Everyday strength

This actually occurred to me when reading the steroid thread...


Do any of you guys have problems in everyday strength-related activities, but can lift massive amounts in the gym?

For example, I can deadlift and squat a lot more than my brother, who's only 16, but when we play mercy or arm-wrestle or are moving some piece of furniture, it is usually me who looks like the weak one. Granted, he is pretty beastly - but still, it is a bit baffling.


Does anyone have an inkling of what I am talking about?

They're different activites though, so I'd expect that. I notice a huge improvement in my couch lifting skills when I get my squat numbers up. Lifting my dock out of the water this year was no problem.

I think the difference can also be cause your lifting an awkward object no perfectly balanced weight. I found that carrying and dragging other people and objects does wonders. Especially dragging people and carrying objects.

I often get humbled when helping my mom move furniture... that's a strong woman!


It's funny, she's run a marathon but she cannot jump. At all. I even tried to teach her how, but no matter what she does she cannot get off the ground.

I notice the carryover, especially since now I can lift the front end of my snowmobile since getting more serious about deadlifts over the last several weeks. Other areas, as well. One thing I find myself doing is visualizing the weightroom lift as I get ready to do the heavy every-day stuff, especially as regards my posture.

Well jonwell your mum is at an extreme end of the scale.  She is perfectly suited to a long distance event like her marathon running. But because of this she lacks fast twitch fibres or rather has a lower %.  So it isn't a suprise she won't be able to jump well.

You get a lot of strong people but they can't jack.  They can't seem to generage the speed in their legs.

Like me.  I can jump but no way in hell I'd finish a  marathon!

I find funiture and trees etc to carry fine.  I have moved my fair share though.  Cutting trees in the back garden then chopping them up further and moving them about does that to you.

But yeah my dad does all of this fine too and hasn't stepped foot in a gym.

Koing

old people strength is impressive :)

Where would I find some strongman routines, XenNova?

You get a lot of strong people but they can't jack. They can't seem to generage the speed in their legs.I'd say they also substantially lack fast-twitch fibers in their wrists.

HR, what you need to do is suppliment your training with exercises that works your muscles in multiple planes of directions. This consists of instability training with equipments like the Swiss ball, wobble board, bosu ball, etc.

Traditional resistance training is flawed in that it specifically trains your prime movers and often ignores your stabilizers. Granted that if you train with free weights, you will engage your stabilizers than training with a machine. However, resistance training with free weight still only allows your muscles to move in one or two (at best) plane of direction. Thus, your muscle fibres are contracting with maximum force in the most efficient manner, but at the cost of not being able to move in any other direction.

And guess what? Most task done everyday requires you to move and balance yourself in more than one direction while having your muscles engage in syncronization.

Unless you suppliment your resistance training with some instability training, you can not expect your muscles (i.e. stabilizers and prime movers) to function in sync with each other.

Take for example of arm wrestling (like you pointed out in your first post). You can have strong deltoids from doing bench press or dips, but these aren't the only muscles of the shoulders. There are four muscles much deeper in that makes up your rotator cuffs that are responsible for stablizing your shoulders (so it doesn't dislocate). These muscles are also responsible for literally rotating your arm laterally and medially. Even if you do exercises such as flies or cable crossovers, the rotator cuffs are hardly worked (because they don't perform the major function as the prime mover of the arm).

And guess what? You need good rotator cuffs to arm wrestle, because they works in conjunction with the biceps. Your biceps' origins are deep in the shoulder and clavicle. If you only work your biceps, then you can't expect to last long in arm wrestling because you only have "half" the muscle power to begin with. That's what I mean by having your body work in sync.

Most resistance training (even the multi-joint exercises found in powerlifting and Olympic lifting) are limited in that the exercise trains the muscle(s) to work independently from the other muscle groups. The solution is to throw in the instability training with your resistance training. You may have to lighten your load, but you will find improvement in balance (proprioception), posture, and even reflexes (namely the stretch reflex). These will contribute greatly to your lifting.