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Comment by YinglingLight | Hacker News Reader

>Arnold type body looks great on photos, but is utterly impractical for normal life

No one gets "buff" on accident. No one gets to the size where they have trouble fitting through a door on accident (and without drugs).

>Low rep means you are close to your limits, which is area where injuries happen a lot

High reps = more movement, and just like a hard disk drive, more movement means more chances for failure. The injury that sent me to the chiropractor was a warm-up ~125lb Deadlift that I did with impromper form. Weight does not correlate with Injury risk.

>what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example

The "joints and connective tissue" (tendons aka grip) you mentioned prior is exactly what gets trained on heavy reps, and takes a LONG time to develop.

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> High reps = more movement, and just like a hard disk drive, more movement means more chances for failure. The injury that sent me to the chiropractor was a warm-up ~125lb Deadlift that I did with impromper form. Weight does not correlate with Injury risk.

You don't see any logical fallacy in your statement? If more movement = simply more risk, then ultra-trail runners would be all in wheelchairs in 5 years. What you load on yourself on top of your weight makes huge difference. Give those ultras 10kg backpack and they will be having all kinds of knee/ankle issues in very short time.

Doing deadlift warmup with cca 55kg seems ridiculously high, I am not surprised you eventually had an injury. Really buffed up guys in my gym start with cca 30 kg only after proper warmup of whole body via some other way (I do it same way, usually on elliptic trainer for 5 mins).

Joints and tendons get trained with whatever you do, bodyweight can still do the trick if done properly. You are right it takes horrible amount of time, also healing injury can take months easily. I prefer sport climbing for those, flexibility required is substantial, and overall the sport is awesome on every single level, especially on the rock outdoors.

Whatever works for you long term, stick to it. You should know your body better than anyone else. I know amount of load made a big difference in injury risk for me, going lighter but still almost till muscle failure I have lost 0 of the power, and gained tons of endurance. But that's just me.

All of the ultra-trail runners I've known have had significant injuries from overuse or falling on the trail. When you're exhausted at the end of a 50 mile race it's easy to trip over a root and blow out your knee. A single mistake is all it takes.

Just as note, for a trained adult male, a first set warming up for deadlifts with ~60kg is not uncommon.

A regular bar is ~20kg by itself.

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