You’ll learn:
Why modern jobs have made us the weakest wave of humans ever.
Why manual labor builds what my high school friends called “bricksh*thouse strength.” It’s raw, functional strength that works in the real world and leads you to be exceedingly strong for your size—i.e., supermedium.
Why manual labor jobs lead to extreme strength—but have a diminishing rate of returns over time and can eventually backfire for strength and health.
How to find the sweet spot where you get the strength benefits of manual labor yet avoid its downsides.
5 exercises to build “bricksh*thouse strength,” the powerful strength, functional strength often seen in manual laborers. Watch the video to learn how to do the exercises.
Housekeeping
Full access to this post and its audio version—like all Wednesday and Friday posts—is for Members of Two Percent.
Become a Member of Two Percent. Get strong.
P.S., I can’t believe I used the word “bricksh*thouse” in a headline, but I’m feeling good about it … 😂
Audio/podcast version
The post
When I was in high school in Northern Utah, I frequented a local gym.
The place was was inexpensive and old school, with a slew of aging weight and cardio machines, a racquetball court, and a lot of free weights.
A new gym in the nicer part of town was the place to be “seen.” My gym was the opposite. It was a place where everyone from retirees to semi-pro bodybuilders showed up, shut up, and worked.
I’ll never forget a guy who came to the gym. He taught me powerful lessons about what it means to be physically strong and capable.
This dude would show up to the gym after his shift at a construction site. He’d roll in wearing cutoff jeans, a cutoff T-shirt, and work boots. He smelled like Marlboros and fearlessness. Picture a supermedium Kenny Powers. Not big, not small.
He’d stroll past giant, steroided-out bodybuilder types. Then he’d stretch for about seven seconds—and outlift everyone else in the building.
He’d load weight onto a barbell and squat the equivalent of a Volvo. He’d do the same on bench press and deadlift. He’d effortlessly whip heavy dumbbells around in wild movements he seemed to make up on the spot.
This guy wasn’t unique. Every good gym has one of these people. For example, at a gym I’d often frequent in Pennsylvania, it was a woman who worked in trucking. She outlifted many of the men.
My high school buddies called the type of strength this guy had, “bricksh*thouse strength.” It was the type of raw, real-world strength you see in assuming people who do hard physical labor for work.
And it highlights a significant change in fitness over the last 100 years.
On Monday, we covered how our jobs are safer but now have unseen and insidious dangers. These dangers stem from inactivity. Our sedentary jobs have led to a surge in unwanted weight gain and chronic disease. The cubicle is the new coal mine.
This trend has also impacted our strength. For example:
Scientists compared the grip strength of 20- to 34-year-olds from 1980 to the grip strength of Millennials today.
Grip strength among men and women decreased up to 26 and 11 pounds, respectively.
This is important! Grip strength is highly correlated with longevity. One study found people with the strongest grip were 31 percent less likely to die during the study period.
Another study suggests that our ancestors likely had much denser bones than us, a result of loading their bones while lifting and carrying objects for work.
Bone density is also a strong predictor of lifespan and health span.
Other research suggests our feet have become much weaker, likely because we walk less and walk in supportive shoes that bear the load our foot muscles would typically take on.
How manual labor gets people strong (and its downsides)
Section summary: Manual labor works requires lifting loads in odd positions for hours on end. It often leads to extreme, unique, real-world strength. But it can backfire as manual laborers age.
We know work requiring hard labor (e.g., carpentry or millwork) burns between 3 and 5.5 times more calories daily. But it can also make us stronger.
It often involves doing movements that work our muscles for hours on end. For example, doing lots of moderate and heavy carries (carrying buckets of gravel or beams). Constantly moving and lifting light loads (using crowbars to move slabs, holding items in place overhead, shoveling, and more).
That builds muscular strength and endurance in unpredictable and unique ways, movements, and body positions you don’t often see in a gym. And it happens all day everyday.
But I learned that the equation isn’t as simple as “manual labor always makes you stronger and better.”
That bricksh*thouse human at my old gym was probably in his late thirties back then, which means he’s now nearing 60.
I exchanged emails with Brennan Thompson, Ph.D., a researcher at Utah State University. He’s studied the impacts of physical labor on health and strength.
I wrote him assuming that manual labor was always a good thing. But he opened his email with:
I should point out that this is an area where there is very conflicting results.
The type of activity done in many traditional manual labor jobs … tends to be static, repetitive and of long duration in nature with less than ideal recovery parameters.
He pointed to some studies that show manual labor does increase strength and others that show manual laborers have reduced strength and function.
But a look at which manual laborers get strong and which don’t shows something important. It often depends on the age of the workers. Thompson wrote:
Perhaps some of these conflicting effects of manual labor on muscle function could be explained by an age effect. For example, we compared muscle function in young and older white and blue-collar workers to try to help unravel some of the complicated details. We showed that harder work (using a work index factor) was positively associated with muscle strength variables in the young blue-collar group, but that the trend was reversed in the older blue-collar group, showing a negative relationship with harder work and muscle function.
That is to say, younger laborers tend to get really strong but actually lose strength and function as they get into older age because their bodies get beat down by doing the same repetitive, hard movements daily. Think: back, knee, and hip problems.
And many times, he pointed out, labor saps the energy workers need to do exercises that would balance their strength, help them avoid problems, and lead them to be more fit.
Thompson’s work holds lessons for how we can exercise and build strength depending on our job:
White collar: Your job will lead you to lose strength, bone density, and more. That will increase your risk of disease and death, and impede your ability to do what you want to do. Do the five exercises below regularly.
Blue collar: Your job will help you get really strong when you’re young, but if you may end up worse off if you don’t do the right things as you age. Do exercises that balance your strength and help you avoid injuries.
These five exercises can help anyone get bricksh*thouse strong.
5 exercises to get strong. Really strong.
Section summary: We asked the legendary strength coach Zach Even-Esh to give us five exercises to build bricksh*thouse strength.
So how can you build the sort of real-world, raw strength that manual laborers have the first couple decades of work? It’s strength that allows you to accomplish far more and helps you well beyond the gym, in the arena of life. That’s what we’re after.
I spoke with Zach Even-Esh. He’s a legendary strength coach. His methodology is gritty, no-B.S., and brutally effective. He’s from New Jersey—the type of dude Springsteen sings about.
He put it this way, “you gotta move your body as if you live and work on a farm.”
He sent me five epic exercises that build the intense functional strength we get from manual labor. They’re the type of exercises that:
Most improve markers of strength that research shows helps you live longer and better (grip strength, leg strength, core strength).
Help you avoid injury when lifting and doing hard chores like shoveling snow (we all know serious lifters who blow out their back bending over to pick up a rather light box or while shoveling snow).
Build the bricksh*thouse, supermedium strength that transfers to all sorts of different real-life activities.
Weave them into your current routine as you wish. Do anywhere from 2 to 4 sets and keep your reps below 15.
