Heavy lifting and Golf - Pros, Cons, everything in between.

I couldn't find any golf fitness category so I decided to start this in general golf talk.
As many know there have been many threads regarding working out and golf. It's like beating a dead horse I know and I've always been one of the advocates and examples for what the benefits are. Of course there are also risks but I'm going to give a recent example of what I'm currently going through as a topic of injury prevention.
I've always worked out but 5-6 years ago I really started focusing on heavier squats and deadlifts. Then in October I decided to train for a powerlifting meet which is in 2 weeks on March 14th. I'm 37 years old and I've never done one before but I just wanted to do one for the experience. Throughout the experience I had aches and pain which you would expect from the type of intensity I was putting my body through. I've had some lingering back and hip pain off and on. Some days it restricts me and some days it doesn't. Now fast forward to last week, I had some pretty bad lower back pain and pain in the right hip. Much more than usual. It's a pain i hadn't had before but it dissipated after about 3 days and then after my next deadlift session it came back. At this points I was worried it may be a slipped disc or something like that and I was planning on shutting down deadlifts until meet day and maybe get a cortisone shot that would mask the pain just enough so I could get through the meet. Before I could get one I obviously needed to go and get images done. Here are my images! I have a very significant hip and spinal imbalance but nothing is broken or "injured'. This of course leads to the thought of whether my heavy powerlifting has been hurting me? @J13 is a buddy of mine and he commented on my IG post about it and I just wanted to kind of put this out there for the forums for discussion. Too much of something is never good thing and I don't plan on pushing my lifts like this forever but I will always still lift "heavy".
So what I wanted to talk about is what role the extremely heavy training has played in all of this. It is a reason that I'm in pain? yes. It is the reason I'm imbalanced? No and yes. Its not the reason I became imbalanced but putting that kind of load on an imbalanced hip and spine obviously will put more stress on it and make it worse(hence the pain I've been in lately). The pros of the heavy lifting and injury prevention is what I wanted to bring up. This kind of spinal imbalance could EASILY cause slipped/herniated/ruptured discs yet I have none that even with the load I put on myself through years of heavy lifting. My strength and muscular stability in my core and hips has been a safety net for my spine. Also, I had no idea I had this much of an imbalance and probably would have never felt a severe enough discomfort to ever go and find out something was wrong.
So in conclusion..yes I'm in bad shape but I'm not injured and I don't need surgery. It's correctable and will only get better in the next few weeks and months. I will have 3 adjustments and treatment sessions with my chiropractor weekly for 3 weeks, then twice a week for 3 weeks, then once a week for 3 weeks. After that I will go once every month or two basically for as long as I want to in order to make sure I don't naturally revert back over time.
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Workout with good technique and you'll be fine.

Much like the golf swing. Technique is everything.

I do workout with good technique and I know I will be fine. Technique isn't the issue.

I would personally but little to no stock in minimal abnormalities in alignment on an x-ray, which could be entirely based on your positioning.

that "imbalance" is not significant at all and calling it significant is truly insane. not sure what the lateral c spine x-ray is supposed to show, it has normal lordosis as does your lumbar spine.

also way more likely something related to the neural foramen and disc herniation which would be better evaluated on MRI and you aren't going to see on x-ray.

interesting topic. i'm also similar in age and do workout (crossfit) but do give myself enough rest days to recover (2 days on, 1 day off) which is just as important as any lifting routines. powerlifting is extremely taxing on the body and i've seen my close friends all go through their share of pains and aches and tears throughout the years. hopefully you're resting enough between your on and off days and eating and sleeping right. I'm sure you have good form and technique but father time does eventually catch up with all of us.

best of luck with your upcoming meet but maybe after that you can change up your workout schemes and increase your ROM and mobility for that golf swing.

what the dr pointed out to me in the second photo was the shrinking of this space in my last 2 sections. Which is where I’ve started to feel pain recently.

Just my opinion on your post in general

1) Kudos for trying to better yourself with the power lifting. It's def a cool goal to strive for.... BUT I'm in the opinion (convinced via my Physical Therapist wife) that heavy dead lifting is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen to you when the barbell is in front of you like that during a traditional lift. I don't DL for power lifting meets but I do still do them but I make sure I use a diamond bar. It's so much safer. I know there's a lot of guys who are 100% fine and can DL the world, but you really don't need to be one of the guys who gets hurt unless you srsly think you're going somewhere with power lifting. Now bring in golf which is pretty taxing on the low back and I'd say you're probably at higher risk for injury.

2) You don't have a slipped disk yet and I would bet that with some PT, you can fix your hips and back pretty much no issue. Once you do get fixed... I'd probably think about stopping the oly bar dead lift and switch to the diamond/trap bar. The chiro. can get you started on the right path but PLEASEEEEEE follow up with a PT. You almost certainly have muscle imbalance issues because of this and 99% of chiro's won't address this. You show up, they smash your spine into place, then 2 days later it snaps back again because the muscles are still in disfunction. I view the chiro as quicky relief but in the last... 15 years, I've never had one fix me to "completeness" so to speak. It should always be followed up with tissue work and strengthening.

