Wynton's routine needs help (long!, but funny little diagrams)

[shemp]

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OP is 44 and out of shape so obviously throwing down some starting strength moves and quickly ramping up to his 5rep max is going to end with him injured, hating exercise, and resigned to a lifetime of yoga and jogging. DO all the compound lifts but start light and STAY light. Anything close to failure is pointless, just work on training your muscles to do these very natural (but horribly unpracticed) movements for a few months and then start to push yourself.

A 44 year old body has the same capacity to build strength and mass as a 20 year old one (well almost), but it's not going to have the same resiliency to injury and over training.

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Essentially the same stuff but slowing down due to age and injury and the fact he's far more out of shape.

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Oh boy. I'm gonna start a gang called the 40andUps and kick your asses. He's playing sports twice a week and doing a combo elliptical/machine circuit two more times.

I'm all for taking things very slowly if/when you ramp up, but he ain't dead yet.

Wynton, there's all kinds of things you can do. You might look at crossfit which has a bunch of good and quick and well-focused workouts, keeps things varied and fun, and is built on complex movements. Or you could do something completely different set/rep wise like a Starting Strength thing. Or you might go in another direction, with circuit training built on dumbbell stuff-- snatches/cleans/presses.

You will, of course, want to take things slowly and pay close attention to learning the movements correctly, etc.

It might be worthwhile to reflect on these recurring injuries. Maybe you have a problem with adequately recovering/resting or with form that you need to address.

[Thremp]

shemp,

He has two essential fake injuries. The pinched nerve is completely immaterial. Almost everyone who's played some decent amount of football has had a pinched nerve/burner/stinger. I've had them myself. They go away when you don't keep repeating the same injury. Pretty much meaningless.

The back problem is way busto and should be addressed. Pulling your back seriously 3-4x a year (I'm gonna assume this has been going on for several years since "like clockwork" I would assume to be a decent sample size) is likely a training issue. Whatever he is doing currently kinda sucks as it hasn't covered the min issue of preventing injury.

The non-squatting stuff I've been reading is way lame. Unless you can't get up or sit down without pain there should be a way you can do squats without pain. Ramping up slowly and addressing the reason for your pain is what should be going down.

While I'm not as hard on to him keeping it slow like Smiley. He's not 20 and his weight lifting has been pretty poor for a long time and he's also doing a good bit of other physical activity that is gonna tax his recovery. Even putting him on a low intensity SS would likely overtax his recovery. I'm not really sure how you'd modify a beginner plan with his stipulations especially since he's not really addressing his injuries in a fairly basic way.

Though I will likely be starting to do some "athletic" type training in the near future and will report how the results are.

[Wynton]

It's funny. Most people in my age group, I think, would consider me to be in pretty good shape. I definitely believe I am in good aerobic shape. But admittedly, the way I've done weights probably amounts to about nothing.

The other problem I didn't address is my woeful lack of stretching. I know better, but it's been the hardest thing for me to get myself to incorporate. I believe that the regular back injury might be prevented if I simply did some basic stretching on a regular basis.

The knee pain is minor, but chronic. It rarely stops me from playing tennis. On the few occasions I ski, the pain worsens, but it's still manageable. I simply do not want to do exercises that make the situation worse.

At this point, I'm really interested in maximizing the time in the gym. So, the two main issues were:

(1) What lifting type exercises should I do or avoid?
(2) Given the schedule I've outlined, how should I divide my time up?
(3) Am I better off getting to the gym a little more frequently, and spending less time there each visit, or is it ok to go once during the week, twice on weekends, for 60-90 minutes a time?

[shemp]

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(1) What lifting type exercises should I do or avoid?

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Don't do stuff that hurts. Don't do isolation exercises. Don't overdo stuff. Your recurring injury could be a lot of things-- but one of them is that it is how your body tells you it needs time off for recovery, so try to take more time off.

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(2) Given the schedule I've outlined, how should I divide my time up?

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You've got several options. You could do the Starting Strength twice a week for 4 weeks with the other day being some sort of circuit or HIIT or whatever, then take both weekend days off for recovery and reevaluate. You want to take your time learning the movements and developing confidence with them, slowly but steadily increasing the weight. You may be able to do another cycle like this. After that, you could schedule out 4-6 weeks at a time, rotating through (for example) heavy twice, light once, heavy-medium-light, light-medium-light, branching out into more varied (but still, complex, and athletic) movements.

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(3) Am I better off getting to the gym a little more frequently, and spending less time there each visit, or is it ok to go once during the week, twice on weekends, for 60-90 minutes a time?

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A key thing you have is that this schedule fits your life. You've been doing it for a couple years. I'd hesitate toying with that.

[theblackkeys]

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The other problem I didn't address is my woeful lack of stretching. I know better, but it's been the hardest thing for me to get myself to incorporate. I believe that the regular back injury might be prevented if I simply did some basic stretching on a regular basis.

The knee pain is minor, but chronic. It rarely stops me from playing tennis. On the few occasions I ski, the pain worsens, but it's still manageable. I simply do not want to do exercises that make the situation worse.

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It's possible these issues are related. Lower body flexibility in one area can give you pain in other joints.

I would give squats, deadlifts and other lower body exercises a try and see if they hurt your knee. One question though, does the pain come immediately during an exercise or does it hurt after you're done working out? If it's the former it should be easy to find out what bothers you, if it's the latter you might want to try testing them out on different days.