Just Google the title I've already given you. But ultimately they just know they want to know which types of exercise are the safest so that people can avoid getting hurt while working out. Transcription by CastingWords And the main ones that they looked at were traditional strength training weightlifting, powerlifting, high intensity, functional training slash CrossFit and strong man.

And when I say traditional strength training, that is more of what we were talking about, like isolation, Jim bro stuff, hypertrophy those kinds of things doesn't mean [00:12:00] a barbell squat isn't in there. It's just not true power lifting. So that's what strength training is just to get all the definitions out of the way.

Weight lifting is. typically more Olympic weightlifting. So snatch and clean and jerk. And I didn't actually look further. Is that what they were referring to in the study? I was just like, I read weightlifting and I was like, yeah, that's what you're talking about.

Joe: That's what I assumed.

Jerred: Yeah. And then powerlifting was powerlifting are the big three, the squat, the deadlift and the bench press.

So being competitive in those high intensity functional training, CrossFit funny. Cause it's like everything, it's I wouldn't necessarily call CrossFit a resistance training methodology first off, but it's good to compare the two. But there CrossFit is doing all of it.

CrossFit is doing a little bit of powerlifting. It's doing a little bit of weightlifting, not as much traditional strength training, but it's also probably doing some strongman. Strongman stuff. And then it has strongman as a resistance training methodology. And so strongman would be like, it could be flipping tires.

It could be carrying yolks. It could be carrying sandbags or heavy jugs or like all [00:13:00] sorts of all the crazy stuff that, sand are that strongmen do pulling ropes, pulling cars, like all those kinds of things. So those were all the ones. I think I'll just jump straight to like spoiler. I'll rate them most dangerous to Yeah, most dangerous.

I think that's the more cutting way to say it. So strongman was the deemed the most dangerous with 5. 5 injuries per 1000 hour or injury incidences per 1000 hours of training. So that's strongman. Then it goes to CrossFit, which averaged 4. 22 injury incidences per 1000 hours of training. But it said it could go up to 18.

9 hours. of our 18. 9 injuries per thousand hours in some studies. That's a, that's quite a difference. They have to take the average or whatever, but there wasn't that much of an outlier in traditional strength training, weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, CrossFit was the only one.

It's there was a study that [00:14:00] had 18. 9 injury incidences per 1000 hours. But when we average it all out, it came down to 4. 22. Just something interesting, I think to hit on powerlifting was at four. So just under CrossFit. Weightlifting was 3. 2 and then traditional strength training was one injury per 1000 hours.

Of training, which is crazy. So I've already defined what they all are. And it's like pretty straightforward. What's most dangerous and the safest. But Joe, I'd love to hear your kind of your thoughts on the study and what you thought.

Joe: It's great to see that this kind of comparison. I know there's probably a bunch of injury studies out there.

I couldn't find too many of them. I found some that were somewhat relevant, but yeah, it was good to see the reason why I put this across your desk was a post we saw on social media with a doctor talking about injury rates and how, CrossFit's the most safe. But I was like, Oh, I don't think that's really true.

And so we just went down the rabbit hole and found this one. And yeah, it's, there's, but there's a good reason why there's some of these that [00:15:00] are where they are. And that's because CrossFit has so many things, a part of it, like you said, that has a bit of everything. And I found one study that it was That's the most common injury for cross for upper extremities and the reason being, though, so there was a study that was done in July of 2022 upper extremity injuries in CrossFit athletes, a review of the current literature and the main biggest reasons are the elements as to why they got injured were 34 percent were gymnastics and 25 percent were Olympic lifting.

And that's because of what they are. They're very dynamic. They're very skill based. They get things into weird positions. And so that's why those specific parts are doing, CrossFit has so many different elements in it that's why it's going to be a little bit higher. I was pretty surprised at how the traditional strength training was like by far in a way.

And just thinking about my own experience yeah, I guess I never really had any injuries with digital strengthening. And you might bang yourself, with your weights or something. I got a hernia. That's [00:16:00] about it. That's about the biggest worry for strength training that you might strain too much and get a hernia or hemorrhoids.

Jerred: And I think if you're getting hemorrhoids or a hernia, you're probably That would might be classified more in the power lifting zone. Like you're lifting hard. Yeah. Yeah, I would assume. So I've legitimately done all of these, like I've done at least two solid years of CrossFit many years of powerlifting, like legitimate powerlifting weightlifting.