Hope you recover well.

ya the foramen are probably a little narrow but very hard to assess on x-ray, just like those lines they drew, slight differences in positioning can affect how it appears on x-ray. I don't think that's something that manipulation can fix but YMMV.

It sounds scummy to me, they're already planning on almost 20 visits from you and then it extending into perpetuity, but again YMMV

I do use the trap bar regularly. I deadlift twice a week, once with traditional oly bar and once with trap bar. I do have muscular imbalance in my right hip that I've developed with the compensating for the structural imbalance. I do a lot of psoas, tfl, glute medius mobility and activation cues before sessions.

Luckily it is a family friend so I'm only paying $10 a visit and it's covered on my HSA card that I get $1500 yearly from tribal enrollment. So it's minimal financially and it's with someone I trust.

I wish my spine looked that good

a man with your knowledge and fitness can handle this easily

Do you even lift bro?

All pros. No cons.

In my early 20s I did a lot of reasonably heavy lifting both upper and lower, plus lots of stretching and yoga. It was the longest I’ve ever been, low 120s SS.

Fast forward to my early 30s and I tried to get back into it, eventually DL 3x8 btw 300-400 pounds. Went well for a while, but one day something just felt like it popped, and I couldn’t turn for a week. Took it easy for two weeks and went back to the gym, and when doing squats of 185 it popped again. Had to walk with a cane for two months, could barely get out of bed without terrible pain. I was terrified I would never be able to play golf the same again, or at best would have to become a pea shooting scrambler. Eventually I got fine but I haven’t squatted over 135 since or done a single deadlift.

Maybe some day after building a stronger foundation I’ll up it, but I don’t think I’ll ever get back to heavy lifting. I just don’t see the point, the risk/reward doesn’t make sense. And generally being sore all the time doesn’t facilitate working on your game effectively, so I’ve started changing it up to be more traditional lifting early in the week and lower weight/higher rep/cardio later in the week.

Sorry your having pain Rosco. As we age I think it's important to change and adapt our workouts to avoid repetitive stress injuries. I don't know if I'd get too freaked out over the x-rays; my guess is you'd find some level of stenosis in most heavy lifters as they approach middle age if everyone had radiological studies.

I'm 52 and have been lifting since the 9th grade. Years ago I lifted heavy weights, regularly squatting 405+ for reps, benching 315+, etc. Now I avoid anything that places excessive stress on my joints and I take care to listen to my body; there's no advantage to working through pain. I've had knee, hip, and shoulder surgeries to address injuries and will eventually need a knee and possibly a hip replacement. Years of sports contributed as much as the lifting.

These days I typically lift just twice per week. It's hard to recover fast enough to do much more. I still do squats & deads, but don't go above 205 anymore. I avoid flat benches altogether opting for incline dumbbells up to 85lbs and machines. It takes quite a while to recover and get past the soreness now which is frustrating and not great for my golf. Still I think it's worth it to maintain strength and ROM.

I've got a great chiropractor who is also a licensed PT, so I get the best of both plus he has massage therapists at his practice. He's a low single digit golfer and also a former World's Strongest Man competitor from back in the Bill Kazmaier days, having done lifts that make my best numbers look like a joke...lol, so he gets it.

Im not saying you have a disc issue etc but x ray isn’t the best way to find that, need to get MRI. Doctors who specialize also have physical tests they can perform to give them an idea. Chiropractors “always” have an answer to fix you.

Ive kinda been telling you this on the forum when you were all about go big on the main lifts or go home approach for people on this forum. I use to workout with one of the smartest people I’ve known, he wouldn’t touch going heavy on dead’s or squats, basically loading the spine. I’m not saying go that far but have to adjust your workouts as we age.

Issue I ran into was left rhomboid pain on deadlifts years ago. I think mine was more related to overuse from golf swing and the extreme stress of heavy deads it started screaming at me. Anyway, I adjusted my workouts and I didn’t lose any gains and am pain free. Thing I’ve also been telling you over years in forum is that you will make more gains using exercises that don’t cause you pain, have to be able to adjust and know when to. The best exercise for someone to make most gains is the one you can get the most out of pain free, not necessarily dead, squat, bench.

You admitted using steroids a while ago, so I’m going to assume you are back on the juice for your meet.

i don’t have a problem with that in the slightest. That’s up to you. But obviously you are asking your connective structures questions they arent designed to answer, and injuries become more likely.

hahaha man that's a terrible assumption. 1mg shots of test 15 years ago doesn't make me a steroid user. You know zero about steroid use or what it looks like. I lift the same amount of weight year round. There is no cycle. Steroid users cycle on to hit numbers on a certain day and then cycle off. A using power lifter peaks during cycle for a time period and then when he goes off he can't get anywhere close to the numbers he got. My totals are constant, small increases over years. I pulled 495 for the first time 3 years ago and now I'm at 565 and my body weight has remained the same the entire time. During the summer and golf season I lean down to around 190, and in the winter I build up to 200-205 max.

I smoked a cigarette a couple times in college too, does that mean I'm a smoker?

It's also a tested meet so you'd be wrong.

