I see many people at the gym jumping straight into their heavy lifting sets without doing warm-ups.
This is a recipe for disaster; not warming up is one of the leading causes of injury.
To add insult to injury ( excuse the pun) many people who don’t warm up properly also seem to be the same people piling the weight onto the bar to squeeze one rep out with shoddy form.
The double whammy almost guaranteed to get you injured is lifting weights that are too heavy without warming up.
I’ve found that the solution to this is:
Don’t lift too heavy ( very low rep training). training close to your one-rep max is much riskier for injury.
Use a science-based warm-up that you can repeat for any exercise.
Don’t train in the 1-5 rep range. I’ll go no lower than six reps per set when I perform a set now. Higher rep training puts less stress on your joints and is much lower risk than training in the 1-5 rep range.
Use perfect form.
Always use a full range of motion. Squat ass to grass, touch the bar on your chest when you bench press etc.
A Science-Based Warm-Up Routine For Your Weightlifting Workouts
Warm-up set 1: Lift 50% of your working weight sets for eight reps.
Warm-up set 2: Lift 70% of your working weight sets for four reps.
Warm-up set 3: Lift 90% of your working weight sets for two reps.
Here’s what this warm-up routine may look like if you were going to barbell deadlift 100kg for your working sets.
Warm up set 1 – 50kg x 8 reps.
Warm up set 2 – 70kg x 4 reps.
Warm up set 3 – 90kg x 2 reps.
Then you perform your work sets.
I haven’t just pulled this warm up routine out of thin air I got this warm up routine from the book The Muscle And Strength Pyramids (training version) which is a book written by Dr Eric Helms who is a natural bodybuilding coach and is a scholar in the realm of all things natural bodybuilding and strength training.
What happens if you don’t warm up?
When you lift heavy weights without warming up, your muscles will be colder, which will mean they’re stiffer and less pliable, making them more vulnerable to micro tears and sprains in the muscles, ligaments, and joints (when the muscles contract under load).
When you warm up, you pump blood through your muscles, joints, and connective tissue, making them more pliable.
When your muscles are warm, they’re more pliable, and your body is much better prepared for lifting heavy weights.
I injured my wrist from doing heavy weighted chin-ups last year, primarily because I didn’t warm up properly.
Conversely, every time I’ve warmed up properly, I’ve never got injured.
The Bottom line
I recommend that you don’t lift in the 1-5 rep range; it’s more risky, and I recommend you train in the 6+ rep range. Always warm up ( use the routine in this article), and always use perfect form and a full range of motion. Not only does warming up protect you against injury it also enhances your performance.
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For a year, I had chronic wrist pain due to ego lifting in the gym when I was doing some weighted chin-ups.
I felt my wrist pop while doing weighted chin-ups on the descent.
It only took me a year to realise I tore some cartilage in my Wrist.
I had to have surgery to fix the cartilage in my wrist, and now I’m pretty much back to normal.
I would hate for you to get injured from lifting weights.
And I would hate for you to feel the way I did during that year of chronic pain.
So, here are my eight golden rules for weightlifting, which will help you avoid injury.
Always use perfect form. When bench pressing, tuck your elbows in so they don’t flare out ( this will protect your shoulders from getting injured). In the deadlift and squat, never round your back.
Always use a full range of motion when lifting weights. When you squat, go ass to grass, and when you bench press, touch the bar against your chest. If you can’t go full ass to grass when you squat, try to go as low as possible and as comfort allows (no pain).
Don’t lift too heavy, too soon. Progress slowly but surely, don’t just load all the weight on the bar to do one sloppy rep. Progress slowly with perfect form. Here’s a good progression method for beginners. I’m using an example for the squat. Week 1: lift three sets of 5 reps with 50kg on the barbell squat. The following week, aim to lift three sets of 5 reps with 52.5 kg. Then repeat this for as many weeks as possible until you can’t perform three sets of 5 reps. When this happens ( a plateau), reduce the weight by 10% and start the progression again. This is called linear progression, and it’s popular in Mark Rippetoe’s book, Starting Strength. At the end of the article, I’ll give you a free strength training program.
