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How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

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Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#71

Post by burnt-resistor »

c7b wrote: post #6

One thing I always found a bit of a puzzle: it's widely understood, and scientifically backed up afaik, that strength training is healthy and good for longevity. Yet, if you look at people whose everyday jobs look a lot like functional strength training, eg construction workers, my general impression is that their bodies (age 50+) are in worse condition than the average population (who's not in great shape already),…

Many blue collar professions tend wear out one or more essential body parts in some manner regardless of cardio or strength fitness. Maybe some are differently "easier" than others like HVAC or electrical, but they still take a toll on knees, necks, and backs that can render one incapable to perform the tasks. Some guys last longer than others but there's usually a decision point of retirement balancing enjoyment vs. additional income vs. retirement health.

My dad was a light duty mechanic with his own specialty shop until 1986. He blew out a cervical disc and exposed himself to a variety of carcinogenic chemicals, and that was the end of his career.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#72

Post by sjducb »

ekr wrote: post #51
sjducb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The confounding variable is probably wealth. Being rich is very important for longevity. The effect size for wealth is likely bigger than the effect size for strength training. So construction workers age badly because they are poor, despite all the strength training.

Not being rich per se, but probably stress. The body has no innate knowledge of how wealthy you are, outside of some information stored in the neocortex about financial details (which has little influence on the overall functioning and regulation of the organism as a whole). But it does keep track of a very important signal, and that is neuroception, or safety, absence of threats. And being wealthy, absence of source…

Your body does keep track of your place in the social hierarchy with hormones like Vasopressin, Oxytocin, Testosterone and Estrogen. Social hierarchies are biology not culture. You can tell it's biology because all social animals have social hierarchies.

However, this is a very complicated and poorly understood field. Current research struggles with a chicken and egg problem. Does high testosterone cause high status, or do high status men produce more testosterone? The answer seems to be both simultaneously.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/tre.372?msoc...

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#73

Post by rhplus »

kingstnap wrote: post #20
c7b wrote: post #6

One thing I always found a bit of a puzzle: it's widely understood, and scientifically backed up afaik, that strength training is healthy and good for longevity. Yet, if you look at people whose everyday jobs look a lot like functional strength training, eg construction workers, my general impression is that their bodies (age 50+) are in worse condition than the average population (who's not in great shape already),…

You can have confounding effects. Specifically note Cochrane’s Aphorism. "The correlation between any variable and smoking is likely to be higher than the correlation between that variable and the disease." If you aren't controlling for substance uses (which anyone who has walked by a construction site would know.) You are going to misread an effect. Smoking in particular is actually just that bad for you.

Nutrition too. Not to paint everyone in the construction industry with the same brush, but there’s often a lot of cheap, high calorie, fast food and sugary drinks on site and in work trucks. This is manageable for younger workers, but by a certain age, the job responsibilities become less physically demanding, the metabolism slows down, and the eating habits remain.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#74

Post by elijaht »

bob1029 wrote: post #24

Carrying things on your head/shoulders is surprisingly efficient. Many people can unrack a barbell with double their body weight and just stand there for a bit without having done any strength training at all. The trouble is getting the load into that convenient orientation. Taking something from the ground and putting it over your own head is where all the bad stuff happens. Once it's up there it's not as big a deal…

Agree it’s efficient, don’t agree that an untrained person could unbrace double bodyweight.

I weigh 90kg and can squat ~190kg. Having that much on my back feels HEAVY. I think if you haven’t built up to it before you will not be able to do that

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#75

Post by alistairSH »

olalonde wrote: post #18

This reminds me of a trip to Guilin when I was an athletic 22-year-old. We'd booked a hotel on top of a mountain that was only reachable by hiking up a trail. At the trailhead, a five-foot-tall grandma offered to carry my luggage to the top. I thought it was funny — and a bit insulting — so I refused. About a quarter of the way up, I gave up and let her take it. She carried it all the way up without breaking a sweat.…

Related, it's wild what the porters on the Inca Trail carry. Both the weight and the pace they move. We'd get up and start hiking after breakfast, the porters pack up camp, start hiking 30-60 min after us, fly-by us mid-morning, and have a cooked lunch ready by the time we get to the lunch spot. Repeat again for dinner/night. The trail itself isn't technically challenging, just lots of elevation gain/loss each day and at a high enough altitude to make unacclimatized people feel pretty bad.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#76

Post by alistairSH »

dragonelite wrote: post #68
acchow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get that there can be too much of a good thing etc Similarly, people that run 45 minutes a day are in great shape. But if you run a half marathon every day, you will age quickly You’re exactly right, too much of a good thing. And for hard strength training, you can hit that tipping point very quickly. Probably within an hour a day if you’re going hard

For strength you can do a workout within like 25~35min that is taking it slow like browsing socials during pauses. Talking about programs like rippetoe, 5x5, 531 etc. Unless you have elite genetics or are on juice you don't really need to go beyond those programs.

