What got you into lifting?

Cill94 · 12-08-2021 8:12am #1

This forum has gone pretty quiet since the update. So I’ll make a thread here and there to try keep things alive.

I’m wondering what got you guys into training, specifically lifting weights?

I was very lucky to be introduced to strength training through my school’s PE teacher as a teenager, who gave up his time to let myself and a handful of my mates use the gym after school. The workouts were more CrossFit-inspired, which I loved at the time. After a while, I realised I cared more about what I could deadlift than how fast my Fran time was.

For me, strength training is a physical outlet where I can see measurable progress and change in myself from consistent work. And getting big and strong (relatively speaking) is pretty damn cool.

whippet · 12-08-2021 8:20am

I did so much damage to myself playing football - culminating in a dislocated shoulder at the end. I suffered for about 12 months until a physio told me to go to a gym and start lifting weights - at 38 years of age!! it worked and now I do it for stress, fun and use competitions to get me focused

The Mighty Quinn · 12-08-2021 8:28am

Encouraging whippet, I'm 35 and always threatening to get started at lifting weights. I did some for a year or so when I was 30 and gained strength, shaped up a bit, but moved county, tried a new gym but could not get back into the mindframe.

Now there are babies and no time, but hoping later in the year things will have settled enough to let me start back doing "something", whether that's swimming or jogging or weights or whatever.

I'm so unfit now it's a daunting thought how hard it will be to get the initial ball rolling again.

Black Sheep · 12-08-2021 8:44am

I didn't start lifting until I was about 24.

It was the very beginning of CrossFit in Ireland, and at the time there was a big crossover with Irish MMA and brazilian jiu jitsu. I ended up pretty much shifting over to just doing CrossFit for a year or two, and then eventually that was a bit of a gateway into focusing more on lifting in general.

I can't say that I had very clear goals when I got involved, I knew I liked to train, and I liked to be in a gym with a bit of community, and at the time that was delivered in spades.

In hindsight there was a lot wrong with how we approached our training, we didn't even follow CrossFit mainsite programming, which was reasonably balanced at the time. We were doing a kind of homebrew that was the blind leading the blind. But I guess we were young, the intensity was high and it was fun.

whippet · 12-08-2021 8:48am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741302#Comment_117741302

its never to old to start .. which is good.

What I like about weights - they start at 1kg and after that the sky is the limit. So there is always a weight for everyone ! and it is always the same movement

Alf Veedersane · 12-08-2021 9:10am

Kinda only really started as I got out of an eating disorder...to build myself back up.

But I always feel like it's a form of mindfulness....you have the exercises, sets and reps to do and you do them. You're in a bubble of those things while you train.

I also just enjoy the process of trying to get stronger more than I thought I would. Even now what I can't squat or deadlift any more

Keano · 12-08-2021 9:19am

Started circuit classes in a local gym a number of years ago and was chatting to the guy running the gym/class and said I wouldn't mind trying to put on a bit of mass and been lifting ever since. The first gym was just so old school it was brilliant but a number of moves later and lack of shower facilities has meant I had to join another gym

geotrig · 12-08-2021 9:29am

interesting that crossfit had a bearing on a few getting into it ,I hadn't even noticed it until a few years ago when looking for some form tip vids and didn't even realise it was here at the time!

To answer the question though, Just going to the gym in the early 90's with a few lads on the schools rugby off season one year (put on great muscle and strength that 6months that I've never matched since :P) and have kept it up on and off over the years *currently on an off :P but looking forward to getting back into it , I do it now more so to keep some strength /mobility and routine and de-stress more than anything.

Cill94 · 12-08-2021 9:45am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741373#Comment_117741373

Yep. The CrossFit workouts I used to do back then (2010-ish) were insane and definitely not what I'd have a beginner do now. There was one day I did 20 rounds of Cindy and then straight into some other monstrosity involving thrusters, box jumps, and burpees. Pure hell.