Always warm up properly. I warm up like this: first set lift 50% of my working weight for 8 reps, second set lift 70% of my working weight for 4 reps, and lastly lift 90% of my working weight for 2 reps, then I’m ready to perform my work sets. Say, for example, I’m going to bench press 100kg for 5 reps (working sets). Here’s how the warm-up sets go: set 1, 50kg x 8 reps, set 2, 70kg x 4 reps, set 3, 90kg x 2 reps. Failing to warm up correctly can cause your muscles to be stiff and tight and more susceptible to injury. Warming up ensures your muscles and joints are warm and have more synovial fluid flowing through them, thus they will move better. By working up to your heavy sets, you allow your muscles to adapt to the heavy loads slowly in a way that they can easily manage. The day I injured my wrist, I went straight into heavy chin-ups without warming up for this exercise; it’s no wonder I got hurt.
Don’t compare yourself to other weightlifters. Focus on being a little bit better today than you were last time you worked out, even if that’s just adding one rep or only adding a small amount of weight to the bar. Over months and years, small progress is enormous progress. Like compound interest, your body and muscles will benefit from years of slow progression in the gym. Slow progress is good progress. Fast progress is more likely to cause injury. Slow progress is desirable.
Keep hydrated. I like to have a glass or two of water before I work out. Staying hydrated is vital for every physiological process in your body. Make sure you’re always hydrated. A good daily water intake I recommend is to drink at least 1 litre of water for every thousand calories you consume, plus an additional litre for every hour you work out. This is around 3-4 litres of water for most people daily.
Lift weights in a controlled fashion. You should always control the weight you lift; if you’re not controlling it entirely, you’re lifting too much weight. Decrease the weight on the bar and ensure your muscles are doing all the work. At gyms, I’ve seen people dive bombing their squats (where they almost just drop their body to the floor and bounce back up). When this happens, your muscles aren’t firing correctly. I’ve also seen people round their back during deadlifts ( when they assume a frightened cat’s posture), which will eventually cause injury. Your back should be flat when you deadlift and squat. When you round your back, your joints take much of the load, whereas your muscles should carry and control the load.
Only use exercises that you can safely perform or that feel most comfortable. For example, I’ve both barbell conventional deadlifted and trap bar deadlifted, and the one that feels the best for me is the trap bar deadlift. So, this is the variation I mostly perform. Try different exercises and see what your body responds to best. Don’t persevere with an exercise that’s causing you pain. Your body is trying to tell you something.
Here Is A Sample Starting Strength Workout Routine Using Linear Progression.
Week 1
Day A ( Monday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Bench Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set of 5 reps
Day B (Wednesday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Standing Overhead Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set Of 5 Reps
Day A ( Friday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Bench Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set of 5 reps
Week 2
Day B ( Monday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Overhead Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set of 5 reps
Day A (Wednesday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Bench Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set Of 5 Reps
Day B ( Friday)
Squat 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Overhead Press 3 Sets Of 5 Reps
Deadlift 1 Set of 5 reps
Repeat this cycle for 12 weeks, then have a deload week ( no lifting), just going on walks.
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Deadlift. Nothing strengthens the body and mind more than a heavy set of deadlifts.
Read about people who have suffered through tough times; you’ll learn valuable lessons about how they coped. My favourite book that depicts this point is Man’s Search for Meaning by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
Look after your body. Healthy body, healthy mind. Where the body goes, the mind will follow. Work out, eat well, sleep well, etc. We’re all pretty fucked, we have our trauma and weaknesses in life but being healthy makes everything easier and being unhealthy makes life a struggle. Choose impeccable health.
Say no to instant gratification. In the famous marshmallow test study, kids were asked if they would like to eat the marshmallow upon being given the chance, and they also had the option to postpone eating it, which would allow them to eat another marshmallow later. Once these kids were followed up later (as adults), the kids who delayed instant gratification did much better and achieved much more in their lives than those who opted for instant gratification. Say no to porn. Say no to the doughnut. Say no to lying in. You get the point.