I've probably done more seriously. Probably around the CrossFit time or I don't know. I've probably done like a year of that traditional strength training again many years of that strong man I've dabbled in, I've dabbled in strong man, but I wouldn't say I've ever truly trained strong man, but like I've trained all these other methodologies and I agree with the assessment I probably would put a, see, I don't know enough about strong man, so like I'm, I think it's fine.

Like where the science is laid these out, but what CrossFit I feel like is always trying to do. [00:17:00] Is there always trying to act like it's not, they're always like no it's fine. It's perfectly safe, but I don't know why, like it's, they claim it to be a sport, not just like fitness. And so like sport comes with injuries and I would say, you can see here, the top two, the most dangerous CrossFit and strong man being what they are there, there's work done for time in both of these sports.

And I think that's where a lot of the injury comes in. Like strong man and CrossFit. Have taken a very similar path and how they, how the competition is run, how it looks like, and to be honest, CrossFit probably mimicked a lot of some of the strong man stuff. But if you think about it, it's just like strong, man, they do a lot of things where they have to lift something and it's or they have to lift a bunch of balls onto a, like these heavy Atlas stones onto something and it's done for time.

And I think when you add that time element, I think that's where the injury stuff starts to come in because you're trying to move faster. And there's always going to be that ego [00:18:00] competitive side to basically everyone. And that's where you start to compromise positions. And so I think if you can, I'd say gain enough maturity in your fitness journey to not worry about the ego, the time, the clock, then I would say all of these are probably about the same in my opinion.

But because that's not truly the case, there's always gonna be that time component or that competition element. I think that's why people are getting injured. And CrossFit, like just the other day, I walked into a gas station to buy some stuff and I was wearing a rogue shirt. I just said rogue.

And some guy stopped me. He's Oh, you do CrossFit. And I was like, not really. He's Oh, you look like a CrossFitter. You're wearing the rogue shirt. And I was like, yeah. And we started talking a little bit and he told me like, he used to do CrossFit. He was probably in his fifties and then.

He got injured a bunch and so did all of his buddies. And then some of his friends were getting injuries and he's I just didn't, or not injuries, they were getting surgery and he's I didn't want to go down that route. So I just gave it [00:19:00] up altogether and started doing something else.

But how many anecdotally, how many times I've heard something like that from CrossFit? Is just it's overwhelming. And again, this is, we're outside the science. I'm over here talking as a coach, my experience in the fitness industry for the last 20 plus years, that's just what I see, but I also do see that in powerlifting.

Like I see a bunch of power lifters. Who are broken by the end of their career, low back, shoulder, wrist, like all sorts of problems. My, I have a second cousin who's like very seriously competed in powerlifting. He's had multiple shoulder injury or surgeries hip problems now that he's getting older.

So it's just clear that these things take a toll. And on your body, when you're pushing them to the extreme, but traditional strength training, this like hypertrophy, I've always said if you just want to be like healthy, you don't really care about performance, do some bodybuilding and go [00:20:00] for walks.

If you don't want to get injured at all, don't run. Because running, if we were to pull up the running stats here, it'd probably be a little bit more alarming than some of these, and that's, that won't even be competitive running. That'll just be like average every day. Joe running.

Get a bike. Yeah. And if you just want to be safe, that's your only concern walk and do bodybuilding stuff. But if you want some performance element, I think it's good to look at these and dive in them a little bit deeper and try and be like, okay what should I do? How should I try and attack these things?

Joe: Yeah, I, the people always say like going to your like you can scaling the workouts and it always comes down to the coach. People like to blame the coach for CrossFit, but there is a certain responsibility to the coach, but they have how many athletes that they're looking after at the same time.

Plus the same class. They don't know everything that's going on with you. And yeah. What I've always thought it's more about the whole culture and the whole gym. It's the whiteboard competitive culture that you're always trying to compete with somebody. I'll always remember when I was a coach, like I didn't really care [00:21:00] that much about the whiteboard.

So when I put people's times down, I've had ladies come up behind me and erase their time and just put it down one second. Like really, that is that one second that big of a deal for you to have to go and change it coming behind me. The best gym that I was ever at that it was the entire like that there weren't that many injuries because the entire culture of it was different.

