Does a physical job gives or takes away from your sport preformance?

Hi!

I worked at the fields at our "farm" this weekend, the sun was very hot, I drilled and knocked down the electric fences pales, moved up and down on the hill.
I was very tired and I thought that I won't have any power to train after this.

What do you think, if some one works in a warehouse, at a farm, or any kind of physical job, and you drop dead in the bed at the end of the day, you have worser chances then those who are sitting in any office all day?

Of course it depend on how much can you get used to it.

Should it be count as a "cardio wokrout", so you could be fitter then those who don't do any physical activity besides training, or you take away from your recovery time, and be weaker at training?

What is your personal experiance? How does your job effect you?

Thanks!
(sorry for my english)

 

It depends on your ability to adapt.

 

It's tough. It takes a lot of self motivation and discipline to clean up and go lift more weights or exert yourself physically for another few hours after you've just been handling heavy tools or pushing labour for 10 hours.. Then you gotta cook for the next day... It's a bitch but I'm sure it gets easier as the days progress.

 

Depends on the type of physical labor too. I did landscaping for a while but it was mostly mowing big ass lawns and strumming trees. I was still able to train pretty well as long as I stayed fueled up.

Later I stocked lumber at a Home Depot at nights for 8-10 shifts 5-6 times a week. Unloading trucks hauling shit really left me pretty beat by the end of shifts, I still ran a lot then but didn't do much if any lifting while doing that job.

 

Someone mentioned it in another thread recently, and I've seen similar analogies before. If you imagine a basin that fills up with water (stress), then doing an intensive manual labour job will fill the basin up a lot without including any other stress, such as from training or just general life.

Eating plenty of food and sleeping properly will 'widen the plug hole'. Meaning you can recover from more stress. But yeah it's still gonna be harder than someone who has more time to train.

 

You'll get used to it and in the long run be better than the office weaklings.

 

Nutrition and rest are the things. Baring RSI or pulls/injury everyone I know who is a manual laborer is stronger than those that are not. Usually because of their ability to continue pushing out work under pain/stress.

There's an accommodation period. Then you can start adding.

 

Unfortunately yes it does take away from your sport to work a physical job or really any regular job because that is time you are spending not training/recovering.

 

I worked as a garbageman at a big, but understaffed, hospital. I cleaned out 16 floors twice a day, both garbage and laundry. Pretty much hauled shit around from 7am to 3pm each day with 30min-1hour break during that time on normal days. It was a terribly straining and stressful job. Not only did you have to do that shit in the most ackward positions, in narrow corridors, you also had to hurry the fuck along to get everything done before the trucks left. I did that for 3 years.

I trained as well and I was completely burned out every day. I gained a lot of finger and grip strenght, but pretty much everything else stalled and was a battle. I was so overworked, was sick all the time. It SUCKED and definitely didn't make me as strong as a sensible training program has. Maybe if I had a better base.

 

Not really. Working a really physical job helps a ton with active recovery. I have a job in landscape construction, and I attribute a lot of my deadlift and squat strength to my job. One of the guys I competed against in the past had a very hard/physical job as a miner. Consequently, he's one of the best natty deadlifters in the 181 class, last year he pulled 705 in competition.

 

Not a good argument, sorry. You could specifically program said active recovery in a more optimal fashion if full time training was your full time job. And then you would have all day to be able to handle more training volume and more time spent with active/passive recovery methods. Goes for any sport and there is really no way around it as much as I hate the idea of it. I didnt say it was necessary it would just be more optimal.

 

Ok. My point was more that having an physical job does help with active recovery and some aspects of strength. I completely agree with you about how training would be optimal if it was your full time profession and you had no other job. However, there are very few "professional" strength athletes in the world. You're kind of pointing out the obvious that having a full time job training would be optimal.

 

fair enough

 

I'm a sprinkler fitter, aka hard labor, lots of wrenching in pipe and carrying 21 ft. lengths of pipe(heavy but more awkward than anything, it's all in how you handle it), but yeah it definitely drains my energy from gym, especially in summer and winter, the cold takes it out of you like the heat. A lot of times I'm 40 ft up in ceiling or in attics where it's 20 degrees warmer than actual temp. But through determination I still see decent gains, hitting the gym definitely helps with the job too, I work circles around most guys, I hope to maintain my gym habits until I retire because being a pipe fitter beats you down and gets tougher with age. Just got to eat right, get rest, and stretch alot.