I also got an MRI 2 days ago and was notified this morning it came back negative for disc issues as well.

i'm not a proponent for "go big of go home". I'm a proponent for "heavy" lifting. Heavy is relative for every person. My regimen now is for something I wanted to do once to see what I could do. It was never going to be a long term training idea. I modified my workouts 5 months ago to train 3 lifts for a specific day and I've had to change up frequency a lot because of aches and pain which I knew I would be getting at some point. Lifting "heavy" and powerlifting are not the same. I will always lift heavy but I will not always powerlift.

Can’t test for hgh, testosterone, igf, insulin etc. As you know. So that’s not a denial.

Stop abusing, your joints will thank you for it. As will your liver.

That's the result of anterior pelvic tilt and probably came from doing deadlifts and squats as well as playing golf. If you use the form prescribed by someone like Mark Rippetoe (an excellent choice), you probably have heeded the advice to deadlift with an arched back and to squat with an arched back in order to avoid 'butt wink'. Anterior pelvic tilt is something you see in a lot of athletes. The solution isn't to stop lifting. The solution is to stop anteriorly tilting your pelvis when you're NOT lifting.

Mike Boyle and Steve Maxwell have both argued that the weighted rear foot elevated split squat (aka Bulgarian split squat) is both safer for the spine and more effective in training the legs. They also argue that a contralateral squat is more applicable to sports in which the use of the legs is contralateral in practice.

A number of posts on Dan John's form have praised the snatch grip deadlift from a deficit as far better than the conventional deadlift and the squat for throwing sports (hammer and discus, at least. Don't know about shot, or javelin). In my own experience, doing this variation got my conventional dead over 400 (at least in my mind...for what that's worth).

In my own personal experience, I did deadlift singles, every day, for about eight years. I would also do high bar squats and overhead presses a couple of times a week. It was very much a 'grease the groove' approach. About a week after breaking the 400lb. mark for the first time, a very exciting achievement for me, I started wondering what the hell I needed to lift 400lbs. for. I was a lot stronger than I had been, but I was also stiff, my knees were kind of a mess, and I couldn't come close to touching my toes. Long story short, I ditched lifting for Yoga (at age 60). Three years later, I can now do full splits and I'm constantly getting called 'Gumby'. Supplementing Yoga with bodyweight training has also helped (there's no pulling in Yoga). None of this has had any affect on my golf. You'd think it would. The only difference really is that I'm much more comfortable now than when I was lifting, but that's all the time, including golf.

My apologies if I got too carried away with yhe subject.

Not carried away at all. Good info.

Spouting out a couple forms that aren't effectively spotted in urine tests but, as you know, can be found in blood tests.

But here's a final challenge for you to inevitably avoid and to put this all to rest....double or nothing on the $5k you still owe me. Full blood and urine tests for you from any physician you choose and I'll perform that old challenge back to back to back in the gym on video and drive straight to the trackman for ya.

Just to expand on a few things...

This is an excellent video on the transversus addominis. It's the muscle you'd want to use, primarily, in remedying any anterior pelvic tilt. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to tuck their pelvis under using the glutes. It's better to use a "postural muscle" rather than a prime mover for such a correction. (This guy reminds me eerily of Robin Williams.)

A point I forgot to make is that it might be best to use the lifts that have the wider range of motion than other lifts. So, for example, you'd choose a high bar ATG squat over a low bar powerlifting squat, or you'd do a lot more snatch grip deads than conventional deads. Another useful thing to add is inverted rows. These are an excellent counter to the bench press, and if you do enough of them, you could greatly reduce the risk of a rotator cuff impingement. And, I think everyone should be doing 'dead hangs' from a pullup bar. They not only drastically improve one's shoulder health, they also greatly improve the flexibility of the lats (which I see as golf specific). And one last point...Steve Maxwell once told me that when we begin to lose strength, that loss begins at the outer limits of our ranges of motion. As most people rarely move out of the range of normal activity, they don't realize how much strength they've lost until they fall walking up the steps. If you're at all familiar with those wacky machines Ichiro Suzuki and Yu Darvish use, you can see that they are training full ranges of motion at some peculiar angles (suggesting that ROM is a three dimensional concern).

I remember that challenge. Vaguely. Something about squatting 300 and driving 300?

Good information in this thread. I'm going to the gym now. Good luck in your meet!

All good info. I do a ton of that stuff normally. FWIW I have my training certification through the Cooper Institute in Dallas and have attended many different seminars over the years. So I do have experience and knowledge when it comes to all of this but I'm certainly not a biomechanics expert.

I'm 36 and lifting heavy 3-4 days a week and while my power, speed, balance and distance have increased a lot the biggest issue I'm finding is that I'm so sore I can barely swing a club most days of the week. I'll definitely be cutting back big time once golf season starts here in Michigan.

I appreciate it!

Yes it was bench 3 plates, squat 4 plates, deadlift 5 plates and then average 300 yard carry. Then came @milesgiles criteria that drives all had to be with 10 years of center over 10 shots and then he said that because I took once a week low dose(1mg) test shots for 4 weeks 15 years ago that I was disqualified for being a steroid user. Because that is cheating and it still makes a difference today.