That being said, it definitely taught me how to push myself to the dark place, which was exactly what I needed at the time. No interest in ever going back though. 😁

rainagain · 12-08-2021 9:45am

I started doing PT two years ago after reading an article about benefits of lifting for women. Never been interested in team sports or keeping fit before, my stamina was always good for hiking holidays and I walk or cycle everywhere so I wasn't overweight, just at top end of acceptable BMI and hip-waist ratio for my age & height.

Decided to sign up for 10 sessions and see how it goes - I now do 3 sessions a week (just going to the gym myself would be a disaster, lockdowns were proof of that, didn't do any kind of training when gym was closed - I am fine when someone is expecting me to turn up and they push me to work hard). Amazed at the benefits - while how I look was never a factor, I have toned up and dropped a size. I rarely feel tired, no urge to hit the snooze button on the alarm and I pay a lot more attention to what I eat (noticing that the less sugar I eat, the less I want it). Definitely helps with mental health too, moods are on an even keel for longer periods of time.

Most of the time I don't pay attention to the weights I lift, but trainer told me yesterday I did my best barbell glute bridge, few kilo over my body weight. I'm impressed with myself :)

Black Sheep · 12-08-2021 10:00am

Our programming was off the mark on nearly every level. There was a very limited understanding of how to design a workout so that it was reasonably balanced, the best case scenario was if we were doing a "classic workout" like Cindy where that was already taken care of. And then no one was intelligently planning the schedule week to week, it was a shitfest of randomness. It may have been news to us at the time that CrossFit was not literally meant to be programmed in a random fashion. Intensity wasn't really managed at all, it was just running into the machine guns getting progressively more and more run down.

But for all that there was a ton of positives. The CrossFit Journal at the time was putting out instructional material relating to squats, deadlifts and the olympic lifts that still stand up pretty well today. Rippetoe and Burgener were huge. In the space of just a couple of years people were getting a very good grounding in most of the major lifts, bodyweight movements, running, rowing, kettlebells and so on. The missing component for me was just having someone at the top with the experience to actually program in a sane way. I still sometimes think I'd like to go back and program my own CrossFit for a year, I think I could do a pretty good job.

Maybe that's why I use a conjugate set up now, it has some of that week to week variation that I still enjoy.

Cill94 · 12-08-2021 10:17am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741718#Comment_117741718

As poorly as early CrossFit was programmed, I think it's easy to discount how equally poor the coaching was (and still is) in many normal gyms. I think CrossFit got a lot of flack because of how popular it became, and how fond they were of uploading videos to YouTube of terribly performed cleans and snatches. But on the whole, I'd wager you're likely to get a better intro to lifting by walking into a CrossFit gym today than you would in many other places.

Some of the most negligent and ignorant training I've ever seen prescribed to this day has been while observing personal trainers in commercial gyms. I once saw a trainer have a novice middle aged woman maxing out on wide stance box squats against bands. 😂 I had shown him a Westside video just a week prior to this..

Cill94 · 12-08-2021 10:19am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741302#Comment_117741302

Best of luck. Most important thing is to find some kind of exercise you enjoy.

Mr. CooL ICE · 12-08-2021 11:02am

A few things:

I had been running a few years and did a marathon. Got bad shin splints in the process and couldn't run more than 5k at a time. As I had been pushing myself for distance, suddenly I wasn't able to and wanted a new challenge. While training for the marathon, I did a month of BJJ as I wanted to do something that wasn't running-related/leg-centric that also kept me fit. I enjoyed it but was annoyed at how unashamedly weak I was compared to the other beginners. Although technique was #1, I was getting easily outmuscled by others that were far smaller than me. I hated being weak.

I started reading about lifting and these weird things called "squats" and "deadlifts" on this very forum and the benefits sounded right up my alley. I joined a BD gym and tried figuring it out myself, but was an absolute disaster. Enlisted the help of Transform and got on my way.