They took preventative measures for everything like You did not do you only did wall facing handstand push ups like they didn't do the wall facing away because of either neck or shoulder injuries deadlift. This is also how I started doing clean grip deadlift is that you had if you had to do clean grip deadlift and with your regular hook grip.

And if you did alternating every single rep, you had to change hands. You had to switch the grip on your hands, so you're just picking it up from a complete dead position. But it's so you weren't imbalance and just little stuff like that and how they would scale with people. And like some of the coaches wouldn't even care about writing on the white board.

So it's just that sort of mindset mentality and of can't be competitive in every single [00:22:00] workout that you do. But to I found another study. So with that, when it went along with that sort of compliments, what this one said about how strength training and resistance training is the lowest is this one was done in January, 2024 is resistance training, a protective factor for musk Musculoskeletal injuries in CrossFit practitioners, the conclusion to that one is resistance training associated with CrossFit and covering all anatomical segments can be considered a protective factor for occurrence of musculoskeletal injuries in CrossFit, aka do regular traditional strength training, and it helps prevent some of these other injuries because You're going to be stronger around the joints and around these other areas that if you do mess up, if you do have a little slip or at that certain intensities, when you're fatigued, your body can handle it a little bit more.

Jerred: Yeah, I do think that resistance training in general has a huge protective element to it. Like same with for running, like the runners who do no strength training versus runners who do strength training. There's going to be a big [00:23:00] difference in. Rate of injury there as well. So I think there's a lot to say there but to some degree, I feel like if you want to be competitive in CrossFit, all the best CrossFitters that I've seen from when I was keeping up with it, they've had, they had a significant strength background before they got into CrossFit and I think that's why they have that protective mechanism.

I think if you just get into CrossFit as the first thing you've ever done with no real base to strength, I'm not sure how great that is in all honesty. And it might. Might lead to a lot more injury over time, but I do want to hop into kind of like my own personal experience. Like I said, having done all of these things and more seriously for long periods of time in training I would say here's how I rate them CrossFit for me.

Yes, there were a lot more injuries when I did CrossFit, but I would say the injuries when I did CrossFit, granted, I was also younger. I was like probably early twenties, mid twenties, something like that. So also like a rubber band. I could bounce back from almost [00:24:00] anything at that age. But what would happen over and over again with CrossFit would be like these little tweaks here and there it'd be like, You did something again, probably going too heavy for time or like low, you got your loading wrong or whatever.

It'd be like a wrist injury that was around for two weeks or a little like shoulder tweak or something like that. It never seemed to be anything too serious in my opinion when I was doing it, but there was always a tweak. And my judgment on that, like if I were to forecast that out from trying to do it into my twenties and keep going like the thirties and forties and fifties, if I was like just going to try and always be a CrossFitter, like I think those tweaks do turn into more serious things over time.

It's this is the 11th time you've tweaked that wrist. So maybe the wrist is going to go, in a negative direction or something like that. And that's what I noticed in CrossFit jumping over to weightlifting, which is more Olympic weightlifting. I didn't, I would still see some shoulder issues in that, but that's because it's really just from the snatch, man, like clean and [00:25:00] jerk is fine.

That seems to be honest, it seems like the most efficient movement a human can do to go get it from getting weight from the ground to over your head. Clean and jerk just makes perfect anatomical sense to me. Granted it's with a barbell, but even if I had A bag of mulch for some reason I had to put on a shelf over my head.

The clean and jerk makes the most sense. Let's try and get it up to my chest. And then I'm going to try and press it. I think learning that movement and being explosive is amazing. The snatch makes no damn sense to me. It's like the dumbest thing that humans have ever created. There's no doubt a ton of athleticism and power, like just raw power in the snatch if you're really good at it, but the amount of pressure it puts on your shoulders, if you don't have the mobility and you haven't really practiced that movement and nobody does it correctly because the people who are getting into the snatch typically aren't people there who just want to go weightlift because they're trying to get into the Olympics.

It's CrossFitters who got tired of the intensity stuff. And so they go start doing Olympic [00:26:00] weightlifting. And I think the snatch is just bad in general. So anytime I hurt myself there, it had to do with going too heavy on the snatch basically. Cause like I'd always want to PR or something. So I, it would always be the snatch.

