And it got my thinking, outside of the gym what’s the best/ greatest/ most impressive thing you’ve ever lifted.
A couple to start this off, I once managed to pick up an anchor that was in my friends garden when they moved into their house. The anchor was around 5ft high and absolutely massive. Everyone (including myself) was very impressed I actually managed to pick it up.
Second one when helping a friend move, I carried a double wardrobe up 2 flights of stairs on my own. I was very impressed with my giant bear hug technique.
Just a bit of fun to hear impressive non gym things you lot have lifted, there will be some much better ones than mine I’m sure.
As a tiny female, ppl tend to do lifting for me unfortunately
But two non gym “feats”
Scoring 90+ in the finals of differential equations and intro pure maths. I never had confidence in my maths ability and my friend (that one) basically did my homework for me the first half of the courses bc I just didn’t get it. But… I put in effort and ended up doing well in both.
Where I worked, there was an office downstairs that was getting rid of a safe that we wanted to obtain for our office. We had no elevator. I called downstairs about getting it and they told me to bring a few guys over and we’d all move it up there.
I show up by myself.
The person with the safe is visibly agitated and says to me “I told you to bring a few guys”
I replied “I AM a few guys”
We ended up moving the safe just fine.
I’ve probably had even crazier feats of strength, but that’s my favorite story.
I used to work with lifts. I was in the store yard doing stock take and there was fly wheel on a broken pallet. This is the solid metal pulley wheel that sits at the top of a 10 person lift. It weighs in at about 180/200kg. I came around the corner and 3 guys where stood there all out of breath having tried to lift it onto a pallet but failed. It was too awkward for an effective 2 man lift. And 1 person could not pick it up. Well one of them.
I went over to pick it up and no one really paid too much attention to me. Once I got it in the air one of them saw and kinda did that thing where they tried to help. I just told him to kick the new pallet over. Which he did. But I still had to walk 10m with this thing. Stepping off of and over the old pallet.
That or this summer I had to move a 200kg steel frame up 4 floors via the stairs. It was team effort - but the best part was everyone’s reaction to who should go where. One end of the frame had a LOT more steel. And was a lot heavier. One of the other guys gravitated towards that end. I asked him flat out if he really wanted to be that end. And really cool and just said “No. But its not really fair to let you do it”.
There were 5 of us on that. Put only space for 2/3 guys at anyone time. I was on it the whole way up. I was dying.
In fact it was that hard this was 2 weeks from a comp and I bailed on training that day.
My neighbors are a bunch of old dudes that work on classic cars. He called me over because they couldn’t figure out how to lift an f350 rear end up on a 3-4’ wall rack. I picked it up myself zercher squat style. They were like well that was nice.
My greatest feat occurred just a few months ago this fall. I cut down a really big old tree at my grandparents house and chopped it into logs to load into a truck to take to the dump. I didn’t cut the logs short enough and did not realize how heavy they’d be. They were about 4 feet long and thick enough I could not come close to wrapping my arms all the way around them. I basically had to bear hug them off the ground and into the truck. I can’t really give an estimate on the weight, but it was substantial haha.
A few years back I was changing the tire on my car… What I thought to be a relatively flat driveway was angled just enough to make the car roll back a few inches, but only after I’d had it up on the jack with the wheel off.
Of course, this resulted in the jack tipping over and the Rotor sitting directly on the ground. My solution? Take a 4x4, wedge it under the axle and pull like never before… This was short lived as once I got the axle lifted high enough for the jack to go under it - I needed to switch to holding the 4x4 with one hand and placing the jack under the axle with the other.
A couple attempts later and I ran inside bragging to the wife that I just single-hand deadlifted the car while putting a jack under the axle. She didn’t care, and neither did anyone else - but I did.
Moral of the story: set your parking brake before changing your tires
We boxed in a drunk driver that had committed a hit-and-run. My cruiser was in front of him 20 feet or so. As I ran around towards the driver, he got out and left it in gear. It started rolling and I stepped in front of the car and put both hands on it’s hood and stopped it. One of my guys jumped in it and put it in gear as I held it.
Purely spontaneous and purely stupid of me.
I think it was a Dodge Nitro. It’s all on video. I have had officers from other agencies ask me if it’s true.
Out hiking last summer with my 6 y.o. daughter, she stepped up on a huge rock, where she suddenly disappeared in a small crack in the middle, crying desperately for help. Fortunately, her jacket prevented her from falling deeper.
From where I could reach her, in a forward bent position with fully stretched arms, I barely managed to fixate a grip with my hands under her shoulders. A most unfavorable and unergonomic position. First attempt I felt she really was stuck and it was too heavy thus a failed attempt. As adrenaline (panic) kicked in, I just lifted her straight up out of that hole.
I still can’t figure out how I managed that, but am a very lucky man it worked out. It must have been like an outstretched frontal shoulder flexion with 25 kg + unmeasurable friction. I seriously doubt I would manage a similar lift in the gym. Shoulders are my weakest muscle group. Food for thought. Telling this brings tears to my eyes. I honestly thought I would lose my little girl there…
I’ve heard of people showing extreme strength in extreme situations, so I guess this was my first (and hopefully last) experience in that field.
On a lighter note, me and my gym pals used to move small cars, and put them in awkward positions when parked in town, turning them 90 degrees in the parkingspot. I remember deadlifting a Volkswagen Beetle back then. This was 25 years ago. Youth…
Pushing my old and completely knackered Ford Fiesta with the handbrake still on up a slight hill + I remember when I was about 12/13 I got a metal file lodged in a woodwork project…so I put it in a vice and up perfectly upwards as hard as I could and then BOOM! metal fatigue…file exploded!!! Twas weird.
There are lots of reasons for this. The two biggest are:
1 - Massive adrenaline. Of course. This boosts your strength
2 - The normal self protection measures you have are turned off. To explain this - go and punch a wall as hard as you can. As you try your body will stop you. It is an inbuilt function where your body stops itself from doing stupid shit. It 's hard wired into you. Its why it is so hard to hit hard objects (out side of a fight), hold onto hot objects, go under a cold shower ETC. It is your survival instinct kicking in. This “might” have only been a shoulder injury, but 10,000 years ago a bust shoulder would lead to a slow painful death as you starved over the course of weeks.
I guess what I’m saying is - your love for your daughter over rode your survival instinct. You have tangible evidence that you love your daughter more then you love your own life!
16 year old me was helping demo a house. Lot of fun, this old guy basically just hired half the football team to go to town with sledgehammers. It’s was awesome. Then it was stupid. A kid punched the wall, thought it was so cool how the drywall caved in. So of course, we all started punching walls. Get a little bruised knuckles, knock out some old drywall, egos inflated, it was cool.
Until I heard my friend yell In what sounded like pretty severe pain. We look over and he is grasping his hand, which is bleeding pretty good and cocked at a weird angle. Kid hit a stud, ended up breaking his wrist. We went back to the sledgehammers after that, and that dude was nicknamed “studfinder” for the rest of the time I knew him
The worst thing about being knows as someone who lifts weights is that you get asked to move all manner of heavy things, pianos, rocks, cast iron baths, washing machines, and most of the time it involves one or more flights of stairs.
I remember years ago I was building a deck for the back of my garden. Decided it would be easier to build the frame in the middle of the garden as there was more room to work and then carry it into position when done. It was pretty big and heavy so I called 3 mates to come over and help, thinking one on each corner would work. Thing was so heavy the only person getting a corner off the ground was me. Ended up getting the 3 of them on one side and me walking backwards on the other. Got it done with a little groaning and a bit of sweat.
