[HN Gopher] How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)
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How to carry more than your own bodyweight (2025)
Author : 1659447091
Score : 92 points
Date : 2026-02-03 02:55 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| helterskelter wrote:
| I once carried a log that weighed about double my body weight and
| carried it 100ft. My back has never been the same, I really don't
| recommend it unless you know what you're doing.
| sundvor wrote:
| The idea discussed in the article was one of progressive
| overload; slowly make your body adapt to an ever increasing
| workload. Don't go straight for the 200kg deadlift when you are
| new to the gym, in other words.
| downboots wrote:
| I concur. A lapse in training and one careless fess-up is all
| that's needed for a lifetime injury.
| gadders wrote:
| I managed to carry my bodyweight in each hand for a strength
| event (100kg). I guess the total distance was 20m? I was OK
| afterwards, and I'm no freak of strength.
| a_better_world wrote:
| if you have the grip strength to hold that, you have solid
| core strength already.
|
| And you are carrying in your hands, not balanced on your
| head-- which totally alters the stress on the spine.
|
| So yes, cograts on your feat, that is a pretty cool level to
| hit, but it doesn't counter the basic advice of "grow into
| it" instead of "max from day one"
|
| Also, you did this "once". If the accident rate is 1:100,
| doing it once without getting hurt is not very surprising.
| gadders wrote:
| Yes, I trained for it and did it maybe a couple of times in
| training and then at the event. If you want to do XXX kg
| every day, you need to make your max XXX+[20%+?].
| missingdays wrote:
| No, I don't think I will
| c7b wrote:
| 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), and far worse than
| people with sedentary jobs who do fitness training.
|
| I get that there can be too much of a good thing etc, but I still
| find it curious. If it's generally said to be good for you,
| shouldn't the effects be a bit more robust than that?
| ookblah wrote:
| imo they don't get a chance to recover. i don't think you can
| compare a whole day of back breaking work where you have to
| push thru any minor issues vs like a 1-2 hr workout session
| every day at your discretion.
| q-base wrote:
| There is use and there is overuse. What you are also seeing is
| lifestyle and socioeconomic influences. Construction workers
| are not necessarily in the highest income bracket, may not have
| the same access to healthcare or have the mental, physical or
| economical bandwidth to take extra good care of their body.
| chrystalkey wrote:
| Well the answer here is: other factors. Safe, supervised
| strength training is great, but construction workers do not
| have that luxury, but instead heavy stuff to carry in
| (unhealthy)positions dictated by the task itself rather than
| your training regimen.
|
| Then there are toxic chemicals on site they are exposed to,
| which attack lung, skin, bones, muscles. Then there is dust
| everywhere all the time, wood dust, stone dust, plastic
| particles, metal particles. All not great for your lungs, skin
| an eyes. So the strength training alone would be great, and
| many construction workers do have a lot of muscle mass, but the
| rest ist just poisoned.
| chistev wrote:
| > 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 are in worse condition
| than the average population (who's not in great shape already),
| and far worse than people with sedentary jobs who do fitness
| training.
|
| Really? That's not my observation.
| dijit wrote:
| I have the same observation, and I've often been curious
| about it.
|
| I think truthfully, if we do anything for too long our bodies
| overoptimise for the task and we lose the benefits to fitness
| and other health issues also creep in.
|
| Young construction workers are often extremely strong and
| fit, but nearly all the 40+ ones I know have a huge gut and
| sound like wheezing ICE engines.
|
| There are a handful of exceptions of course, but as far as it
| goes the general rule is this.
|
| It could also be that factors surrounding the culture of
| construction workers (lots of alcohol to wind down) are huge
| contributing factors in of themselves.
|
| Too many variables.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > It could also be that factors surrounding the culture of
| construction workers (lots of alcohol to wind down) are
| huge contributing factors in of themselves.
|
| Terrible food, too. I'm not in construction but I do have
| to tour worksites for my job somewhat regularly, and pretty
| much everybody is eating some combination of greasy kebabs
| and mcdonald's.
|
| I like me a juicy kebab as much as the next guy, but eating
| just that for days on end can't be good for you.
|
| Now they're certainly more active than a keyboard warrior
| like yours truly, but there seems to be a consensus around
| not being able to outrun / out-train a bad diet.
| jamiecurle wrote:
| I wasn't in construction but I did spend three years working
| as an arborist / forester between 2022 and 2025 whilst taking
| a little break from tech after a long 20-year stint. I've
| been in good shape since I was 30 with strength training,
| cardio and even a little stint as a masters level competitive
| olympic weightlifter. A long way of saying, I know my body
| fairly well.
