Comment by Aurornis
7 hours ago
This is highly unusual. You shouldn’t be injuring yourself that frequently at the gym, especially if your goal Is just to maintain mobility and basic muscle mass as you age.
This is such a strange thing to hear, as someone who also has gone to the gym a couple times per week for my life with a lot of different gym buddies.
I would suggest considering a reset of your gym routine and gym knowledge, possibly with the help of a physical therapist to see what you’re doing wrong.
If you’re going to one of those gyms that encourage dumb things like doing heavy lifts in a timed competition format or other bad ideas that were trendy in the 2010s, I really recommend getting out of those environments.
My experience is that every movement pattern causes "injuries" like a sore tendon, wrenched back, inflamed shoulder that surface with every 20 pounds of added weight until I figure out what about my form is incorrect. Usually not something a trainer would see like "don't flare your elbows", internal stuff like "use your glute medius to help push" or "elbows in line with the torso on squats" that might be in 1 of 20 YouTube videos.
I use the weight training to surface the injuries to make me aware of what I'm doing wrong in daily movements. I might finally be past this and able to just go in and push weights but it's taken years. I feel like it's down to the body I'm living in and what I consider a pain threshold, not any risk taking or lack of information.
Only the 80% number was given. If he has been going to the gym for 30 years and had 5 injures at the gym, one outside that would be incredibly low for a total, and that level of carelessness at the gym is lower than I'd expect. If his routine was over 1 month then there are big problems.
Getting injured at the gym shouldn’t be such a problem that someone has to mention it.
You don’t need to be pedantic about the 80% number.