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Off-Topic Comments made by non-fitness (aka out of shape) people!

WxHerk said:
Fine and dandy but almost all of your target audience listens with their mouth.

At my age and experience, I just let them babble and stay fat & weak. A “Richard” move, I know, but I’m tired of talking to houseplants.
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Pearls before swine etc.
 
steve-in-kville said:
A workout session is way different than a manual labor job. To me, it's part of my therapy. I look forward to it. It's just like taking meds for depression or bipolar, except way better!
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Depends if you're doing the manual labor for yourself or someone else.

Other than competing (weightlifting, rowing), I've never had a training session that is as emotionally satisfying as splitting my own firewood.

Or building a fence. Or planting a tree.

There is satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something with your own hands and seeing the results as the tree grows, or as visiting family enjoy an evening in front of the fire pit you built yourself from bricks.

Way better than a biceps pump.
 
bluejeff said:
My comment about the world 30+ years ago was really your comment in disguise….

I also think some youth would rather gamble on becoming a social media star (because it costs them very little to start) than definitely rack up college debt that there’s a good chance will stick with them the rest of their life.
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I like this thread. There are a thousand ways I could take this topic further from strength so I will try to stay focused. In addition to debt, there are a lot of economic factors that most people simply do not even imagine. Too bad for them. These are dominant factors in our economy that affect why wages do not keep up with the expected quality of life from X years ago. Fill in X with the time of another generation's prime working years and it will probably be accurate.

Psychologically, the worst problem is the desire not to know more but to accept an ignorant status quo, even when the status quo isn't great. You see it if someone is not as wealthy as the complainer (That poor guy was lazy/stupid/unlucky) or wealthier than the complainer (That rich guy was greedy/dirty/lucky).

In fitness you see "I do not want to change, I do not want to learn, so anyone who wants to 'improve' is misguided and knows nothing." I read about a guy who did neck training and it was something like this: "A woman saw my neck plate curls at the gym. She begged me to stop because she was sure I would snap my neck and said she couldn't bear to see it. It was my light day."

That's another topic where it could spin out beyond the topic of strength. But people with this attitude will not know the awesomeness of what @Rygor the Swoleman was able to do. In a sense, the ability to focus on and apply yourself consistently to any topic (strength, in this case) allows you to improve your life in other ways (in this case, not dumping a wheelbarrow of money needlessly).
 
Rygor the Swoleman said:
That $14 per month on Netflix is making me plumb broke, by golly!

It's funny. I was thinking of some of this stuff as I was clearing off the 450lb giant branches that partially fell onto my roof yesterday from a heavy snow we got a few weeks back. I had gotten quotes initially from a couple arborists to take them down and dispose of them and they both came out to around $850 to 900. I thought that was ridiculous, and figured "Hey! I'm an able bodied dude. I can just do this &@!t myself." So I bought a $60 pole saw from Home Depot and cut them down, then flipped them off my roof and onto the ground, then chopped them up with a hand saw into manageable pieces. The whole deal took a bit over 2 hours, and I got in a mini workout. I do know that no person of average (or worse) strength could have done what I did, though. Those tree limbs were quite heavy and I had to do some overhead lifting and pulling to get them down and off the roof, and then into a position to where I could safely cut them down. Don't know of many nearly 47 year olds who could have done that and they would have likely been stuck paying whatever the tree company wanted to charge, so there's one way that investing my time in getting stronger paid off (literally) in a real life, tangible way.
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This is exactly how I sweet talk my wife into new home gym equipment. If I’m going to lift, I might as well do as much as I can without paying someone else to do it.
 
watchnerd said:
Depends if you're doing the manual labor for yourself or someone else.

Other than competing (weightlifting, rowing), I've never had a training session that is as emotionally satisfying as splitting my own firewood.

Or building a fence. Or planting a tree.

There is satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something with your own hands and seeing the results as the tree grows, or as visiting family enjoy an evening in front of the fire pit you built yourself from bricks.

Way better than a biceps pump.
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I agree! I just built this up with my step son last weekend. It would have cost probably quadruple to have someone else do it.
 

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Sinc wood chopping has been mentioned:
One of the most accurate ways to identify an annoying person, is when someone observes you using an axe of a saw, and feel the need to tell you that it would be more efficient to use a chainsaw and a wood splitting machine. And yes, a strong hypothesis is that the very same indiviudals are sometimes trying to justify their lack of training discipline.



øks.jpg
 
Sometimes out-of-shape people are on target, though. Sometimes we over-prioritize gaining strength, and need a rebuke.

I'm thinking about me, here, but I can't be the only one. No one perfectly balances his responsibilities.

Sometimes the messenger is a fool, to better humble us.
 
watchnerd said:
Depends if you're doing the manual labor for yourself or someone else.

Other than competing (weightlifting, rowing), I've never had a training session that is as emotionally satisfying as splitting my own firewood.

Or building a fence. Or planting a tree.

There is satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment that comes with doing something with your own hands and seeing the results as the tree grows, or as visiting family enjoy an evening in front of the fire pit you built yourself from bricks.

Way better than a biceps pump.
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I enjoy gardening, something I had left go the past few years as I was dealing with some other stuff in life. But this year In am picking it back up again. I love building trellises of all manner and various platforms to put containers on.

Some years back, I got maybe 10 yard of mushroom delivered. I used a wheelbarrow to move that all over our 2-ache property. Oneof my older boys offered to bring home a skid loader from work to help move it around. I declined. This is how I wanted it to be.

Yes, at the end of the day, I hurt. But it was a good hurt. And I slept pretty good that night, too! To me, that was more than any therapy session could ever offer. Cost me 10 yard of mulch, but still way better.
 
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