What has kept me going for a long time was how numbers focused lifting can be, in that there are always a new PR of some sort that can be achieved. Could be a new 1RM, new 5RM, turning a 1RM into a 3RM, etc. I am guilty of priorisiting the actual numbers than how I get the actual numbers, i.e. not paying attention to form, so that is what I am focusing on now. And what I love is that even if numbers are currently rubbish, there so much room for improvement everywhere.

I really don't see myself getting tired of lifting any time soon. I'm as happy lifting now as I was 6-7 years ago

Stone Deaf 4evr · 12-08-2021 11:35am

Got into crossfit to lose weight, certainly did that but never really gained any huge strenght - i will say that our coach was very good, and even though at first glance, it seemed random, as the weeks and months went on you could see how he was giving 3 month blocks of programming that would emphasize different movements and body parts.

started looking at stronglifts 5x5 and Jim wendlers 531 in the months up to covid nad had ended my crossfit membership just before the lockdown.

have had moderate success, but will put some of the blame on the whole mental toll that Covid has taken. I've gone back to basics again with a huge deload, and am concentrating on form more now.

I do think that Crossfit certainly made lifting weights more mainstream though.

Black Sheep · 12-08-2021 11:42am

For sure, CrossFit has been a net good, when all is said and done. It's probably done more for Olympic Weightlifting than that community did for themselves in the previous several decades, for a start...

whippet · 12-08-2021 11:54am

i'll admit to having limited exposure to CrossFit .. but from what I remember there always seemed to be a focus on the quantity of work rather than the quality of it. For instance doing buckets of reps with a barbell ... as anyone knows fatigue will affect form and when form breaks down injuries happen.

Black Sheep · 12-08-2021 12:03pm

It varied between CrossFit boxes, in fairness. Some were more conscious of what was an acceptable amount of form breakdown than others.

When I was level 1 certified the CrossFit HQ guy who coached us used the metaphor of shooting in combat (Typical ex US military veteran). When you are shooting, you have to find a compromise between being fast and being accurate, which are mutually exclusive to an extent. He suggested that when performing a high intensity workout (A metcon) coaches should monitor for unacceptable form breakdown, but that a certain amount of form breakdown was permitted if it allowed the trainee to push themselves harder and get more out of the workout. The phrase was "acceptable slop".

Many years on, I would argue he was basically correct in what he said. The trick, however, is knowing what is an acceptable amount of form breakdown. If it's still basically safe, and the movement is still being completed to more or less acceptable standards, you have to understand someone really killing themselves at the end of a metcon is not going to look pretty. But that doesn't mean you allow something you can recognise as unsafe, or where movements are no longer being completed to acceptable standards (High squats, short ROM pushups, pull ups where chin or chest never reach the bar, partial ring dips and so on).

From what I read online though it seems that a lot of CrossFit boxes see the idea of "slop" as a kind of 2010s idea that doesn't fly anymore. As CrossFit really blew up, with people of all ages and sizes coming in, I can imagine how it might have become something they would stop talking about for liability reasons, or just because with older or heavier trainees it would become harder and harder to make a call on.

Patsy167 · 12-08-2021 12:47pm

I figured it was cheaper than Therapy (And Cocaine)

whippet · 13-08-2021 8:57am

@Black Sheep coming from a powerlifting background the idea of what you've described as 'slop' would be non negotiable ... and that is probably what has clouded my view of crossfit. In powerlifting if the lift isn't performed correctly it does not count. So if the lift can't be done to proper form for all the required reps then either the weight is too much or the person isn't capable and needs to learn

Stone Deaf 4evr · 13-08-2021 10:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117746422#Comment_117746422

The best and worst thing about crossfit imo, is the group mentality, there's a camaraderie from all being in bits doing the same workout and a great motivation to push yourself further out of your comfort zone so you dont leave the other person down (in say, a partner workout).

