So I’ve been training for about a year now and have had great progress and gained almost 40 pounds (37’ish.) I trained hard every single day and spent on average 1-2 hours in the gym daily. I just switched to a new job, (doing factory work for a Rice Company. I feel bad because I’m not able to spend as much time in the gym. Especially right now, I’m working 6-7 day weeks, 12 hour shifts. For example, tonight, I skipped the gym, and came home after my 12 hour shift and did 200 weighted push ups. However, I’m not a huge “Every Day Bench Guy.” I go hard on back / bicep days for the most part.
Since I started this job, I feel my back days are suffering. I’m not able to do as many weighted pull ups. And have been skipping hammer curls, bicep curls, and deadlifts all to-gether for the reason that I’m loading pallets of rice daily. Yesterday I loaded 36 pallets on a 12 hour shift, for a total of 65,000 plus pounds in a day. This involves direct leg work, biceps, and lower back.
Most of the people that work there, I’d expect them to be “built” or pretty " big" and their not. However, I’m wondering if it’s because most of them don’t eat right or have a good diet. I still eat like I’m lifting, 5k plus calories a day and lots of protein, my macros, etc.
If I cut back on some movements like curls and deadlifts, is my growth going to slow still being that I’m lifting so much weight throughout the day (over 50,000 lbs per day?)
It’s not because of that: it’s because loading pallets of rice is not an effective training program for building muscular size. Would be decent for conditioning though.
Yeah. I’ve seen this question in many different forms for years now, and I’ve asked it myself. Really what you’re asking is, is my physical job a form of lifting that is cutting into my gym progress, and should I factor my job into the effort I put into lifting?
The answer is, yes and no. You’ve already covered a big part of the answer yourself:
When you do it every day, physical or not, your body adapts. Physical jobs are tough, not because they replace hard work in the gym, but because after you’ve adapted, they require the same amount of effort in the gym as everyone else, while suffering far more wear and tear than other people. That’s why you see fat, out of shape people do physical jobs. They’re just used to it.
So yes, you can factor your job into your gym time with regards to paying extra attention to joint health and recovery, but at the end of the day, no, your physical job will not make up for reduced effort in the gym.
I work 12 hour physical shifts. Did it overnight for a few years, too. So I know it sucks. But I have fat guys and skinny guys there too. Only me and one other guy are built like lifters, and it’s because we lift.
The only muscles that seem to grow to work stressors are forearms. My dad is a mechanic and has popeye arms.
Might also be genetic, I have good forearms just from hammer curls.
But yea add more carbs during the day. I work 12s at a hospital and just being on my feet for 12 hours took a while to adapt to training after such a long shift. I’m sure a 12h labor job makes it extremely hard to have productive lifts after work.
I’ve seen guys that had physical jobs that were big and muscular (not body builder esq) that’s probably more genetics and outlier opposed to your average joe with a physical job.
I think real world strength is a little different in this situation. I’ve seen my brother working on a scrap yard, pick up some crazy stuff and move it and weighing 150lbs. he never dead lifted or anything else. Just moving heavy crap around throughout the day for 2 years. That’s more of a strongman angle though.
For me, it took several months before I was back up to the working weights I had been at prior to the job and then several more months before I could push the volume back to where it had been.
Even after that, if I had done an extra tough shift I would have to cut back on the assistance or even give myself an extra rest day depending on how tough that shift was and how on point I was w/ my recovery game.
I lift before work and it seems to work reasonably well. My job is not the most physical, just loading lorries with metal cages. I think you should factor in your physical job though at least in part. I have noticed people tend to be bigger than the people at the call centre I used to work at. Not everyone is big though.
I cut out most conditioning work and stick to high pulls and bench . Starting to introduce deadlift and squats again. Warehouse work requires a lot of simply walking about. Sometimes 10-15 miles depending on the job . At least that’s what the health app on the phone says.
I have done some farming, and a lot of construction. Im used to working hard for a living and i can tell you that in my case, working has not done a lot for building much size other than my forearms. Its made me strong and conditioned in a way thats different than the gym, but not much in the way of size. My dad is a good example of work strong too…he has always been a strong man in real life situations, coming from farming and labor jobs, never gone to the gym ever. Even in his 60’s he is still very strong…but he looks much like many men in their 60’s with the belly and what not, although his legs are very solid. So in my experience, you do need to think about the affect that work will have, and maybe eat a bit extra or something like that, but you still need to lift. Work cant replace the gym and the gym cant replace work.