Read more, you’ll become more erudite. You’ll learn wisdom from great literature passed down through the millennia. You’ll learn time-tested heuristics to help you make sense of this complex world, which will forge your mind to diamond-grade strength.
Take a chill pill. Reduce your stress levels by doing breathing exercises, meditation, etc. Also, turn off the news that sensationalised garbage will curse your soul. Most news is fake news.
Reach out to friends. Regardless of who you are, you need a support network. Isolation kills. No man Is an island.
Go to therapy. I’ve been going to therapy for several months, and it’s helping me more than I ever thought it could. I’d urge everyone to go as early in their lives as possible. It enables you to deal with your trauma, and most of all, it helps you know yourself.
To Become Mentally Strong: Avoid Becoming Mentally Weak.
So, how do you become mentally weak?
You lack integrity and aren’t honest with yourself or others. This is a fragile way to be because part of self-mastery is being honest with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with? If you aren’t honest with yourself, you’ll end up living someone else’s life. But if you’re honest with yourself, you can dictate your life to be what you want for yourself and your uniqueness, which is one of the cornerstones of a meaningful life.
Lacks self-control. Publilius Syrus once said, “Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself”. The key to progress in the outside world is winning first at the inner game. First, rule over yourself. Then, as a byproduct, you’ll succeed in the outside world.
You can’t expand your time horizons. If you can’t plan a worthwhile goal for yourself that you might accomplish in ten or twenty years (e.g., a business, life goal, etc.), then I’m sorry, but you’re probably living for short-term instant gratification, e.g., junk food, porn, shitty TV, etc. The most meaningful things in life take work. But it’s the work that makes them meaningful.
Masking is something I’ve done my whole life by taking on the traits and mannerisms of the people around me to fit in; in other words, it’s adhering to the herd mentality. If you do this long enough, your subconscious will eventually resist, and it manifested to me as tiredness, anxiety, and depression. And now I don’t want to be anyone other than my best self. If people don’t like who that is. Fuck em.
They lack structure and routine. To do great things in this world, you must live consistently. It’s hard to squeeze the pith out of life when you’re sleeping in until noon most days. Have a consistent time you sleep and wake, and plan your life around it.
If you pay attention to what most people do, then it’s pretty obvious why you might notice that people age faster than you.
My motto is, “Whatever 99% of people are doing, do the opposite.”
Unfortunately, many people have no idea how to stay in good health.
It’s very easy.
You should ensure that you get 8 hours of sleep per night, eat a healthy diet, work out several hours per week, and stay hydrated.
Unfortunately, many people are still destroying their health by engaging in unhelpful habits, i.e. smoking, drinking in excess, eating too much sugar, not staying hydrated, etc.
I’ve noticed that the people who look the worst are the ones who neglect their health the longest.
Just like good healthy habits compound and pay dividends in the years to come, like continued vitality, lack of disease and overall higher energy levels.
Practicing unhealthy habits will compound, and sooner or later, you’ll wonder why you’ve ended up in the Emergency room after having a severe heart attack.
Staying healthy is simple but not easy.
It’s 90% behaviour and 10% knowledge.
If you’re reading this now, ensure you’re not harming your future self and start practising healthy habits as soon as possible
Healthy Harry And Unhealthy Ulysses
I’ve already mentioned the main things you need to do, and they are basic common sense, but here are some examples of two different people: one, I will name healthy Harry and the other, unhealthy Ulysses.
Healthy Harry is 40 years old and has a healthy body fat percentage between 10-15%. His abs aren’t clearly visible, but he doesn’t have a belly that sticks out profusely.
He is reasonably strong. He doesn’t care about being the world’s strongest man, but he does care about maintaining a good level of strength.
He can bench press one rep of 1.2 times his body weight, do eight chin-ups, squat 1.6 times his body weight for one rep, and deadlift 2 times his body weight for one rep.
