I’m 34 and my workout partner is 45. We’re with ya on the warm-ups. My shoulders aren’t the best in the world and my partner has problems with his hip, one elbow, and his shoulders. We warm up thoroughly and work out quickly.
Well said, ZEB.
Mr,
Have you ever tried the “shoulder horn”?
I used to have pain in my left shoulder until began using one. It is amazing. It completely rehabilitated my rotator cuff.
I also think that three supplements have helped me immensely, they are: Glucosamine,(without chondroiton), MethySulfonyMethane, commonly called MSM, and lastly, Hydrolyzed Collagen.
I have been taking the trio listed above for the past few years and my joints feel like they did when I was 25! I am truly blessed as I have worked out extremely hard for mnay years and have zero joint pain!
Yeah, I’ve got a shoulder horn. Unfortunately, my shoulder problems aren’t going away. I’ve got excessive laxity which basically means that my shoulder joint is sloppy as hell. To complicate the matter, I fell last fall and separated my AC joint. I’ve went through physical therapy several times and seen docs a dozen times since I was 17 about it. Basically, I’m gonna have to live with it and there’s certain things that I just can’t do. I can’t bench press. I can’t do military presses. I work around it. I’ve taken glucosomine in the past and so has my workout partner. I haven’t tried MSM though. It’s great that you have no joint pain. That’s basically the only thing that “tempers” our workouts.
MR,
I have a loose shoulder joint also. As you do, I have to live with it for the rest of my life, and I’m 22. When I bench, I go for speed only, not maxing out or going anywhere near it. I’m sure I could bench 250 with proper neuronal activation, but what amount do I do? 135 baby, hell yeah.
I have to do some goofy exercises for my shoulder for stability. If you want to know what they are, shoot me a PM and I’ll detail them for ya.
“Not Jared”
ZEB:
why w/o the chondroitan - just curious
I use Glucosamine and MSM, and read the labels for the chondroitan, but have had good results so far w/o it, and figured maybe when I’m 60 … haven’t had time to research it.
Haven’t tried the collagen.
My shoulders have always sucked, and I’m fairly flexible/loose, but I realized one day that my ROM was causing me problems, so I stopped using it, and sure enough it tightened up a great deal (a side-blessing of old age?).
I can bench now for the first time in my life.
And I agree, I’m using more weight now than ever.
Something to look forward to I guess
Mr,
I am really sorry to hear of your shoulder problems. It sounds like you have been trying to rehab. Just keep trying and I know (because you are on this site) that you will never let it interfere with the big picture. Strength and health!
Thunder,
I would be interested in hearing about some of your best hypertrophy squat workouts, if you have the time.
ZEB, seeing your age and your goals it does make sense you do that warmup.
Hey if it works for you, who cares what others think anyway.
Myself i’ve been gradually weaning my warmups down to a small amount.
I do 3-5 minutes on cardio machine (depending on physcially how warm it is outside and thus my temp). I then do ~5 squats with 135 fairly slow and hold them at bottom for a little bit, and then usually bump that up to 185, 205 or 225 and do another 3-5 squats the same way.
Then I stretch my hip flexors a little bit if they feel they need it, and go to work.
I used to do about 4-5 sets of warmup on a progression to my workout, but that didnt seem to help me and I have been toning that down
Antiliberal,
Don’t get me wrong. I go as hard, and probably much harder than most much younger. But, when it comes to warming up the body I take no chances!
Hey you can’t argue with success! However I wasn’t saying you were wrong ZEB. I was just asking why so many reps in the warm up. I myself warm up close to Thunder’s recomendations and for the same reasons. Especially if your doing heavy sets. All the latic acid from high rep sets is no help there. However I warm up the same way when doing high rep work sets as well. I thought this method of warm up was old news. Poliquin is where I first heard of it. 
The Bulgarian weightlifters often used their recovery HR as an indicator of when to perform their next set.
For example, they may use 110 bpm as their cut-off. So instead of waiting 4 minutes between sets, they would simply wait until their HR was back down to below 110 bpm, etc.
Stay strong
MR
Mikerob,
There are plenty of ways to utilize the heart rate monitor. The Bulgarians have used, just as you have stated.
Other ways, To move more weight with an average BPM being the same is another way. You can actually use it to know when to end a set as well as begin it.
For overall conditioning you can’t beat it. It’s sort of like having a coach!
interesting stuff, one thing tho.
increade heart rate in weight training is mainly from increase blood pressure forcing the heart to work hard (for no reason) unlike aerobic work inwhich the heart is responding to provide moire oxygen faster to working muscles
this is why i dont see it as a good indicator of progression as breathing patterns would (well could) have more of an effect than the weight lifted
Whetu,
During a strenueous lift, the lifters blood pressure may go as high as 280/200 briefly. This places great demand on the lifters heart.
If this demand occurrs repeatedly, over a long enough period of time, the actual cardiac tissue will change. The ventricle wall thickness will increase! A thicker ventricle will pump the same amount of blood with each stroke, but can also generate greater pressure when it needs to. Which means its work capacity increases!
There is further evidence that “weightlifting condition” is quite healthy as total cholesterol has been shown in studies to decrease, for the non-steroidal user.
I have gone long periods of time without running, up to one year. With just hard weight training I have been able to maintain my aerobic base.
After one year without running at the age of 47 (last year) I ran four quarter mile intervals, all between :70 and :80 seconds. I also ran one mile in under 6:30.
While I do not claim that these times are fast, they are almost as fast as I have ever run them. And this is without any training in either event, and no other running!
I attribute this success to hard weight training! Squatting, Deadlifting etc.
Antiliberal and Thunder! Took your advice and cut out a lot of the warm-up reps. We still did a few sets of leg extensions for 12 reps with 80 and 100 lbs then it was 5x135, 4x185, 3x225, 8x275, 6x295, 5x305. I put on a belt for the 305 set and I swear that I could have knocked out a few more reps. My back felt fine. Thanks guys!