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A comment on Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by y-c-o-m-b on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @06:27PM (#22242288)
"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.

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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by Infinitesimus on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @08:57PM (#22243298)
That sucks. What lift did you in? Was it gradual or a sudden injury?

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

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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by y-c-o-m-b on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @12:55PM (#22249317)
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.

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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by sbmthakur on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @02:18AM (#22244696)
My guess is that it could be deadlifts.
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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by sbmthakur on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @02:17AM (#22244689)
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).
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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by graeme on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @11:55PM (#22244143)
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.
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Re:Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020? by y-c-o-m-b on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @12:59PM (#22249365)
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.
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