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As you can see from my avatar pic I don't look too bad, but for various reasons I haven't been able to do a lot of heavy leg work, including DL's, since my 20's. (I'm 52.) The various reasons include 25 years of martial arts where the Muay Thai turning leg kicks have done some serious wear and tear damage to my knees. IF you can DL then that is an amazing exercise, provided that you do them with PERFECT form. Like any other heavy lift you need to give your body RESPECT when you do them and stay focused. It's not a forgiving exercise if you screw around. The risk is hurting your back or damaging your knees. As for myself, I'm building up very slowly on leg presses again. I'm like one year into this, and only now starting to lift mildly heavy weight. I don't think I'll ever return to doing DL's. My focus is to just build some muscle mass in my gluts and quads. My general advice would be not to over think this. Any compound movement is going to give you good results. Let's face it, you must have noticed all those clowns at the gym doing silly exercises but they somehow still look good. Keep it simple, stick to any sort of compound movement. If you introduce a new exercise, go lighter on it than you want to at first at least for 2 weeks, as it will put different stresses on your body. If you tend to lift heavy, switching exercises for the first time multiplies the injury risk. Make sure you know exactly how to do that exercise with PERFECT form before you start doing it. Good luck.