He’s happy with how he looks and is full of vitality.
He sleeps 8 hours most nights.
He eats a high protein diet (30/40% of his diet from protein) and includes many fruits, veggies and other whole foods( at least 5 fruits and veggies per day).
He drinks 3-4 litres of water per day.
He limits junk foods, such as chocolate, pastries, crisps, fried foods, and biscuits, to no more than 10% of his total daily calories.
He doesn’t eat more calories than he needs to and never gets or will get fat unless he drastically changes his diet for the worse.
He reduces his stress levels by reading books, walking in nature, and spending time with his cat, family, and friends.
Unhealthy Ulysses is also 40 years old, but he doesn’t workout, has a body fat percentage of 30% and his belly sticks out like a beer keg. He looks more like a 60-year-old.
He has no energy; he gets tired from walking to his car and orders takeout food thrice a week.
He doesn’t have a strict diet. He mainly eats what he wants when he wants, but it’s very easy to overconsume calories and get fat when you have no dietary limits.
Most nights, he gets 6-7 hours of sleep, mainly falling asleep in front of the television with his mouth powdered by Cheetos after consuming the whole family-size bag.
Ulysses is also a heavy drinker and chain smoker.
Compared to Ulysses, Harry looks in his late 20s or early 30s.
Harry is much more productive at work and is getting the most out of his life.
Being fit has taught Harry that if he can change his body, he can change his life—and he has.
Ulysses is unproductive at work and in life and has been in the same dead-end job for years. He’s also been prescribed the antidepressant sertraline to help boost his mood, similar to the drug Soma in Aldous Huxley’s Novel Brave New World.
Let me ask you which one you think will age better.
That’s right, healthy Harry.
Follow his lead.
Fitness isn’t everything, but everything is harder if you aren’t fit. – Mike Matthews
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be aiming for impeccable health.
You’re ahead of someone who isn’t trying, even if you take the smallest step.
Because every time we work towards a specific goal, we increase our chances of achieving that goal.
For example:
The more often you go to the gym, the more likely you are to be physically strong.
The more you read, the more you boost your erudition.
The more you write and post online, the more likely you are to build an audience.
You get the point.
But the more you get stuck in inertia and never put any effort into achieving your goals, the more likely you’ll stagnate and even get worse as time passes.
In my opinion, the best progress is slow progress.
Because slow progress is maintainable.
And progress is usually slow.
So be grateful for the progress you make, no matter how small.
It will spur you on to achieve more.
Here’s how I’m following my advice:
I’m writing at least 30 minutes per day.
I’m working out daily, even if that means only going on a walk ( but I strength train thrice weekly).
I’m reading daily.
So, if I complete these three tasks every day, I will have voted three times for myself to become a better person.
After a year, I would have voted 1095 times to become a better person.
Whenever we complete a habit that improves us, we vote for ourselves to become better people.
The secret to life is voting for yourself every day throughout your life.
If you start practising this advice now.
In a few years, you’ll be thanking me.
I’ve already witnessed the benefits of voting for yourself.
I learned this idea from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.
I highly recommend you read Atomic Habits; It’s a great book.
If you can’t afford to pay for his book, you can read his articles for free on Jamesclear.com.
I have much more respect for the person in the arena fighting with his blood, sweat, and tears to actualise his potential than for the person who never has the courage to do anything worthwhile.
Start small, achieve big.
A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.
The key is to keep taking those steps.
Don’t give up after taking a few, like most people do.
On a cold autumnal morning in November 2023, I got out of bed, got dressed, hydrated, had my pre-workout meal, and drove to the gym to complete a pull day workout consisting of deadlifts, rows, weighted chin-ups and barbell curls.
The workout went fine until I started performing my work sets of weighted chin-ups.
The gym was busy, and I couldn’t use the regular pull-up bar because they were all occupied.
So, I had to use the monkey bars to perform the weighted chin-ups.
I was already warmed up from the previous exercises, so I went straight into the work sets. I had a belt tied to my waist with a chain on, and attached to the chain was a 15kg plate.