|
| Two years into climbing trees in domestic settings and hand
| cutting in timber plantations, even three days a week and my
| body was hammered. Now maybe that's because I was in the
| 46-50 year old range, but it was clear it wasn't a viable
| long-term strategy for me. Speaking about the people I now
| know in that industry, it's commonplace for "climbers" to be
| done by their mid-thirties. Shoulders all mashed up from
| climbing and carrying heavy loads. It's not pretty.
|
| On the positive side and injuries notwithstanding (I did get
| a shoulder issue just like everyone else) my bodyweight
| dropped 10kg and I did look (and feel) much nimbler. The core
| of the problem in this kind of work is that when the rubber
| hits the road "getting the job done" always comes before
| "correct techniques for doing X". And there's no liability
| claim to be had as at the start of each job you sign the risk
| assessment which states that you will get it done in a
| health-and-safety-compliant way. If you don't sign, you're
| not on the crew the next day and you're walking home from
| site. This is basically how it is in the UK for these kinds
| of jobs where salaries are between PS24-34K annually.
| 7bit wrote:
| You age much faster when older. Don't read too much into it
| a_better_world wrote:
| "when AI took my job I bought a chain saw"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/opinion/artificial-
| intell...
|
| Sorry, don't have an archiv link.
| pengaru wrote:
| My father worked concrete construction and stayed relatively
| fit from all the activity, but his skin was trashed from all
| the UV and he smoked into his 50s. I've never met a person with
| more wrecked hands since. It was like shaking hands with 40grit
| paper.
|
| Construction workers are not known for taking care of
| themselves, and it's a notoriously machismo culture. Sun
| screen? ok dandy.
| CalRobert wrote:
| After going bald I appreciated just how damn practical the
| sombrero is. Now I wear a wide brimmed hat (Tilly or Panama
| hat or big straw farmers hat or, if I'm feeling flamboyant, a
| sombrero) almost any time I'm outside. Goofy maybe, but I
| think my skin is better for it.
|
| I really wish hats were normalised again.
| altmanaltman wrote:
| Because their jobs are not "functional strength training" at
| all and you're discounting all the negatives that come from
| that kind of work. It's borderline insulting to their jobs to
| make that comparison, to be frank.
| kingstnap wrote:
| 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.
| sjducb wrote:
| 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.
| rmunn wrote:
| Wealth _per se_ has nothing to do with longevity, as a
| minute 's thought will make plain. What wealth does do is
| enable certain things that help with longevity, such as
| better medical care. If you're using wealth as a measure,
| you need to realize that it's only a proxy, and you'll get
| better data by looking at the actual behaviors that it's a
| proxy for.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > such as better medical care
|
| Better food, comes first
| rmunn wrote:
| Thing is, better food is available to the poor as well,
| you just have to be willing to put in the work for it.
| Buy vegetables and make salads instead of spending the
| same amount of money at McDonald's, for example. The
| price of fresh vegetables at Walmart has never been out
| of reach even for someone working 40 hours for minimum
| wage. Housing might be ridiculously expensive, and
| medical care if you don't have insurance? Good luck. But
| basic vegetables? Rice and beans? (Which make for a
| complete set of amino acids, BTW: there's a reason rice
| and beans is such a popular dish in Central America).
| Those have stayed affordable even when the price of other
| things has gone up.
|
| Now, I'll grant that there are plenty of poor people who
| are drinking soda and eating junk food. Not going to deny
| that. But I have always been able to go to Walmart and
| buy lettuce and tomatoes for my salads, and I've never
| seen the price of those basics skyrocket like the price
| of eggs (at one point) or meat have. So the poor people
| who are drinking soda instead of water, and eating chips
| instead of salads? They're choosing those foods, not
| being forced into them by poverty.
|
| There are plenty of areas where rich people have a big
| advantage over poor people in terms of access to things
| that provide longevity. But food, at least in America
| (the only country whose food prices I'm familiar enough
| with to talk intelligently about), just isn't one of
| them.
|
| Now, you could argue that poor people didn't grow up with
| parents who taught them how to cook healthy food on a
| tight budget. Yes, that's true for many (not all) of the
| poor (again, at least in America, I don't know enough
| about other countries here). But there, it's not _being
| poor_ that 's keeping them from eating healthy, it's _not
| being taught_. Money isn 't the limiting factor there.
