"Gym muscle" different from "real world muscle"?

[jyl]

I've heard variations on the above. What do you think?

[masraum]

Well, the two are developed differently. The Gym routine is usually designed to build muscle size and possibly ultimate capacity ("I was able to press 350# three times today!" type of thing)

I can only assume that what you are talking about with real world muscle is some guy that hefts 50# bags of concrete all day every day for his living. His muscles are defined by what they do, and are defined by functionality.

I would certainly assume that the two types will yield people with 2 different sets of abilities.

I think you could go to the gym and build muscles more like the real world muscles by doing more reps of less weight, but I'm not sure that with machines and free weights that you could match the range of motion and muscles worked by someone who is moving naturally in the course of the day. You'd probably have to do a lot of different stuff. I've never been a boxer or trained as a boxer, but based on the type of stuff that you always see on TV, those guys, swimmers, gymnasts, they probably have muscles that are more like "real world" muscles.

[Moses]

The old term used to be "dad strong". Daily repetition and 8 or more hours of hard labor a day gives sinewy total body strength that can't be matched by a few hours in the gym.

[RWebb]

there are actually 3 different types of muscle fibers

this could all be covered in an advanced physiology seminar over the course of a year or so...

[jyl]

The trainer I've started going to does not use that phrase, but I was reminded of it, by his methods. He tells me that I won't be doing any situps, curls, pushups, etc. He doesn't use exercises that isolate a specific muscle group. Instead, he has me doing things that are whole-body. For example, plank on rings instead of crunches. I don't know much at all about this stuff, so I may well be mis-reporting or mis-understanding this, and of course I'm a novice and the exercises he's using for me are appropriate for a novice.

[RWebb]

there are lots of smaller muscles that stabilize the joints, and actions of the larger one - that is what he is after (and smart IMHO)

using dumbells instead of barbells is another example of working those muscles

this is at a more gross anatomy level than different fiber types...

[peppy]

Ever seen a scrawny farm boy whip the snot out of a jock?

[Embraer]

we called this "parker strength" when i was in school. there was a skinny farm kid named andrew parker who could pummel anybody.

[emcon5]

I remember seeing something on wide world of sports when I was a kid, it was some sort of all around athletic competition.

Two of the competitors were a pro body builder and a football player. The bodybuilder was huge. The comparatively normal sized football player beat his ass in the weightlifting competition.

[rfuerst911sc]

In the early 80's I was working at an independant home center retailer in the north east. We were refurbishing an old A&P grocery store into our third home center. We hired a grunt to do general clean up work he was a body builder. Great physique and very fit. We also had hired a stone mason to do some concrete/stone work. One day at lunch body builder boy starts talking smack to the mason and eventually challenged him to arm wrestling. After getting his a$$ kicked 5 times straight in about 2 minutes body builder boy quit and we never saw him again. True story.
In that same time frame we used to order Sakrete masonary products. Because we were a small outfit we did not have a forklift. At that time Sakrete had a minimum order of like 10,000 pounds. Had to hand unload that truck. It took 3 of us on the ground and one Sakrete driver on the truck. Learned real quick not to mess with a Sakrete driver !!!

[Embraer]

the summer after i graduated college i took an impromptu job building above-ground pools. i had to level the ground, and usually they'd drop 5-10 tons of sand on the site, and i spent the day moving all of it by shovel. i was the strongest during this summer.

in college i lifted a lot, and got big. i got smaller the summer after college, but got a heck of a lot stronger.

[Zeke]

I knew a farm boy that was small and light in high school. When they said do some pull ups on the bar for an overall fitness grade, they just told him to stop.

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

When I was in my initial training while on active duty we called out several body builders to join our required exercise routine. None of us looked too big. We did nothing more than run seven to ten miles per day (sometimes passing around 40 pound packs). Maybe a few hundred sit-ups and a thousand or so arm rotations and push ups per day. Dozens of other types of similar exercises. When we went to a gym (very rare actually in the group I was in) we lifted 10 to 100 pounds. We could not compete in the gym. Those guys could out lift us all day long. They could not compete in our training. They could not lift their own body weight in push-ups as often as we could or even do pull ups (I don't think I could ever do more than the minimum required pull-ups/chin-ups, I never developed the ability to go above the minimum). Our trainers did not allow us to do heavy, bulk building, lifting. Our jobs did not require huge, massive, heavy muscles. Rather our muscles had to go all day.

Around here on the farm and in other farms I have seen the weight lifters/body builders try and keep up. They do not have the stamina or staying power. Yep, the first ten or so bales are light and easy to toss around. The next few get harder, then they give out! My Wife put one to shame here VERY recently. He could not go more than an hour (with many breaks) picking up 70-90 pound hay bales and loading them on a trailer. She went all day. Don't mention allergies, we have them too! He had zero stamina.

I am a city boy, raised in the small town of Houston. My buddy (who appears rather thin and wiry and grew up in Chicago), Wife (summer farm girl), and myself have put to shame a crew of five loaders for each of the past two years. The others are a weight lifter (who cannot keep up with the speed of his own team), two teenagers, and two guys in their 50s. That is the power of their group in order. The older guys would keep up with us if they had one more like them!

[cgarr]

Whats a Gym?

[Scott R]

I'm an avid bodybuilder, no way would I "challenge" a guy that moved cement bags for a living. He would probably bend me like a pretzel.

[eastbay]

pfft.. portland cement comes in 96 pound bags

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Scott R

I'm an avid bodybuilder, no way would I "challenge" a guy that moved cement bags for a living. He would probably bend me like a pretzel.

[vash]

Originally Posted by Scott R

I'm an avid bodybuilder, no way would I "challenge" a guy that moved cement bags for a living. He would probably bend me like a pretzel.

i know some ironworkers. rebar guys. (aka rod-busters.) same things as milt.this guy could do chin-ups forever. they could climb anything. but this one guy was a foreman, late 50's. he was like a hunk of iron. he demonstrated how they used to climb steel buildings. he climbed the flange of a vertical steel beam with ease. (before cal osha days). he showed me a pic of himself riding that big steel ball at the end of a crane cable. one hand, waving.

he handed me a six foot long torque wrench with one hand...i almost buckled when i took it from him.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by masraum

does he use hydrostatic pressure for the appendages, or what?

[pwd72s]

Get a logging job for a summer...setting chockers. You'll get in shape.

Bucking hay bales works too...