This. I go beyond those programs (currently weight training 4/week with an upper/lower split) and it's still ~4 hours/week inclusive of some stretching at the end of each workout.

Vs ~40 hours/week of whatever a tradesman does.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#77

Post by malfist »

sjducb wrote: post #72
ekr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being rich per se, but probably stress. The body has no innate knowledge of how wealthy you are, outside of some information stored in the neocortex about financial details (which has little influence on the overall functioning and regulation of the organism as a whole). But it does keep track of a very important signal, and that is neuroception, or safety, absence of threats. And being wealthy, absence of source…

Your body does keep track of your place in the social hierarchy with hormones like Vasopressin, Oxytocin, Testosterone and Estrogen. Social hierarchies are biology not culture. You can tell it's biology because all social animals have social hierarchies. However, this is a very complicated and poorly understood field. Current research struggles with a chicken and egg problem. Does high testosterone cause high status,…

Your scientific study does not support your claim (body keeps track of social status) and the other is a men's health magazine article. Hardly the cutting edge of science

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#78

Post by d_runs_far »

c7b wrote: post #6

One thing I always found a bit of a puzzle: it's widely understood, and scientifically backed up afaik, that strength training is healthy and good for longevity. Yet, if you look at people whose everyday jobs look a lot like functional strength training, eg construction workers, my general impression is that their bodies (age 50+) are in worse condition than the average population (who's not in great shape already),…

Although it has been a couple decades since I've worked on construction sites, the underlying factor is that of the culture - this was northern Alberta - you had to be 'tough' and that meant eating steak, drinking hard and ignoring basic safety protocols like dust protection masks, eye guards, etc.

I was in my early 20's and worked with guys only a few years older than me that were already bordering on obese. The physical nature was typically repetitive and while sometimes requiring raw strength, had very little cardio/endurance aspects.

Of course there were exceptions, like the wiry 'old guy' who could take two bundles of shingles up a ladder over his shoulder and slam three beers for lunch.

They were being paid crazy amounts (for their age and the rest of their peers) and it was spent on rye and weed.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#79

Post by shipman05 »

c7b wrote: post #6

One thing I always found a bit of a puzzle: it's widely understood, and scientifically backed up afaik, that strength training is healthy and good for longevity. Yet, if you look at people whose everyday jobs look a lot like functional strength training, eg construction workers, my general impression is that their bodies (age 50+) are in worse condition than the average population (who's not in great shape already),…

I worked construction during the summers in college. There's quite a bit of sedentary work on a job site. In my experience, the guys who worked on their feet and did hours of physical labor were in pretty good shape. They burned a lot of calories and consumed a lot of calories: fast food, sweet tea, gatorade, beer at night. The more senior folks often ran heavy equipment like track hoes and bulldozers. Those guys were seated all day long, but their eating and drinking habits didn't change. Every one of the machine operators I worked with was overweight and had various health problems. Heavy smoking and drinking surely didn't help.

Re: How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)

#80

Post by jermaustin1 »

olalonde wrote: post #18

This reminds me of a trip to Guilin when I was an athletic 22-year-old. We'd booked a hotel on top of a mountain that was only reachable by hiking up a trail. At the trailhead, a five-foot-tall grandma offered to carry my luggage to the top. I thought it was funny — and a bit insulting — so I refused. About a quarter of the way up, I gave up and let her take it. She carried it all the way up without breaking a sweat.…

A couple years ago, I did a 90 mile hike in Scotland, which was mostly flat. My pack weighed just at 20-25lb (light but not ultralight - a lot of water weight). The trail was MOSTLY flat, with a couple steep trails to bypass forestry work, and crest over some steep hill.

I'm a large man, at the time I was pushing 250lb on a 5'8" frame, but I found my flat land endurance was basically unlimited at walking pace. My uphill endurance was limited so short bursts, and I had to regularly stop for a breather.

Once on flat ground, again, 20+ miles a day no issues.

After the detours, and some one-off side trails to see something, and walking from the trail to a town for food and/or sleep, my entire trek was 125mi over 5 days. And when I got home, I weighed 255lb. I gained 5lb while hiking somehow.

All that to say, uphill endurance is no joke, and it is hard to train, even maxed on a treadmill if you live on flat ground. Stair climbing (or machine) is the only thing I can think of.

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