| etiam wrote:
| Basically a good point. Merely never ending up in
| situations where it's a struggle to make ends meet has a
| huge impact on stress though. You often don't even have
| to use the wealth in order to benefit with respect to
| stress.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| Such a strange comment. Wealth has nothing to do with
| longevity and yet here's all the ways how wealth CAUSES
| longevity.
| duskdozer wrote:
| >Wealth _per se_
|
| For example, if you have $10m but never go to the doctor,
| you won't benefit from the medical care discrepancy
| between wealthy and poor
| Scarblac wrote:
| But you won't have poverty related stress.
| goodmythical wrote:
| But you will have "hey man lend me 10000 my moms dying"
| stress
| Bender wrote:
| Just my experience but I have never found the medical
| industry useful for health. I have found they mostly
| tinker with feedback loops to give the illusion of
| health.
|
| Eating right, exercise, supplementation of the things I
| am missing from my diet, clean air, avoiding chronic
| stressful situations and people are the only things I
| have found to benefit me. But that's just my own
| anecdotal experience. (n=1)
| ekr wrote:
| 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 sources of stress, or ability to avoid them, brings
| about that state of feeling secure, safe, which affects
| every cell of the body and leads to a good regulation of
| the whole organism.
| sjducb wrote:
| 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/S03
| 064...
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/tre.372?m
| soc...
| malfist wrote:
| 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
| rhplus wrote:
| 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.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Substance abuse and rest.
|
| If you lift weights Monday and Friday, you give your body time
| to recover and get stronger.
|
| People whose job is to lift weight, they don't lift things
| heavy enough and they don't give their body time to recover.
| They work everyday, whatever if their quads are hurting or not.
| It has very little benefits and only destroy the joints.
| globular-toast wrote:
| This is probably about extremes being bad. Having an extremely
| sedentary lifestyle is bad, but also having an extremely
| strenuous one is bad too.
|
| I used to lift weights regularly. I'd go to the gym three times
| a week for an hour or two at a time. I'm pretty strong
| naturally and thought my training was going quite well being
| able to bench 1.5x my bodyweight, squat and deadlift more than
| 2x etc.
|
| Then I paid some guys to move house for me. Actually, my job
| paid, I have still yet to pay for this service myself. They
| were lifting whole chests of drawers without even emptying
| them. It was crazy. I've since done plenty of this work myself
| (moved house three times by myself), but I do take the drawers
| out etc. Basically I work more intelligently and take more
| time.
|
| What the moving guys were doing is harder, less safe, and they
| are doing this day in, day out. Add to that poor diets (both
| seemed to be fuelled on crisps, Coke and fags) and the
| differences become more clear.
|
| So, like with anything, don't be too extreme. Too much heavy
| lifting will be just as bad for you as too little.
| gadders wrote:
| I think for a lot of manual labour, the tasks are repetitive
| and so they experience greater wear and tear.
|
| TBH, a lot of pro-athletes have wear and tear injuries after
| they retire as well.
| scott_w wrote:
| And, as others point out for manual workers, they don't fully
| recover. As it's their job, many professional athletes will
| perform while partially injured and exacerbate it. And it's
| not even professionals! One of the older men in my tri club
| has a permanent Achilles injury now in his 60s because of an
| injury sustained when he was younger. The doctor told him to
| rest for a month to let it properly heal. That weekend he was
| running a sub-30 10k at the local league competition!
| emptyfile wrote:
| Sounds like you never properly understood what "back-breaking
| work" really means.
|
| Try doing bending down and picking heavy stuff up, for 8 hours
| a day, every working day.
| lawn wrote:
| Strength training demands proper rest. If you do too much
| training with too little rest you break down instead if
| building up.
|
| It's not weird. Medicin works the same way: too much will be
| very bad for you.
| acchow wrote:
| > 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
| dragonelite wrote:
| 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.