I was doing chin-ups with my body weight and 15kg attached, so the total weight lifted was around 95kg because I weighed around 80kg (80kg + 15kg = 95kg).
I grab the pull-up bar with both my hands and the 15kg weight plate attached and start repping out chin-ups; my goal is to hit 4-6 reps for three sets.
While performing the first several reps, I felt an uncomfortable pull in my wrist and stopped the exercise.
My wrist was painful, and it felt unstable, but it wasn’t excruciating ( maybe a 6/10 in regards to the severity of the pain).
After experiencing this, I rest and try again. It still doesn’t feel right, so I perform dumbbell curls. They didn’t feel right either.
I go home, shower, get dressed, start working, and get on with my day. A couple of days later, I tried to perform my leg workout, but gripping the bar for barbell squats didn’t feel right, and I realised there was a serious problem with my right wrist (to make things worse, it was my dominant wrist).
So, I gave myself a 2-week break from the gym.
After the 2 weeks were up, the pain was still there, but I tried to go back to lifting, thinking, “Maybe my wrist is weak after the injury and needs to be strengthened”, so I tried to train for a few weeks.
The pain was still there.
I then saw my general practitioner (GP) at the local doctor’s surgery centre, and he gave me a wrist splint to wear for a few weeks.
It didn’t help.
A few weeks later, the GP authorised an ultrasound for me on my wrist. When I had the ultrasound, the doctor couldn’t find a cause for my pain; he said, “It’s probably just mild tendonitis”.
I gave my wrist more time to heal, then saw a physiotherapist to help me with correctional exercises, hoping this would fix the problem.
Nothing helps.
I wait several more months, then see an orthopaedic surgeon who requests an MRI scan of my wrist.
He finds no cause for my wrist pain on the MRI and tells me to start using my wrist as usual again.
I couldn’t deal with the pain any longer, so I asked him to refer me to a soft tissue wrist specialist.
I went to see the specialist, and he gave me a steroid injection in my wrist, hoping to reduce any inflammation in my wrist that might have been causing the pain.
It didn’t work.
The next option was wrist keyhole surgery to find a cause for my wrist pain (and hopefully fix my wrist) because the specialist said MRIs could only be 70% correct, meaning my diagnosis had probably gone undetected so far.
In December 2024, I was put under general anaesthetic and had my wrist surgery.
The surgeon found a Triangular fibrocartilage complex (tfcc) tear and repaired it the operation lasted around 2 hours.
As of writing this article, I’m almost 9 weeks post-op, and my wrist is improving.
Don’t Get Injured
Why did I develop the injury? It’s because of a few factors.
I was getting back into weighted chin-ups after a period of not doing them and added too much weight too quickly.
My weighted chin-up form could have been better. I was in a rush the day I got injured and was going through the motions.
It was a cold morning, and I should have warmed up more before performing the weighted chin-ups. I should have performed 2- 3 sets of 6 reps of bodyweight chin-ups before doing my work sets. This would have warmed up my wrist joints, reducing the likelihood of sustaining the injury.
What I’m Going To Do Moving Forward
I won’t do pull-ups or chin-ups anymore (definitely not weighted ones). Instead, I’ll use the lat pulldown exercise and focus on perfect form. I’ll use a full range of motion. The lat pulldown is as effective as the chin-up as it targets the same muscles as you do in the chin-up.
What You Can Take Away from My Experience
Warm up properly before completing any heavy sets.
Always use perfect form. Always use a full range of motion, and don’t use momentum. Your muscles are supposed to do the work (this is true for every exercise, even a bicep curl).
You know your body better than anyone. See a specialist if you face an injury like mine as soon as possible. I unfortunately wasted a year of my life experiencing this chronic pain.
This Experience Was One Of The Most Challenging Of My Life
Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results”. I spun my wheels for over a year. Truth be told, I was going insane before I got my surgery.
