Labor Strong- Gym Weak Part 2

Labor Strong- Gym Weak Part 2

The gym is a big social and ego event for most men and a place to look at women
the gym is full of mirrors and nice state of the art equipment with all the new
technologies. Here’s a question why do you new technology while walking on a
treadmill? It’s just walking, get over yourself.

Now look around the gyms what are men really doing to build real strength?

The bench press, behind the neck press, a little work on the smith machine
curls ( for the girls) oh yeah a little kettle bell training oh that’s right the new
training in gyms like adding chains to the bar while you bench press or squatting
this is what building real strength must be about. Don’t forget about spinning classes,
walking and jogging on a treadmill, this is fitness and strength building at its best in
America. Is it no wonder that we are weaker and fatter than at any other time in
American history?

Being a laborer isn’t just a physical job it’s also mentally brutal. Pushing every
day whether your body wants to or not, but if you want to eat and you have
pride you continue to push ahead and do the job you are paid to do.

Now don’t misunderstand I’m talking about where seven men stand around
a ditch while one man digs and there is more standing around then actual
work I’m talking constant moving and working.

Gyms are climate controlled, heated in the winter, cooled in the summer. But,
the gyms I used to go to would have the doors open in dead winter just to get
it a little frosty in there. Gyms got so bad that most men walked around and
would talk then train they would take 10 seconds to do a set and spend ten
minutes until the next set.

It’s said by the experts that your body needs time to rest to grow, isn’t a hour
and half gym workout with 20 actually minutes of work and an hour and ten
minutes of walking around plenty of rest time? I guess not.

Laborer gets very little rest from day to day in the gym you only push as hard
as you feel like it. Laborers have to keep going and if they have pride they want
to keep going. Labor is a tough way to live and if you find a laborer who has been
pushing hard 40, 50 and even 60 or 70 hours a week for years you will find a strong
physical man, but don’t let looks fool you, have know many of skinny men that were
more than capable of handling themselves in all situations and have known a lot
of big men that were just little cry babies and couldn’t handle the smallest physical
work.

First of all it takes physical and mental toughness to work physically hard every day
it takes a toll on the body yet you keep pushing its attitude, its pride in knowing that
not anyone can do this day in and day out. Most will abandon these types of jobs
early on and almost every time it’s for a less physical job with even less pay, but
sometimes more it’s more money.

I have known many men who lifted weights and were strong in the weight room and
were physically weak in real world strength I’m not talking weak gym men, I’m talking
men that had well over 350 to 400lb bench presses. The reason I use this as a reference
is it seems to still be the standard in male strength. (How much can you bench).

Then there was the truck driver I knew who was at the time in his late 40’s, 6’ tall and
185lbs thin by gym standards and didn’t look like much and at the time on the dock
we were all big in to heavy training and to pass the time we had arm wrestling matches
wrestling matches as well as feats of strength contests it was fun and some time brutal
then came in was this thin 6’-185lb hunched over truck driver who looked like he couldn’t
lift the smallest weight.

There was not a man that could move this man’s arm in an arm wrestling match I watched
him beat every man time after time as many as 5 or 6 in a row I could not even move his arm.
Big man and small all failed to move this man’s arm even an inch.

I watched him drop men, strong men weighing over 275 lbs and watched him slam a man with
22” arms, Technique? You got to be able to engage him for him to use technique. You just
could not move his arm. Later on he started actually training and entering arm wrestling
contests and at 185 lbs would win four different weight classes including heavyweight and
the left handed competition’s, and all his training never included any weight training.

Toughness Builds Winners

Johnny Grube