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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.
| stuffn wrote:
| Unless of course you're training practical, useful
| strength. Which requires intense bursts of weight training,
| and balance between tempo runs, rucks with 35-40% of body
| weight, and slow run/jogs. Weightlifting is a small part of
| a larger picture of strength and being able to put it to
| use. Cardio is the single most important thing you can
| train because without a gas tank you're just a fat, slow,
| strong slob.
|
| You don't need to be elite nor on juice to do this. All you
| need is a purpose. I do this all the time, am over 35, and
| not on juice. My fitness is great but no where near elite.
|
| Rippetoe is an obnoxious jackass and you can venture to his
| forums (cult) to see it. He's great at making fat, out of
| shape, strongmen. He's not great at producing a fighter,
| tradesman, or operator. When you want to know what works
| look to the people actually using their fitness not morons
| like him who proselytize and look like the hardest thing
| they do all day is eat a pack of bon Bons.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Rippetoe gives good advice on lifting form and
| programming especially for novices but I'd look wider for
| diet and nutrition advice.
| dragonelite wrote:
| Strength on itself is already functional and useful. I
| kind of agree with you, its why i have been moving away
| from the strongmen stuff, more into kettlebells,
| calisthenics and walking during lunch and/or post dinner.
| erfgh wrote:
| Unless you get all your information from movies construction
| work does not train strength that much.
| Tom1380 wrote:
| I think it's because while on the job you cut corners and
| everything. You don't, and often can't, use proper technique.
| In the gym, barbells are perfectly symmetric and balanced. On
| the job, you might carry something that forces you into a
| horrible posture. That can't be good for you
| duskdozer wrote:
| There's often a machismo culture in jobs like that, in which
| people neglect things like PPE or safety procedures. Or of
| course, abusive employer-employee conditions in which workers
| are exposed to hazards without their knowledge or ability to
| mitigate it. Obviously, not everyone participates, but it's
| widespread enough I think it could explain this somewhat.
| lazide wrote:
| Construction workers don't get rest days.
|
| Every one I know described the first two weeks as complete
| hell, until their bodies just stopped complaining.
|
| But it still takes it's toll long term.
| Qem wrote:
| > 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...
|
| When it's a work, you're expected to show up and do it
| consistently every day. So you can't afford alternate days to
| get adequate rest and recovery time. Your body is gradually
| wasted away by the job. When it's more of a leisure activity,
| you can afford just not to do it and rest, when you don't feel
| well, so the combination of workouts and recovery time can be
| net-positive, health-wise.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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.
| d_runs_far wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| They weren't obese from the steak. It's the beer and simple
| carbs.
| shipman05 wrote:
| 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.
| sharadov wrote:
| It depends - construction workers in the US especially look
| like shit, given the crap that they eat - fast food, sodas
| and then beers after the job.
|
| Go look at construction workers elsewhere, especially Asia,
| they're ripped. Because the food they eat is most likely home
| cooked and not the fast food garbage we get here. Even the
| food at kiosks is pretty good, since it's freshly cooked.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Look at it this way. Construction workers aren't strength
| training they are wearing themselves out via hard work that
| requires strength. Not the same thing.
| soanvig wrote:
| Reminds me of slovakian mountain carriers
| https://regiontatry.sk/en/mountain-load-bearers/
| wazoox wrote:
| This is awesome, now I really want to try it and be rewarded
| with a mug of warm tea :D
| bwv848 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMxk-_kezxw
| Markoff wrote:
| hopefully in both Slovakia and Vietnam these will be replaced
| by cargo drones, after all Vietnamese farmers are already using
| them extensively, I saw great use of them in videos of saving
| people during the floods
| kakacik wrote:
| Nah thats also part of historical tradition (in Slovakia).
| Folks doing that could earn way more working regular jobs
| down in city (even say Poprad, closest one). Its their
| passion, hobby, and there is a lot of respect in community
| for them. Even normal hikers can take some smaller load up,
| its encouraged and appreciated. It doesn't have to be 2 full
| 50l alluminium barrels of beer or similar 120-150kg loads.
|
| In alps for example all this is done by choppers these days,
| a tradition lost.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm sure some application will be found for cargo drones, but
| they're limited in range, flight time, weather conditions,
| etc compared to people carrying stuff.
| lstolcman wrote:
| The slovak version of an article contains different photos, and
| a video [0].
|
| Also, check out the interview with nosic from poland [1] - he
| mentioned working there 18 years. Surely, surviving this long
| means that certain techniques are needed ;) When asked about
| back pain: "My back hurts when I sit at the computer"
|
| [0]: https://regiontatry.sk/moje-tatry/tatranski-nosici-
| svetovy-u...
|
| [1]: https://magazynnaszczycie.pl/artykul/chleb-uratowal-mi-
| zycie...
| zkmon wrote:
| This is very common in Indian villages too. As small kids we used
| to carry 30-40 kgs of green grass bundles on our heads in the
| mornings. Girls definitely carried more than their body weight.
| People carried a stack of pots on their heads with full of water.
