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Comment by deregulateMed | Hacker News Reader

I have a weird ancedote. I used to experience the same effect, but now that I've gotten to dangerously heavy weights (385 squats, 435 deadlift, etc...), I have stopped being able to go up in weight and sleep benefits have gone away.

I do various routines to push that number higher, but it's slow and most of the cycle I'm not at my heaviest weights.

Anyway, now I run and I get those benefits again.

Just weird how the benefits of weight lifting have slowed down with a half decade of experience..

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What’s the motivation to lift dangerously heavy weights?

Is there some trade-off to be gained vs. the long term risk or injury?

I'm with you. I don't really push myself as a result. If I can do them safely I'm happy.

But as soon as stuff moves that isn't supposed to, I deload. I'm still able to knock out 315lb squats easy.

My original goal was to make thick bones and get muscle while I'm still young. If I can carry lifting into old age, I'm hoping to stay good sized and move around.

Plus all the health benefits until then.

Yeah the muscle and bone development you get from lifting that heavy really help out in your old age. It's kind of like a reservoir of ability.

I did a lot of grinding out heavy reps when I was younger and less experienced(mid-30s now) but now I am suspicious of that whole idea. If I stick to two reps before failure - i.e. when I start really slowing down the movement - my recovery time post-workout becomes much better and I don't experience as much collapse-into-bed tiredness, but I'm still seeing progression. There's an old broscience debate about whether muscle damage is critical but my own observation is that if it is, you don't need a lot of it, and doing so would favor PED users with tons of recovery capacity.

I also shifted my focus away from the largest muscle groups towards hip/core/shoulders, under a similar reasoning that if what I'm up against is mostly recovery capacity, the small muscles can be trained safely at higher frequency and will have the most impact on injury prevention and avoiding the stoop, rounded shoulders, etc. that afflicts the old.

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