But otherwise I think that Ellen's pretty solid power lifting. I didn't see a lot of injuries, but when I did, they were bad. Like that, this is just my experience. Again, power lifting where it's I could do cycles of power lifting programs. I might feel like something, but when I did finally get hurt, it would be like a low back yeah, lumbar thing that, that lasts for three months, six months.

And my worst case, like two plus years, it stuck around with power lifting. So I think power lifting is like,

It can be like you're playing with fire for a long time, but like it's also very, it can be very serious. If you keep pushing it forever, what were you saying?

Joe: Yeah, because usually you're lifting very heavy. So you're playing with fire. Like you can be good [00:27:00] and get you can feel good and be great.

And Yeah. Go through your cycles. Go 12, 16 weeks. It'd be awesome. You have one bad day because you traveled and we're sat and sit on a plane for a while. And you took a couple of days off, but you squat wrong or didn't warm up quite enough. And then you'd have one little tweak your hip shifts, and then you're out of it for a couple of weeks.

That kind of, that's what happened to me. I was, When we were in when we were in San Diego, like I did, it was when I went for that rock, I was doing great for strength and everything. And I went for a rock with a weirdly lifted backpack with a kettlebell in it. And then I squatted the next week and I tweaked something in my back and I was doing PT for six months to get my hips back.

It was also like, I was, I always had really tight tips and quads. So it was an issue that was one of those bound to happen things, but still one little thing. And it just goes. Yeah,

Jerred: and now jumping to traditional strength training, I've probably done this more than anything else it'd be a tie between powerlifting and traditional strength training for me, maybe in time spent doing the type of training, because I just did several [00:28:00] years of it, that bodybuilding style stuff before I ever did anything else, and I've gone back to it, I've gotten moved away from it it's just been a lot, I was trying to think about it, I don't know if I've ever been injured doing it.

Like in all honesty, like when we're talking about like isolation movements, lap pull downs single leg stuff, don't think when I'm just trying to grow muscle, getting a burn. I honestly, I don't know if I've ever been injured. The only time I've been injured again in weightlifting, typically the snatch thing going, something going overhead the wrong way, powerlifting going to heavy lumbar spine crossfit.

Tweaking from any wide, that's just weird. Or I loaded incorrectly. And again, I don't know much, much about strong man, but I just, in complete agreement that traditional strength training, I've almost never seen an injury. And again, that's my two decades plus of a fitness experience. Never really seen it. I got it.

I've never really been injured doing it.

Joe: I think I'm the same really the only thing you could have like at most you might get some trauma here and there like you might bang Yourself with the dumbbells [00:29:00] like your foot your hand you can smash your fingers easily But haven't had any issues with tearing something or putting something out of place And like I said, it was really just either a hernia or hemorrhoids.

Jerred: Yeah, I've never I don't think about a hernia. I will not from lifting I

Joe: did, and I remember this specifically, it was on a incline bench.

Jerred: Yeah, but that, and so that's the thing, and what I want to talk about more was like how I've transitioned because I'm not injured right now. I haven't been injured for a while, Joe, you're injured all the time, but whatever I was really hurt when I was chasing that 500 pound backspot, five minute mile, and I hurt my back pretty seriously.

And I'm almost like an injured animal now to where I don't want to go back there because it was really bad. If I would have gone straight to an orthopedic surgeon or something, I think that they would have wanted to do surgery, but I just avoided it and waited my two and a half years, did a bunch of PT and like now I'm back, but [00:30:00] I just refuse because I've just read all the research on surgery and it never seems to work out well for those who do it long term.

So anyway since that happened, I have not, I have squatted with a barbell and I've deadlift with a barbell, but I have not gone heavy. I am probably so much weaker right now than my strongest, but I wouldn't say I'm weak. There's a certain level of my ego and just . I gotta make sure I can still squat a certain amount.

Like tho those things are still there, but I'm talking about, I maintained the ability to probably squat at least 450 to 4 65 pounds. For over a decade, I could just always do that. Like a 500 pound pool on a deadlift over a decade. That was just like, I knew I would be able to do that. And I'm talking about maintaining that for 10 years, being able to lift those kinds of weights.