| Carrying two equal weights hung from the two ends of a bamboo bar
| (kaavidi) on your shoulder is extremely common. There was even a
| folk story of a boy who carried his two parents on a kaavidi
| wherever he went.
|
| But none of that farm work was seen as something special. It's
| just a routine thing. Media and academic research makes things
| look special and interesting. Samething goes for romanticism,
| mystery, fiction as well.
| balamatom wrote:
| >kaavidi
|
| This is an interesting word. Halfway across the Alpo-Himalayan
| backbone the word for this tool is "kobilitsa", cognate to
| "kobila" (female horse) and I always figured it was a metaphor
| for the arched form of the bar (and probably referring to how
| women were stuck with the task of fetching water with it).
|
| But now it seems the word "kaavidi" has reached our ancestral
| lifestyle all the way from the Indian lands! And the
| transformation it underwent was more due to how people
| "normalize" foreign words; same linguistic churn that gives us
| backronyms and false etymologies (see also "eggcorn"). Whoa
|
| I presume linguists have already studied the naming of
| household implements when deriving Proto-Indo-European. I've
| never encountered much literature on the subject, nonetheless I
| find the subject rather fascinating.
| olalonde wrote:
| 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. It was more a
| feat of endurance than pure strength, but still incredibly
| impressive.
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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.
| MikeNotThePope wrote:
| I was hiking in Nepal a couple years ago. I regularly saw
| porters carrying 85kg (187 lbs) of wood on there backs up the
| mountain trails (pic I took: https://imgur.com/a/ahJhoi9). I
| asked my Nepali guide how much he can carry, and he said "I
| can carry you!" I'm 195cm (6'5"), and weighed about 120kg
| (264 lbs) at the time, and this guy was maybe half my size. I
| told him to prove it, so he asked me to get on his back,
| which I did, and then he picked me up and started running.
| Crazy strong.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| 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.
| epakai wrote:
| Altitude can be a huge limiting factor. I biked from Texas to
| Oregon, and the first days in the Rockies were brutal. It
| seemed I could barely travel 50 feet up hill without taking a
| break. I even considered turning around because it just felt
| impossible.
| bwv848 wrote:
| Here's how to actually train for it.
|
| https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/vertical-beast-mo...
| kakacik wrote:
| Its not even something hard to come up with if you are active,
| understand you body and generally how workouts work on you.
|
| I've trained in similar fashion for my trip to Aconcagua or
| Nepal, and never researched for that nor discussed with
| anybody. You carry big backpacks up there a lot, or smaller
| backpacks for 10-12h each day, every day in places where lack
| of oxygen makes you lose breath in 5-10 steps easily when
| walking uphill. It figures that when training for strength-
| endurance there needs to be a lot of repetitions with some
| added weight.
|
| I just took some weights into backpack at building I was living
| back then, hiked those 8 floors on stairs, took elevator down,
| rinse and repeat many times. Or elliptic trainer with same
| backpack. Or other movements/machines (just don't run with
| that).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Why the elevator down though? One needs to train going down
| as much as going up, possibly even more (given my limited
| experiences hiking up / down some touristy mountains in the
| UK). I'd even argue going down is harder because you have to
| stop your own momentum all the time, vs up where maintaining
| it is beneficial.
| nottorp wrote:
| Up is hard on the muscles, down on the knees.
| Fricken wrote:
| The cartilage in your knees is a living tissue. Like
| muscle, it responds and adapts to stimulus. If descending
| stairs gives you knee pain that isn't from some past
| injury being aggravated, then train them.
|
| You get people who go skiing or running for the first
| time in a while and they complain "Oh, my knees hurt, I'm
| too old for this". Nope. You're just out of condition.
| Use it or lose it.
| kakacik wrote:
| Nice theory, now go ahead and do it for some time
| (meaning few decades) and then lets talk. Or talk to knee
| surgeons.
|
| Or no, just listen to few folks who have something to
| sell like books or training regimens or guiding, or
| simply won genetic lottery in that very specific part of
| their bodies, since such advice definitely applies to
| everybody, at any age, at any situation.
| bob1029 wrote:
| 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.
|
| You can make yourself bulletproof to most forms of hard physical
| labor by practicing the clean & jerk. This movement is entirely
| about "get heavy thing off ground and above head" as efficiently
| and safely as possible. There are advanced movements that can be
| even more efficient but you trade some injury risk for screwing
| up. That is to say, the actual amount of wear on your body is
| even lower if you really know what you're doing.
| gear54rus wrote:
| I don't think you can unrack a 180kg barbell with your head and
| just stand there like that as a 90kg male, much less untrained.