Your health affects every aspect of your life; to be injured is to be in poor health. Injuries will make everything in your life harder. We don’t need that; life’s already hard enough.
The Big Problem With Fitness Culture
Many people, especially guys, want to be as big and strong as physically possible. They’re constantly drip-fed images of bodybuilders on their Instagram feeds, which undoubtedly makes men feel inferior to “fitness influencers” regarding physique and strength.
What happens (or what happened to me)? I would compare myself to these guys and try to get as big and strong as possible (it’s not possible for a natural weightlifter to get as big and strong as these “fitness influencers” who take steroids).
This led me to ignore my health and, instead, to lift as much weight as possible.
I’d slam down 4000 calories daily when bulking and “go hard or go home” at the gym (I’m surprised I didn’t experience more injuries, especially when I first started going to the gym).
I’m among the lucky ones.
I hear shocking stories about gym culture on social media (predominantly YouTube). People are dying in the name of strength training.
Firstly, you have the bodybuilders on steroids who are so big their hearts literally can’t handle pumping the blood around their bodies, and then these guys prematurely die of heart attacks.
If you haven’t heard what happened to Justyn Vicky, he died doing heavy back squats ( warning: this video is deeply distressing). He was only 33 when he died. That’s no age, and the whole situation is deeply tragic.
It’s worth noting that Kristina Schmidt a 24-year-old personal trainer snapped her hip in half after doing heavy hip thrusts. She had to have surgery and, unfortunately, after surgery, got a bacterial infection, which was life-threatening.
Gabriel McKenna-Lieschke from Adelaide, Australia, was performing bicep curls with a 50kg weight and tore his bicep, resulting in him needing surgery, which then caused complications and his forearm required to be amputated.
Scott Murray, who developed an eating disorder around his fitness routine, took it so far that he eventually died of heart failure; Scott Was unfortunately only in his 20s when he passed away.
When Did Becoming Healthy Get So Unhealthy
The goal of strength training shouldn’t be to lift as much weight as possible; it should be to consistently keep your joints, bones, tendons and ligaments strong for the rest of your life.
In short, you need to become a lifter, which can only be achieved by consistently going to the gym. I recommend going around 3 times per week.
To become a lifter, you need to be consistent. You can’t become consistent if you’re injured. So, the one thing we need to avoid when strength training is injury.
How Do You Know When The Weights Are Too Heavy?
When you can’t perform a full range of motion for the exercise.
If you start using momentum when the weight gets heavy. You need to use your muscles, not momentum.
When your form breaks down, for example, your back rounding when deadlifting or squatting or your shoulders rolling forward in the bench press.
When you literally couldn’t have completed another rep with good form. Leave two reps in reserve (stop the set when you feel you could have done an extra two reps with perfect form) at the end of every set. Perform all reps flawlessly.
The Bottom Line
Please take what you can from my injury experience, warm up properly, don’t lift too heavy too soon, and always use the full range of motion. Your main goal in strength training (even more critical than getting stronger) is not to get injured. If you get hurt, your whole life will change for the worse. Life is too short to be in pain for a year like I was. Please listen to what I’m saying here. I would hate for you to go through a similar experience. Also, remove yourself from the toxicity of fitness culture if you can. I know removing myself from social media helped me. People are killing themselves in the name of “gains”. Health should always be the top priority. If anything you do compromises your health, you’re doing the wrong thing.
The first picture at the top of the article is me before going into theater for surgery in my hospital gown.
The second picture is a couple of days after surgery. As you can see, I’m wearing a plaster cast.
Over the past year, I’ve suffered from a chronic wrist injury from lifting weights. In this article, I want to use my experience as a springboard to ensure you know how to not get injured lifting weights.
This is my story.
On a cold autumnal morning in November 2023, I got out of bed, got dressed, hydrated, had my pre-workout meal, and drove to the gym to complete a pull day workout consisting of deadlifts, rows, weighted chin-ups and barbell curls.
The workout went fine until I started performing my work sets of weighted chin-ups.
