"I want to lift x amount one day" is not for everyone, it's what lead me to destroy my spine. I went years without any problems and I was in the best shape of my life, but I never thought about the level of compression my spine was taking on.

I ended up having multiple bulging discs from C5-C7, a severe disc herniation in T8-T9 (which happened mid workout, very painful), L4-S1 herniations and L4-L5 breaking away chunks of my vertebrae. I eventually had to get emergency surgery on C5-C7 due to the narrowing of spinal cord.

I still "work out" with resistance bands, but I'm never allowed to properly lift weights again thanks to my foolishness. It's horribly depressing and I don't wish this on anybody.

Moral of the story is you might be just fine and have the skeletal structure to support lifting, or it could be a ticking time bomb like in my case. Lifting goals should carry disclaimers about the possible dangers.

That sucks. What lift did you in? Was it gradual or a sudden injury?

I hope the recovery is going smoothly now at least :/

Gradual. When my T8-T9 popped, I was doing pull-ups of all things, so there was no compression which means it could have been anything preceding that, but I suspect years of military/shoulder press or squats contributed.

I did dead-lifts several years prior to the injuries and stopped those when I had a funny "clammy skin" sensation in one of my arms; it freaked me out a little and I hated deadlifts anyway so I always thought it was just my excuse not to do them, but in retrospect I think that was probably a wise decision.

My guess is that it could be deadlifts.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Lifting is great but it should always be done in moderation (as always with anything that one does with their body).

Yikes. What sort of loads were you lifting, if I may ask? Would possibly help make the warning more concrete to those of us reading.

At the time I was about 180lbs/6' and just got done cutting. I was lifting in the 12-15 rep range so the load was relatively light-moderate enough to hit those reps without losing form. I am an ectomorph, so my skeletal structure is weak by design, really poor bone density.

Nothing wrong to be exercise regularly without progression. I wouldn't be surprised if this was even better than going ham on the gym because of how little exercise the human body actually needs to be considered healthy.

Not saying there is nothing wrong with having lifting goals either. But there are definitely diminishing returns to your health in regards to the amount/intensity of your exercise routine for sure.

I became much happier once I realized that I'm not an athlete and I don't need to have a goal of "I want to lift x amount one day". This has been freeing for me. I started focusing more and more on fixing certain parts of the body (like tightness of pecs, weak glutes, weak transverse abdominis etc - 99% of the people at the gym has it, but they are not aware of it).

So I really think if you are an athlete/ex-athlete and you really know how to train - go for it. My main goal was not to have a back pain ever again.

Nothing wrong with avoiding lifting heavy if you are satisfied with your size. At that point it's maintenance. Even professional body builders get devastating injuries, and if they get devastating injuries while doing a supervised squat with two spotters, then I don't trust myself to go for PR in the squat rack unless my form with the current weight is absolutely effortless. There isn't even a point for me to go for PR; I'm not getting a gold metal but I could end up with a hernia.

Are you saying it’s a mistake to keep training without a goal to lift more?