| That is a humongous amount of weight.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Not your head. Your shoulders. As if you were going to do a
| barbell squat.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I definitely don't think this is the case. For somebody who
| hasn't trained - they're not holding 180kg on their
| shoulders. I think two big reasons would be that they're
| not going to have core strength/training to support it, and
| they wouldn't even have the traps to support the bar on
| their upper back, it'd dig into them and cause immense pain
| and probably just roll as well.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| For me, it actually seems fairly plausible. I was a
| fairly untrained 70kg forty-something when I went to the
| gym and very quickly found that as I did a bit of hiking,
| I could max out the standing calf raise machine at 155kg.
| This involves having a very padded 155kg on your
| shoulders while in a standing position. It felt to me
| like that was the most my shoulders and back could cope
| with, and it's more than double body weight.
| saberience wrote:
| It's a huge difference having a loaded barbell which can
| move in every dimension on your shoulders versus a calf
| raise machine which is fixed in place and cannot move
| around!
|
| I've squatted barbells since roughly 2006 and the feeling
| of having more than 100kg on your shoulders is very
| intense, even if you've trained up to it. It feels like
| it's crushing your whole body and even breathing is hard.
|
| The idea that an untrained person could put a 180kg
| barbell on their shoulders and be comfortable AND move
| around is laughable, they would collapse very quickly.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The OP didn't say they could move around... they said
| "unrack and stand there".
| saberience wrote:
| They wouldn't be able to unrack and stand there either.
| Just standing with a very heavy barbell is extremely
| difficult (assuming an untrained person).
|
| Seriously, go and try it, load up 100KG or roughly 225lbs
| on a barbell and just stand there with it. If you're
| already a big/heavy/trained guy, put 180KG or 400lbs.
|
| It will probably be quite a surprising experience for
| you.
|
| And I will say, that even when I was training for heavy
| squatting, standing there with a very heavy barbell on
| your back isn't fun at all, you have to have a very tight
| core, tensed muscles, breathing is much harder. i.e. just
| standing there is hard work and you want to get your 5
| squats done asap. Also, it just plain hurts your back as
| the metal bar on your spine is painful!
| joncrocks wrote:
| I think people might be able to support more than they
| think, but I'd also be sceptical that they could unrack
| 2x bodyweight without _some_ training.
|
| Could they use a machine to load up to that point?
| Cushioned and loaded in a way that doesn't use traps/a
| barbell? Maybe.
|
| I say this as someone who deals regularly with weights
| around that level, at a similar weight.
|
| Having said all that, I do 100% agree that loading your
| back and getting the weight there are two different
| things!
| elijaht wrote:
| 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
| bluGill wrote:
| It will feel heavy, but you are not lifting it more than a
| few cm (and at the point where your body has the most
| leverage).
|
| Remember the point is most humans couldn't get the weight
| there, but if somehow it already was they could hold it. That
| isn't a useful thing to do so we rarely test it.
| roschdal wrote:
| Invent the wheel.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Good luck using a wheel in uneven terrain. Why would you even
| leave a comment like this?
| moi2388 wrote:
| It works wonders downhill tbh
| balamatom wrote:
| And be stuck only ever going where someone else has invented
| the road for you.
|
| Big same. Now need big wheel.
| AngryData wrote:
| Have you ever tried to pull or push a wheeled cart up a large
| hill? Wheels are not super useful on steep terrain or unbroken
| ground and are often a liability without a bullet proof brake
| to stop it from trying to roll away when you stop. If the land
| isn't super rough or steep then wheels are great, but when it
| is you are going to have to work twice as hard.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| >But jumping straight into lifting heavy weights is not
| recommended. Instead, experts recommend focusing on technique and
| starting with loads that can be comfortably lifted before
| progressively increasing the training.
|
| I'm not sure if its because I'm in the 'advanced' category of
| lifting, but I have recently been going against this common
| advice.
|
| I recommend people get to heavy weights as quick as possible.
| Adding a minimum of 5lbs each time they lift, but more often 10+.
| At some point the weight becomes too heavy and you compensate
| with bad form. Wait wait wait before you downvote, I have a
| rational here:
|
| Your auxiliary muscles that allowed you to do bad form are tired
| now. Lower the weight and 'clean them up' with good form.
|
| I'm not alone in this mindset, but it goes against conventional
| wisdom.
|
| People forget that muscles are being used even when we do bad
| form.
|
| Just don't get injured. Pain = stop right away.
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