Comments on: Gym Strength vs Real Life Stength

By: Mitchel Yorks

Mitchel Yorks — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:57:09 +0000

I am a very small guy about 5′6″, 135 pounds at about 6-7% bodyfat. People always underestimate how strong I am because I am not this huge meathead. I performed physical labor at my job and could outwork most of the guys twice my size. But my one co worker lives on a farm and he is huge 6′1″ close 300 pounds and looks fat. I was over at his place the one day and they had a bull get loose. It charged him and he punched it in the forehead and dropped it. And he never lifted a weight in his life. Farm boys are people you don’t want to mess with.

By: sid

sid — Sun, 30 May 2010 12:11:21 +0000

my grandfather once lifted a buffalo on his shoulder, the buffalo got accidently stuck between two iron poles about 5 ft in height ,, studded to the ground, my grandpa went under the buffalo , resting its lower belly-abdomen on his shoulder and then he stood up and pushed the buffalo over the pole,,, i was bedazzled to see him do this,, it was a full mature buffalow.

By: michael jones

michael jones — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:02:00 +0000

my nephew calls my strength old wise mans strongarm,i just call it brute strengh,its seems tha even when i lose alot of wieght after being a slacker i still have the same force as when i was 135kg`s of rippling mass or 63 kilo skinny dude i guess it comes done to getting it,& even though your not at the peak you or me i should say,you can summon the animal your keeping inside

By: Danelle

Danelle — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:32:39 +0000

I laughed when I read the title. OLD MAN strength. I knew precisely what you meant. My dad died 7 years ago but the guy was like a locomotive, you know?
I never ever knew anyone who could just work and work and work like he could. The man pushed himself past the limits of normal human physical endurance on a regular basis. Dude used to cut down trees, then use an AXE to chop ‘em up. Haul rocks, loads of dirt, shingles up and down roof tops, huge garbage cans full of wet grass. Mow the grass with a push mower, NOT self-propelled. He always flirted with 15 extra pounds. But he died a happy man. A great day was raking and burning leaves and watching Perry Mason re-runs. And all the guys said “amen, bro”.

By: mark

mark — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:11:07 +0000

My neighbor is a 84 year old farmer. I would NOT mess with him. I have seen him move wood and keep his livestock in line. All day strong, real world strong. BTW, I just made my first atlas stone and get to open it this easter morning!

By: Donnie Hunt

Donnie Hunt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:20:13 +0000

To anybody who reads the stuff I posted here. I have no business giving anybody advice about exercise, strength/muscle building. Yes I have lifted and done some physical labor. Figure out what works for you and be careful.

By: Donnie Hunt

Donnie Hunt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:32:18 +0000

I thought I would go into more detail regarding my own post. I think you you should enjoy physical activity. Personally I like resistance training and certain kinds of physical labor. When I lift weights I don’t count reps or sets. I do kinda keep a mental list of how much weight I use on each exercise. I guess my reasoning is that in everyday life you don’t count how long you shovel snow or how many times you load the shovel. I feel that its better to do exercsies that allow you body to move freely instead of machines that keep you in a fixed plane of movement. When you look at how you lift something in everyday life you don’t intentionally force your body to lift in awkward plane of movement. I feel that dumbells, kettleballs and free moving pulleys are best. Barbells are definately great tools I just feel the added free range of dumbells and pulleys is better to how your body moves. As far as how fast I lift something it kinda depends on the exercise or object i’m lifting. I don’t see any reason for lifting something fast for the sake of lifting fast. If you have to catch a fast moving weight at the end of an exercise a heavy object you body is taking the brunt of the impact. Probably not a good thing. Anyway i’m no fitness expert or a hardcore physical laborer. I have lifted weights off and on since i was like 8. I’ve done my share of physical labor. This is just my 2 cents.

By: Donnie Hunt

Donnie Hunt — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:00:28 +0000

From my own experience this type of useful, functional strength makes a great deal more sense. The more experience I have with lifting this seems to make more and more sense. Also what good is being strong if you can’t use it. Some training programs advocate such long rests (several days) between workouts. This whole type III fiber thing you’re talking about seems to go along with the level of development I had back in high school. I’m not saying this will work for everyone and it may have been due to my age also. But during a period of about a year I worked out very frequently. I felt great. I got more muscle and alot stronger. I didn’t really follow a set routine. I worked out with free weights and machines. Sometimes worked out twice a day. Seemed like that such a high frequency made my body adapt to a higher level. I kinda got away from all this when I started reading certain magazines and books about training. I thought that I should be using alot less frequency and volume according to some writers/trainers. I also got kinda hung up on having to have access to certain equipment. I gradually lost that level of development. Not that I didn’t learn anything from the reading I did. I try to learn from everything I do. My point I guess is that from my own experience the body seems to have great adaptive capability. Listen to what others have to say but don’t be afraid to think outside the box with training/getting stronger or any aspect of life.

By: Rjay

Rjay — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:03:05 +0000

Man i know what you mean when you say real world strength. My granpa is 66 and hasn’t weight trained since he was a teen and he is still the strongest dude I know. He has some of the biggest and stongest hands I’ve every seen.

By: jeff

jeff — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:12:22 +0000

I was lifting since the age of 13. I remeber many times trying to beat my granfather or his bigger brother in armwrestling. Never really beat them , my grandfather once i think..these men were from the old country, the hill of Italy. Chefs by trade. Old school chefs. Leg of lamb butchering guys. lol. My grandfather was about 5′7 175 around, but a hard worker. Old country strong.And My love of the weights, and those old Italian stories he and my uncle would tell in the basement to me as they sipped demi tes with sambucca would inspire me to lifte harder , heavier, and also to get jbs that were physical labor. I remeber at my old church we were breaking a sidewalk up, and throwing it into a backhoe, and i was in my glory, loving every big chunck of broken sidewalk…pretending i was in the worlds strongest man contest. We had in the churches backyard , a groundcompacter, this thing weighed a lot, for my own excitement i proceeded to pick it up , my friend,an older man, was like..wathc out jeff u dont hurt yourslef.. i picked this thing up and began to walk with it, i think i was 17…even my present day job in a wharehouse, draggin pallets 7 or 8 feet high around with non electric jacks, cause i think its good practice for the worlds strongest man,(my dream)..occosionally i grab a 120 pound drum of grease and press it over head, just to see if i can, and i can..lol..try draggin 54 batteries on a skid,non electric hand jack.. ur heart wants to explode, ur legs fill up with acid. IF i had a heavy deadlift day i might use the electric jack the next day just to save myself from pain, lol. but the gym, and a manual labor, i think is a good mix..that power bodybuilder mike the iron bull pacchelia, i think thats his name, always recomends manual labor for those who are power atheletes,im thinking of getting molds for atlas stones…there was a few years where i stopped lifting, and worked with mexicans in a resturaunt, and talk about strenght from work alone, these guys were smaleer than me, but gave me a run for my money when we arm wrestled and mercy, got beat by this one guy in arm wrestling, strong as hell,for a guy who probably didnt work out, but just did hard labor for years..