I can't do that anymore right now. I'm not training for it. I'm sure I could get back, but like I said, I'm that injured animal to where I'm like, but why? What's the point of that 500 pound deadlift [00:31:00] now? Like I don't need it. It's, it was fun being really strong. I enjoyed it. It's really awesome to be honest.

Like I can notice some of the differences now. I'm like, I'm not as strong as I once was. And you just notice it in like little ways. And typically when you're like lifting and stuff, cause things were just so easy for me cause I was so strong. Like I could just, I could do 135 pound Turkish get up with a barbell.

And that wasn't challenging, and there's no way I would try that stuff now, but I was just I was so overly strong, I could do all these crazy things and it was really fun, but I've transitioned now to where most of what I'm doing, like if it's squat, yeah, I'm going to be doing the belt squat stuff.

I'm trying to do a ton of single leg stuff now. If it, if we program like deadlift I might just do I will still do some deadlift. I just don't do super heavy with a barbell, but then I'll just throw in like doing single leg, really heavy kettlebell deadlift. So I've invested in like much heavier kettlebells to be able to get like a good stimulus on those things.

But I'm just doing a lot of single [00:32:00] leg stuff and just trying to stay away from injury because I just don't. I don't want to go back to being that injured for that long, because two years of your life is a long time even in the grand scheme of life, that's a long time. And I enjoy where I'm at right now where I can play with my kids.

I can play sports. I. I could run far distances. I'm still way stronger than I need to be in all honesty to manage my everyday life so i've just transitioned and I talked about this, one of the mental shifts for me was like Jim windler, I just recently like a couple months ago You know, maybe six months ago found out like he doesn't touch a barbell anymore.

That just blew my mind So jim windler is like a famous powerlifter. He was a really strong dude Pretty move some pretty insane weight created the 531 strength program, which is insanely popular in the strength and power lifting world. All he does now are basically like mini Murphs. That's all he does.

He calls it walrus training. And like, all he does is body weight stuff. Now he doesn't touch a barbell. He, but he's a weight vest. And I was like, [00:33:00] and I tried watching some content that he had created on. I was like, I finally found like a video on why he did this. And he was just like, at some point, you just know that you're done.

Yeah. Like you're done being under the barbell. And I don't want to say I'm done cause I don't, I never pushed my body as hard as probably Jim Wendler with straight strength training. I probably pushed my body as hard as him. If we were to like encompass like. What I've done with Murph and like some of the miletimes I had and all those kind of things I've pushed my body pretty hard, but I'm just at this point now where I'm like I just don't want to get injured again.

Like I'll do anything to not be injured So if that means I have to sacrifice being 75 percent as strong as what my max 100 percent was at one point That's fine by me. Like I'll stick there. If I have to do a little bit more traditional strength training instead of powerlifting, I'll do that stuff.

Like I've just sacrificed too much when I was injured that I just don't want to go back there.

Joe: Yeah. And in my injury defense, by the crux of my wrist [00:34:00] and shoulder problem is because of playing kickball, not actual training.

Jerred: Oh yeah. That's what happens, man. It's

Joe: You go do these

Jerred: random things like that's where everyone gets injured these days.

Joe: Yeah, I went and played it during Air Force PT and a couple of years, two years ago. And a guy ran into me, backed up to me, I was reaching with my hand, jammed my wrist, and there we go. I just can't do fun things anymore. I just gotta work out and brush by myself.

Jerred: You really can't. I don't know what the solution is there, other than you probably have to be doing it all the time, but I talked about this when it happened, but it's been basically, I think a year, maybe a little bit more, but the first select soccer team, my son was on.

We had this awful coach. I just hated her. And I have no problem saying that publicly cause she was the worst. But she, we'd only been on the team for a month and then she wanted to do parents versus kids, full field soccer game. I was like, what? Okay. I was like, sounds fun. Not only was it full field soccer, kids versus adults, but it [00:35:00] was we, it was during that wicked summer last year where it was like, I 110 to 114 for 30 days straight.

It was like, it was at like two o'clock in the afternoon on one of those days. And I was like, this is part of the reason I hated her. She was just like, she would sit under a shade tent that she brought with a Mr. Fan, but expected everyone else to just be out there doing it. So anyway, I was fine.

