T Nation

49, New to Lifting. Bit of Knee and Back Soreness

Over 35 Lifter
#1

Hey, I’m new to lifting and selected Stronglifts. I’m 49, 5’8", 170. Always been fairly trim despite many sedentary office job years. Ran in college but not much exercise since.

After 8 weeks, my squat is 180, BP and rows 130, DL 225, and OHP 100 (feels like I’m stuck here). Not great stats, but I’m seeing muscle gain and overall feel much better than 2 months ago.

Question is, when walking up stairs, my knees are super sore. I would think the squats would be helping. I’ve had my form checked, and the font feel sore any other time. That seem normal?

Also, I have chronic back pain on one side. Doctors say my right leg is a big longer than my left, causing compression in my iliosacral area. When I move around a lot or lift, it feels fine. Laying around or sitting a lot makes it worse. Anyone have experience with this? Should I keep pushing through it, trying to stay more mobile?

Thanks!

#2

So with the knee’s dunno about you but when i first started working out stretching was never a thing so accumulated stiff knees from just not warming up properly (atleast thats what my physio told me) one thing that fixed that for me was doing lunges to warm up a long with also doing like 10 of stretches and knee sleeves, knee sleeves worked wonders for me!

Now with the back i couldn’t really say? i personally had one side hurting which was my left and that was from having tight glute’s and from that i was receiving lower back pain, i could suggest doing glute stretches in the morning when you wake up and before you sleep and just see if that relieves any tension.

#3

You spent a lot of time not doing much. Tendons and ligaments need time to build and thicken up. “Achy” is completely different from sharp pain, so I’d say just keep it going but maybe slow down on adding weight to the bar. And definitely stretch the knees, calves, glutes, and hammies before squatting. I usually stretch between warm-up sets.

OHP is the slowest lift to progress, always. Never be afraid to back up a few steps and go at it again. The keys are FORCE and form, not weight. Good quality reps, moving the bar as fast as possible, work much better than struggling with too much weight. It’s also good to add the smallest increment of weight possible once you get up to decently hard weights. Even adding one pound every week puts 50lbs on a lift in a year. To put that in a better perspective, you only have to add 5lbs every 5 weeks to make decent progress, so if you take four steps back and hit a 10lb PR every 5 weeks, you’re doing damn good.

Congrats on the progress. Not bad at all for only eight weeks. Take things slow and make sure you’re eating plenty, especially protein and fats. Remember, force and form make gains; too much weight makes injuries.