Experienced Age 50+ Powerlifters, Gather Up

Hey mates,

I hear around that olympic lifters almost alwasy get “Spinal disc herniation” or “slipped disc.”

Any truth to this?

I like those damn deadlifts… I really do feel like they are good for you. By the way, I don’t do olympic lifts. I basically only do the stronglifts lifts. But I really want to get firsthand information…

I hope some old powerlifter powerbuilder and even an olympic lifter can answer (I’ll post it under there too so we know).

Thanks for listening.

My dad had a slipped disc from judo, so I’ve often worried about back injuries. I like to do vertical pulling exercises like chin ups and pull downs after I do exercises like dead lifts that leave me feeling like my spine is being compressed. I feel a lot better afterwards.

Hi I paused powerlifting for a month or so and immediately not only do I seem taller and got asked about it a few times, but also what I complained as swayback/lordosis, got less emphasized…

I had a trainer… He was some sort of a celebrity guy in my small 3rd world country. Or just did a lot of marketing on himself. Anyway. He didn’t do powerlifting. He wanted to teach me how to jerk or all those olympic moves while I could easily go below parallel and stay there for a while on bodyweight squats… you know, the mentality…

he got injured with a slipped disc one day… I got an xray of my spine the other day and it looked pretty damn healthy (in terms of the angles). Yet you get worried. Heavy weights should be handled pretty damn seriously… if one can “play” with or mess with their spine so easily… then are we as powerlifters doing the right thing?.. I get to worry sometimes…

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I’m 55 yrs old. I started training in 1983 and began serious powerlifting in 1990. I competed up to 2007. I took a loooong (8yr) layoff and started up again a year ago. I recently had piriformis syndrome and had a back x-ray done to rule out disc issues. My discs are all OK, no slipping or bulging. The only thing the X-ray showed is a slight arthritic condition of the vertebrae. I did lose an inch of height though.

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thanks for the info!