Those who break themselves down physically with the weights are doing something wrong.
You could be like everyone else racked with joint pain, back pain, while living a mostly sedentary life, or you could make the choice to prioritize squatting and/or deadlifting.
Depending on your build, and your leverages, one or the other (if both you’re a lucky lucky bastard) will be the magical elixir of “I feel phenomenal”.
Whichever of the two this is for you (or again if both you lucky lucky bastard) you’re physically well served doing this for some volume with moderate loads as often as you can do so.
Me? I’m built to squat. Physically I’m better when I squat frequently, as long as I don’t push it too heavy too fast which my elbows don’t like.
Remember this?
Squats do (for me) strengthen the knee, the joint itself!
Likewise if you have monkey arms down to your knees, and a waist practically at your neck the deadlift should do the same for you.
One or the other (or both God smiled upon you in parental coupling) just won’t dip into your recovery ability, and when done right will leave you feeling like the bar left you wearing a suit of armor.
Whenever I psychologically and logistically pull off daily squatting I feel great physically, and have great stuff happen for the rest of my bodies ability.
For me frequent squatting is the most often culprit of my hitting PRs in…everything.
(I actually feel better squatting deep with a barbell on my shoulders than freehand bodyweight squatting as well fwiw.)
The other night I was writing about 50 rep squats and it hit me : I can snatch into light high rep squats whenever I want to. I immediately grabbed the bar, a pair of 25s, and hit a set of 30 breathing squats in the dark.
All of this hit me mid set.
Deadlifts leave me more stiff as I have t-rex leverages. Squatting? J, son of T-Rex, got this.
Applying this seriously ups your ability to do work. You’ve gotta try it for a while, just figure out which lift (even variation of either) fits you for this, and then go do it as often as you can logistically do so. It’ll be of great use to you.
Expect to get leaner, stronger over your entire body, have far more ability to do physical work, and in general be more awesome.
You’re welcome.
P&T 2019