I played hard. I'm not even that good at soccer, but I dominated some kids. I scored some goals. And, but. I think three dads pulled their hamstrings that and I didn't I never followed up with these guys because we ended up leaving the team, but I'm sure that they're still struggling with that a little bit like a year later, but it still flares up or is a problem.

But you can't go from desk job to like full field soccer sprinting at full speed. And throwing kicks in there nonetheless, and and not get hurt. And so I think that's just part of yeah. Part of aging, unfortunately, unless you're like, like I said, you're always doing it. If you're always training that way, like you're training athletically and like you do those things, I think your body would be fine.

I think it's just the, these stark transitions because an hour of training each [00:36:00] day, how we do it isn't enough to maintain the athleticism to go step onto a soccer field or lacrosse field or like whatever, and be. normal, unless you train like an athlete all the time, 100 percent of the time, which is an option.

Joe: We we have there's on every base is always a soccer league and they just had one that started up in April and I saw it when it came up months ahead of time. I was like, okay, I want to play soccer. I want to say as I got closer, I was like, I got more and more scared to join the soccer league because I'm like, I don't want to get injured.

I feel like it's going to be that much easier to get injured. I already had some ankle issues. I feel like I'm just gonna roll my ankle again and it's gonna make like my heel or make my Achilles or something else just way worse. I missed the league because of the trial. I traveled for basically four weeks of it.

So I basically missed the entire league, but still like they'll have a flag football league and I'm thinking about playing that just so I can do something, but it's still man, that's how I get hurt.

Jerred: Yeah. But, and that's the thing is I know of soccer leagues around here. I was asked to be on one after my performance on that kid's soccer team.

[00:37:00] Cause one of the dads was on like one of these, one of these adult league teams, but I think the, I think I told you about it, like the game started at like 10 PM and I just laughed at him when he told me that I was like, dude, like I, I might seem athletic now, but if you want to see me at 10 PM, I'll be a shell of a human being.

Like I can't, I can barely stay up past nine now. If you think I'm going to do it for a sport that I like because my son is in, but like I've never been super passionate about no, not a chance, but anyway, I don't want to give too much of a like doom and gloom. Oh, if you get older, you can't do shit.

It's like what it really is. I think people should always have something to train for. I'm playing tackle football or full field soccer. You can maintain those things, but like what things that you can do and probably mitigate some of the injury are things that we've always been proponents of, which is do a Spartan race, do a 5k, do a half marathon.

If you train for it properly. Do a marathon or an ultra, any kind of Spartan race distance. That one thing that's getting [00:38:00] really big these days. What is it? High rocks. Is that, yeah, I'm actually looking into one of those. Yeah. High rocks is big. I think there's one coming up in Dallas. I've been looking into it too.

Cause my friend does them all the time. So high rocks, that seems like. I looked at some of the events. It looks like that's like a standard event and it seems relatively safe. What's that running one. You're always trying to get me to do the team. One Ragnar, there's all sorts of fun things that you can do as an adult and train for and stay focused.

So don't get me wrong by anything I'm saying. I just think that playing straight sports. If you're not getting paid for, if you don't have like at least a 6 million contract to go play, football, then maybe stay away from the sport, do these other things that are if you train for is are fine.

Joe: Yeah. And do some training where maybe you're actually are. Pushing yourself hard and going fast and doing explosive things. 'cause if you're not doing that, then it's gonna be a very rude awakening. And like we've talked about in Spartan races, you can't just go for runs in Spartan races. You gotta, you're, you gotta work your hips, you gotta do more unilateral work.

You gotta do all [00:39:00] these other odd things that like you're that your body just hasn't been doing because it's gonna do it when you go to do those, some of these events.

Jerred: Alright, cool. We'll we'll wrap this one up. Pretty cool study overall. Again, if you want to check it out, you can always check these things out the, by going to the show notes.

So if you went to garage, gym, athlete. com, check out the blog. We'll have a link to the show notes. You can check out the full study. And also all the other cool stuff we have at garage, gym, athlete. com. So you can go there to check it out. And if you are not a part of the training, it's 14 day free trial.

And. That's about it for all of our athletes. We have a new cycle coming up. Great time for current athletes to start looking into what the new cycles are going to look like perspective athletes thinking about it. Now's a great time to, to sign up and start to get indoctrinated into our programming and methodology and everything else, but that's it for this one.

Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill [00:40:00] you.