[stephenbez]

I'm in the same boat. I had worked out on my own seeing reasonable progress for a year and decided to work with a trainer to see if I could improve my routine. He had me do some deadlifts and it caused injuries that set me back over 6 months.

I really wish places like r/Fitness would talk about risks of training more. Unfortunately I was going to post there, but they pretty much ban any discussion of injury.

I've been reading this book and have found it really good: https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Training-Anatomy-Workout-II/... What it does differently than other books is tells you what are the pros, cons, and risks associated with each exercise. That way if you want a chest exercise but you have an injured shoulder, you can choose the one that is the best choice for you.

The book also talks about how its a myth that the best way to gain strength for everyone is to do heavy compound barbell exercises and talks about how your individual morphology makes certain exercises better or worse for you.

Another plus from reading this book is that you will learn what the individual muscles are and their purpose much better.

If anyone knows a good place online to discuss avoiding injury, please let me know.

[grzm]

I've been fortunate that the trainers I've had have focused very much on proper technique and form which lays the foundations to prevent injury. Online, Kelly Starret's Mobility WOD (https://www.mobilitywod.com) is a great resource. I really like his philosophy of teaching people the tools to diagnose their own problems and working on them, both to prevent future injury and notice when injury may be sneaking up on you. His book is good, too. I'm unfamiliar with the one you already have, so it may cover a lot of the same ground.

[vinceguidry]

I suspect what caused my injuries was that I was training the muscles harder than the tendons. Eventually the tendons gave way. I could never get any solid answers from anyone about how that part of your body really works and what causes it to fail.

[arkades]

It’s undervascularized. It doesn’t fail so much as the normal process of microtrauma-and-repair that strengthens muscles is mostly just microtrauma in tendons. It was once thought he damage was inflammatory, but histological studies have shown otherwise: the tendons degenerate into more-poorly-organized collagen; effectively, a disorganized scarring.

There’s a great article on it. I was going to summarize it, but honestly, I think it’s super accessible to non-medical folks: https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/45/5/508/17888...