[ekidd]

Thank you for the thoughts! My injuries have all been professionally rehabbed, some of them by MDs who treat competitive lifters. I didn't give up easily. :-)

But to take an example, there's not much you can do to rehab a partial TFCC tear in your 40s. There just isn't enough blood flow. I could get surgery, but my TFCC is already better than 90% of surgical outcomes.

It rarely affects me in daily life, but I can't train wide grip bench presses without immobilizing the wrist with a steel brace.

Once you hit 40, you can still get strong. But sooner or later, a doctor's going to sit down with you and say, "There's nothing I can do to fix this that won't make things worse."

But as another doctor told me, "Look, you have a choice. As you age, you can spend too much time talking to your orthopedic surgeon, or too much time talking to your cardiologist." Physical activity is essential, but it comes at a price. Staying as injury-free as you can manage is everything.