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by codersteve 3028 days ago
Don't use heavy weights, use light weight and add slowly.
1 comments

When I was around 16 years old and started training with weights (just like what my father recommended me doing), and gradually increased the weights, there were joints and muscle groups in my body that just could not adjust. I had no way of improving triceps reasonably alongside the rest for pushups for example, and my right shoulder had the weirdest pain points whenever I moved weights with it beyond the initial smaller scales. So I eventually gave up.

Fast forward a decade, and my right shoulder still remembers these pains - I dunno if the weights caused it or some previous injury, but when I started training with my own weight, one sign that I was getting ahead of myself was that small pain. Now I can progress slower, but still I have to be very careful. Some of the exercises with heavy weights are just not natural for the body and simply exhaust/strain it more than it should. If you are experienced, you can work around these limitations, but I prefer body-weight exercises now.

Your issue is that you were 16. I don't mean that weight training young is bad, but that you were a 16 year old training himself. People think that because lifting weight is a meathead sport you would have to be an idiot to do it wrong, but that is incorrect. Lifting weights is easy, but lifting weights in a way that makes you progress towards your goal and emphasizes longevity in the sport is hard and the domain of experienced strength coaches who have seen it all.

You were increasing the weights at a rate that your body couldn't handle. It is very frequent with new trainees because the neurological adaptations that appear at the beginning of training are always impressive: you finally learn how to use those muscles you always had and make them work towards a simple common goal, lifting that barbell. The main problem is that the rest of your body sometimes cannot keep up with that speed, and that results in this sort of issue. Had you been to a professional strength coach, he or she would have forced you to lower your pace and think about long-term progress over short term gain, which would probably have been at your 16 year old self's annoyance (as it was to mine).

Yeah, you are right, most likely. I remember quitting then due to being frustrated over lack of progress. Hah!