This is also the main problem, as it leads to a lot of 'hero' lifting, where technique goes out the window in an attempt to just get a rep. Some coaches are better than others at spotting this, but its often left up to the individual to determine what weight they feel comfortable putting on the bar, often resulting in the form breaking down as fatigue sets in.

Mink · 13-08-2021 11:04am

I got into lifting from Crossfit only about 3 years ago, having never touched a weight in my life.

What has kept me going, apart from the obvious benefits of getting stronger and eliminating back issues that had plagued me all my life, is constantly trying to nail the olympic lifts. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get it right and probably never be perfect or indeed considered strong, but it's seeing the little improvements week to week that I love.

I'm lucky in that the coaches won't let you near a bar until you have the basics and you are immediately told to drop weight if your form gets sloppy.

I love picking up more technique tips from Catalyst Athletics (Gregg Everett), Burgener, Squat University etc.

the baby bull elephant · 13-08-2021 1:32pm

Started lifting as part of rugby training when I was in fourth year really. Looking back it was good in that we focused on compounds but some of it was stupidly dogmatic. Kind of fell off when I finished school but got back into it in the second semester of my third year of college when I was living abroad and was at way too high a bodyfat percentage. Been training consistently since and hopefully a lot smarter too.

Eoinbmw · 13-08-2021 1:54pm

It was Injury that got me into the gym!

Tore my acl around 2008 was recommended as part of my rehab after surgery to do some resistance work!

Sorted my knee and never left the gym!

Now after eventually re injuring my Knee and subsequently doing the other acl I'm fully committed to Weights and gave up the field sports!

I'm 42 this year stronger and leaner than ever with no acls and a 240kg squat with no knee issues!

Biggest regret was not being introduced to the weights in my teens I think it should be introduced to secondary level kids!

Black Sheep · 13-08-2021 3:20pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117746422#Comment_117746422

Well…

Slop wouldn’t be allowing someone to make errors to the extent that they are no longer completing a rep to required standards.

In competitive CF this is obviously the norm, it’s a no rep if you fail movement standards or do not meet set criteria, just as in a powerlifting meet).

Standards of execution / movement standards are pretty set in stone in some regards, but equally there are shades of grey in terms of what form changes are acceptable at a max or when intensity is otherwise high.

I’ve only done one powerlifting meet and about three weightlifting meets, but I would say you see at them “slop” on some lifts that are still good under the rules but are imperfect in form nazi terms. Rounded backs on deadlifts, stumbles after jerking up a new max etc. It can be within the rules but show signs of form breakdown. Whether it’s safe or not depends on the athlete.

I would question whether even in training someone needs to “drop the weight” if their form is not picture perfect. It depends exactly what’s going on and what their programming is calling for.

whippet · 13-08-2021 3:31pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117748414#Comment_117748414

We are going way off topic here … but I’d broadly agree with you …. In oly lifting and powerlifting comps lifts would be subject to a breakdown in form with people failing / just about getting a lift which might be a PB or a holy Mary attempt. I was really talking about training weight; and loosing form in training where it shouldn’t really happen.

It would be a massive problem if I were ever to fail a lift in training .. a massive red flag. As you are peaking you are getting close to your max with a few to hitting that max on the competition platform … as they say ‘gym lifts don’t count’ !!

Black Sheep · 13-08-2021 3:44pm

If you are peaking for a meet, yes, missed reps are a no no but also that’s just one approach. I do a lot of hypertrophy protocols right now and you are very much going to the point of failing reps. If you have a partner, you might go beyond! If not, then you might even continue with some partials.

The other thing I’d use as an example is if at the end of your peaking, if you have a week that is really heavy… And for some reason you have a bad night, or you had a little bug… You might get all your reps and sets, but imagine if they were grindy as hell and you felt your back round fractionally, or your knees track in or something on the squats. Acceptable or not? You’re likely going to just press on, right?

But also can I say, yes, you’re right we likely agree on more than not!

What got you into lifting?

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