The gym was busy, and I couldn’t use the regular pull-up bar because they were all occupied.
So, I had to use the monkey bars to perform the weighted chin-ups.
I was already warmed up from the previous exercises, so I went straight into the work sets. I had a belt tied to my waist with a chain on, and attached to the chain was a 15kg plate.
I was doing chin-ups with my body weight and 15kg attached, so the total weight lifted was around 95kg because I weighed around 80kg (80kg + 15kg = 95kg).
I grab the pull-up bar with both my hands and the 15kg weight plate attached and start repping out chin-ups; my goal is to hit 4-6 reps for three sets.
While performing the first several reps, I felt an uncomfortable pull in my wrist and stopped the exercise.
My wrist was painful, and it felt unstable, but it wasn’t excruciating ( maybe a 6/10 in regards to the severity of the pain).
After experiencing this, I rest and try again. It still doesn’t feel right, so I perform dumbbell curls. They didn’t feel right either.
I go home, shower, get dressed, start working, and get on with my day. A couple of days later, I tried to perform my leg workout, but gripping the bar for barbell squats didn’t feel right, and I realised there was a serious problem with my right wrist (to make things worse, it was my dominant wrist).
So, I gave myself a 2-week break from the gym.
After the 2 weeks were up, the pain was still there, but I tried to go back to lifting, thinking, “Maybe my wrist is weak after the injury and needs to be strengthened”, so I tried to train for a few weeks.
The pain was still there.
I then saw my general practitioner (GP) at the local doctor’s surgery centre, and he gave me a wrist splint to wear for a few weeks.
It didn’t help.
A few weeks later, the GP authorised an ultrasound for me on my wrist. When I had the ultrasound, the doctor couldn’t find a cause for my pain; he said, “It’s probably just mild tendonitis”.
I gave my wrist more time to heal, then saw a physiotherapist to help me with correctional exercises, hoping this would fix the problem.
Noting helps.
I wait several more months, then see an orthopaedic surgeon who requests an MRI scan of my wrist.
He finds no cause for my wrist pain on the MRI and tells me to start using my wrist as usual again.
I couldn’t deal with the pain any longer, so I asked him to refer me to a soft tissue wrist specialist.
I went to see the specialist, and he gave me a steroid injection in my wrist, hoping to reduce any inflammation in my wrist that might have been causing the pain.
It didn’t work.
The next option was wrist keyhole surgery to find a cause for my wrist pain (and hopefully fix my wrist) because the specialist said MRIs could only be 70% correct, meaning my diagnosis had probably gone undetected so far.
In December 2024, I was put under general anaesthetic and had my wrist surgery.
The surgeon found a Triangular fibrocartilage complex (tfcc) tear and repaired it the operation lasted around 2 hours.
As of writing this article, I’m almost 9 weeks post-op, and my wrist is improving.
How To Not Get Injured Lifting Weights – Don’t Get Injured In The First Place
Why did I develop the injury? It’s because of a few factors.
I was getting back into weighted chin-ups after a period of not doing them and added too much weight too quickly.
My weighted chin-up form could have been better. I was in a rush the day I got injured and was going through the motions.
It was a cold morning, and I should have warmed up more before performing the weighted chin-ups. I should have performed 2- 3 sets of 6 reps of bodyweight chin-ups before doing my work sets. This would have warmed up my wrist joints, reducing the likelihood of sustaining the injury.
What I’m Going To Do Moving Forward
I won’t do pull-ups or chin-ups anymore (definitely not weighted ones). Instead, I’ll use the lat pulldown exercise and focus on perfect form. I’ll use a full range of motion. The lat pulldown is as effective as the chin-up as it targets the same muscles as you do in the chin-up.
How To Not Get Injured Lifting Weights – 5 Steps For Injury Prevention
Warm up properly before completing any heavy sets.
Always use perfect form. Always use a full range of motion, and don’t use momentum. Your muscles are supposed to do the work (this is true for every exercise, even a bicep curl).
