Also having the muscles work together for a specific move. Core strength is probably ignored by most bodybuilders in favor of working in isolation. A worker uses his whole body to move that shit constantly.
Strength can be very movement-specific in the sense both neural adaptation and fascia gets reinforced in the movements someone does a lot.
Fascia is very little talked about in these cases of muscular differences, but it's a criss-cross network of collagen that runs through the muscles that gives additional it additional structure on trained movements.
Also having the muscles work together for a specific move.
This is key, and it's also a lot less magical than a lot of people think. Those body builders are struggling in that video, but give them even an hour to get used to the feel of the bags and how to balance one on top of the others, and they would do much, much better.
Give them a day or two and they would do it so well that you wouldn't be able to tell from that short clip that they hadn't been doing it all there life.
When people say "strength" they usually aren't very clear if they mean the raw strength in your muscles, or the ability to actually get a strength-based task done.
The thing with lifting is that you need to be able to do a bunch of stuff like estimating the weight of the thing you are lifting before you actually lift it, know how to get under the centre of gravity, get a proper grip, make sure the object follows a relatively direct path upwards, all sorts of stuff is going to make the difference between succeeding and failing.
Some of this is difficult to learn, and some of it is actually quite easy. You could fail spectacularly at a lift the first time you try it, take a few minutes to assess where you went wrong and then nail it.
Yeah, this is all very obvious stuff, but for some reason people want to turn it into some kind of scene from a kung-fu film. Like the humble, regular workers must have some kind of ki or magical ligament power.
You know what, you are probably right. I wanted to put it down to people finding a complicated answer more interesting than a simple one, but yeah the popularity of this video is probably down to a lot of people just wanting to believe that they are actually stronger than the guys who just pump their pecs to look good for the girls.
I do strength training. I got into it because I wanted to improve my performance in judo and freestyle wrestling, I understand the difference between having big muscles and having functional strength. Those guys with big muscles - they are usually very strong. Not as strong as a dedicated strength competitor, but fairly fucking strong compared to the average guy.
It’s a trend here in Reddit which is why I recognize it so easily now. Any bodybuilder is basically just an inflatable tube man according to redditors.
Like you said, a strong man will be stronger in general than a bodybuilder at anything except for very specific movements. But a bodybuilder will still beat out 99.9% of the populace in strength.
Gym exercises really aren't "messy" like 4 bags of cement are. Dumbbells, cable machines, and barbells are perfectly symmetrical, it's arguably a sterile/clinical way to lift. Loads of little stabilizer muscles never get worked very much and will need time, practice, and recovery to get stronger. Just like with any other muscle.
A matter of hours or a couple days isn't nearly enough time for that sort of hypertrophy to happen.
The stabilizers don't get exercised near the same degree with 4 bags of concrete vs. Whatever people get in a gym setting. I switched from barbells to a heavy, loosely fitted sandbag, there is a HUGE difference. Every rep is a mini wrestling match.
It took me a WHILE to get used to it and I had to go down to less than half what I was deadlifting to start off.
With all due respect, you don't know what each individual person is doing when they are in the gym. You cannot possibly know if they have exercised any specific muscle in their body to the extent of someone who had lifted some bags of concrete.
Frankly, you asserted that these bodybuilders only needed a matter of hours to get fairly decent and only days to be indistinguishable from the labourer... I could throw back your argument at that point too, right?
Suddenly bringing up that I don’t know what each person has been doing feels like you don't realize that you're also making assertions and assumptions to come to your initial conclusion.
Except as someone who’s had experience with odd object lifting I'm telling you that you've oversimplified the process.
Frankly, you asserted that these bodybuilders only needed a matter of hours to get fairly decent and only days to be indistinguishable from the labourer
Couple days, absolutely not. Two weeks, maybe. Two months or more? Absolutely. What this worker is doing is months if not years of muscle memory, strength and coordination that you can't reproduce in a handful of days unless youre just a beast and can brute strength everything.
The clip is a few seconds long. It does not give you enough information to tell how good they are at those lifts, beyond that they can't do them at all right now.
After a few weeks I wouldn't expect them to be able to do the job all day to the level of someone with years of experience, but I would expect them to be able to get it done for the length of the video.
This is the reason I stopped training with weights except deadlift. The rest of my strengths comes from working in machine assembling, gardening, digging and calisthenics
Yeah I talked to some movers and they said the same thing. Bodybuilders are good if it's very specific movements, as soon as the technique changes they cant do shit because it requires a muscle group that hasnt been hyper focused
As someone who’s done moving I think just getting used to balancing awkward objects and techniques is most of it. A bodybuilder who does moving for a month or two will do well.
This is definitely a big part of it. I work in a bakery and regularly have to lift and move heavy items. Cases of dough, trash, bags of flour, etc. I have definitely developed arm strength as well as core strength.
I’m not strong enough to lift bags of cement like that though.
I’m basically repeatedly lifting between 30 to 50lbs of weight.
In the USA people sometimes call it “old man” strength without realizing what it is. Spend all your time learning how to use every muscle you have to get the job done and you will outperform far “stronger” people well after you’ve physically peaked.
It’s like someone being a genius trying to outperform a smart person that uses Microsoft Excel all day in a Microsoft Excel task.
Doesn’t matter how smart/strong you are if a competent person has been doing it longer.
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u/Nordrian Feb 25 '25
Also having the muscles work together for a specific move. Core strength is probably ignored by most bodybuilders in favor of working in isolation. A worker uses his whole body to move that shit constantly.