You know your body better than anyone. See a specialist if you face an injury like mine as soon as possible. I unfortunately wasted a year of my life experiencing this chronic pain.
This Experience Was One Of The Most Challenging Of My Life
Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results”. I spun my wheels for over a year. Truth be told, I was going insane before I got my surgery.
Your health affects every aspect of your life; to be injured is to be in poor health. Injuries will make everything in your life harder. We don’t need that; life’s already hard enough.
And that’s why I’m writing this article to ensure you know how to not get injured lifting weights.
The Big Problem With Fitness Culture
Many people, especially guys, want to be as big and strong as physically possible. They’re constantly drip-fed images of bodybuilders on their Instagram feeds, which undoubtedly makes men feel inferior to “fitness influencers” regarding physique and strength.
What happens (or what happened to me)? I would compare myself to these guys and try to get as big and strong as possible (it’s not possible for a natural weightlifter to get as big and strong as these “fitness influencers” who take steroids).
This led me to ignore my health and, instead, to lift as much weight as possible.
I’d slam down 4000 calories daily when bulking and “go hard or go home” at the gym (I’m surprised I didn’t experience more injuries, especially when I first started going to the gym).
I’m among the lucky ones.
I hear shocking stories about gym culture on social media (predominantly YouTube). People are dying in the name of strength training.
Firstly, you have the bodybuilders on steroids who are so big their hearts literally can’t handle pumping the blood around their bodies, and then these guys prematurely die of heart attacks.
If you haven’t heard what happened to Justyn Vicky, he died doing heavy back squats ( warning: this video is deeply distressing). He was only 33 when he died. That’s no age, and the whole situation is deeply tragic.
It’s worth noting that Kristina Schmidt a 24-year-old personal trainer snapped her hip in half after doing heavy hip thrusts. She had to have surgery and, unfortunately, after surgery, got a bacterial infection, which was life-threatening.
Gabriel McKenna-Lieschke from Adelaide, Australia, was performing bicep curls with a 50kg weight and tore his bicep, resulting in him needing surgery, which then caused complications and his forearm required to be amputated.
Scott Murray, who developed an eating disorder around his fitness routine, took it so far that he eventually died of heart failure; Scott Was unfortunately only in his 20s when he passed away.
When Did Becoming Healthy Get So Unhealthy
The goal of strength training shouldn’t be to lift as much weight as possible; it should be to consistently keep your joints, bones, tendons and ligaments strong for the rest of your life.
In short, you need to become a lifter, which can only be achieved by consistently going to the gym. I recommend going around 3 times per week.
To become a lifter, you need to be consistent. You can’t become consistent if you’re injured. So, the one thing we need to avoid when strength training is injury.
How Do You Know When The Weights Are Too Heavy?
When you can’t perform a full range of motion for the exercise.
If you start using momentum when the weight gets heavy. You need to use your muscles, not momentum.
When your form breaks down, for example, your back rounding when deadlifting or squatting or your shoulders rolling forward in the bench press.
When you literally couldn’t have completed another rep with good form. Leave two reps in reserve (stop the set when you feel you could have done an extra two reps with perfect form) at the end of every set. Perform all reps flawlessly.
The Bottom Line On How To Not Get Injured Lifting Weights
Please take what you can from my injury experience, warm up properly, don’t lift too heavy too soon, and always use the full range of motion. Your main goal in strength training (even more critical than getting stronger) is not to get injured. If you get hurt, your whole life will change for the worse. Life is too short to be in pain for a year like I was. Please listen to what I’m saying here. I would hate for you to go through a similar experience. Also, remove yourself from the toxicity of fitness culture if you can. I know removing myself from social media helped me. People are killing themselves in the name of “gains”. Health should always be the top priority. If anything you do compromises your health, you’re doing the wrong thing.
The first picture at the top of the article is me before going into theater for surgery in my hospital gown.
The second picture is a couple of days after surgery. As you can see, I’m wearing a plaster cast.
I hope this article helps you going forward and that you can learn from my experience on how to not get injured lifting weights.
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