I’m a 56 year old male and have I worked out with a personal trainer 3 times a week with intensive weights and cardio for the past 2 years. As a result of this effort I consider myself quite strong and reasonably fit even if I need to drop another 20 lbs to get to my ideal target weight. In my 20’s I worked as a laborer in construction for a few summers and I understand what hard labor is.
Having said this in the past few weeks I have had a few episodes where I have had to do moderate to hard physical labor for a few hours at a crack. One was 4 hours of straight commercial landscape work with a hedge trimmer and weed wacker on a commercial site to make sure my deal went through and the other was putting up some 4’x8’ plywood signs on 8’ posts by myself with a screw gun and post hole digger. In both cases I ached the next day in my back and joints and it took me a day to get over the soreness and stiffness.
I look at people doing garbage collection routes and similar physical labor like factory work for 8 hours a day and the mind just boggles how they do that without destroying their bodies. Regardless of my working out I realize what a weak weasel I am compared to those guys.
I knew a guy who worked pouring concrete who was a regular at the bar/restaurant where I worked. One day, the gang at the bar was talking about retirement plans. Someone asked the concrete guy what kind of retirement plan he had. The concrete guy replied:
“Retirement plan??? You just drop dead on the job one day!”
My mister mostly worked non physical labour type jobs throughout his life, though he was in good enough shape to play football well into his fifties. It was also in his early fifties that he switched careers and became a Brew Master at a brew pub. This involves, among other things, climbing a ladder with many 50lb bags of grain!
Additionally, after age 65 he took on a side job as a carpenters helper, which involves a ton of hard physical work. And he loves it. And is in better shape now than he was ten years ago.
He just had a birthday and is now nearing 70, with no signs of slowing down. And it’s definitely keeping him young, most people are stunned to learn his actual age!
I wouldn’t do it but it takes all kinds to make a world, to be sure!
I’m a 56-year-old woman and a painting contractor and having a physically-demanding job, as well as being generally active, has helped keep me in shape all these years. I can still fling around 40-foot extension ladders and work all day outside in the summer heat alongside much younger men, but a few years ago I decided to quit being macho about it. I no longer do big-ass exterior jobs or new builds because actually I prefer less heavy lifting nowadays and working inside where it’s air-conditioned. I also do more decorative painting/plaster than I used to; it’s also a bit easier (usually.) My full-time helper is a 49-year-old woman who used to hang and finish drywall and she is tough as nails. In the last few months we’ve painted two supermarkets (inside, and one outside), a bunch of residential jobs, some faux and metallic plaster, stained three decks, the interior of a large church and a cinder block wall around a car dealership. Today she was one one job finishing up the inside of a custom (tile floors, striped walls) residential garage while I was painting exterior trim on a two-story house. Tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain tonight, I go stain a 1,000 square foot deck.
I know a guy who is still laying hardwood floors in his 80s. His daughter works with him, and she’s sixty-something. They are both small, scrawny people who smoke! I know two finish carpenters in their 60s. An industrial painter my age. A tile guy in his late 40s. Two general contractors - one late 40s, the other early 60s. I could go on…
I think that if one avoids job-related injury or illness, the type of fitness and mindset achieved by doing physical labor, as opposed to paying to work out in a gym, is somehow different. It’s not leisure, or trying to stay fit, or thin, or healthy…it just is what you do for a living.
My grandfather always had physically demanding jobs. He grew up as a dirt-poor farm kid in North Dakota and joined the CCC in the 30’s where he helped with road-building in the Bitterroot Mountains. In WWII, he was a medic, and after the war he was a digger on the Alaska Pipeline. He next worked as a silver miner in the Sunshine Mines in Idaho, but left mining after the big disaster in 1972. He went on to be a laborer at an aluminum manufacturing facility, but was severely injured in a boiler explosion, leading him to retire. Even then, he kept more physically active than anyone else I’ve ever known. He used to have a farm that he worked by hand with a team of horses. He refused to even consider a tractor until he was in his 70’s. He also used to go up on the mountain and cut his own firewood, as well as extra to sell, and would go trail-riding/hunting/camping for almost the entire months of October and November. On his 80th birthday, he celebrated by arm-wrestling (and beating!) all of his kids and grandkids. I don’t know if anyone let him win, but I know I gave it my all and lost within a few seconds. He developed dementia when he was 85 or so and had to be sedated sometimes because he’d get violent and was too strong for the staff to deal with. It broke my mom’s heart.
Anyway, I think that if you’re ALWAYS physically taxing your strength, you do build up muscles and strength enough so that what other people deem to be physically demanding is just another day at work.
Five days a week at the very least, and all of those full days in all sorts of weather. Not just an hour or two in a gym three times a week, with a personal paid coach, in a climate-controlled environment.
They often do destroy their bodies – my brother works construction (and has done a number of other physical jobs), and has terrible knees and a FUBAR shoulder.
It’s also a big problem with lobstermen – you have to go haul traps to make money, and they also tend to be reluctant to admit they need a doctor. There’s a lot of undertreated diabetes, heart conditions, back problems, knee problems, and shoulder problems out there.
I am a 48 year old carpenter and quite frankly I am tired a lot. By the end of the day I do not have the energy for much. Ms Fluffy is a few years older and runs a couple successful martial arts schools. All the training has taken its toll, her knees are shot, arthritis is an issue. She does not train like she once did and mostly manages her business doing marketing and paperwork. We both have young people to do a lot of the physical work for us.
I think the human body responds well to hard work however, especially if you can avoid truly damaging activities. I have a good back and am careful to lift properly, I wear my knee pads when necessary. Muscle balance is important - many muscular - skeletal issues can be dealt with proper exercise, and the occasional trip to a therapist to identify what the problem is. At the end of the day I may be tired, but I am in better shape (and younger looking) than most of my peers with desk jobs. That being said I doubt I will be doing it at the same level in ten years.
Stress injuries are a fact of life, but can be managed or mostly avoided if one is proactive. I am dealing with an outrageous acute bursitis in my elbow right now, which is going to take some time to get under control again because it is my right arm and it is hard not to use. It could have been prevented - it was acting up and I did not take action to deal with it. I banged through a day so I could leave on vacation when I really should have been at home.
I am a delivery driver. Once you streamline your processes you’ve just got to remember it’s a marathon and not a sprint. 12-14 hours of halfassing it feels (and pays) a lot better than 8 hours of cardio.
Also, buying cheap shoes is a false economy. You’re going to spend about the same each year regardless and you’ll do a lot better buying two quality pairs instead of six Wal-Mart pairs. And it becomes obvious REAL quick if you’re wearing the wrong underwear.
Well certainly any sort of ongoing physical exertion can have negative consequences, but then so can inactivity - even moreso.
I have two herniated discs in my lower back, but can’t say they were caused by my work, or leisure activity, or just shit happening. At any rate, it’s manageable and overall I think I’m better off at my age after decades of being active, as opposed to decades of being inactive. Most of my peers fall into the latter group, and have ongoing chronic health conditions and medication requirements.
You have to have a little luck, I’ve never had a back injury. My joint aches are all old high school injuries. The cool thing is my 60 year old friends who have office jobs are tired all the time, and I’ve got the energy of a kid. It’s tragic Hw Bush, Clinton, W, and Obama have allowed illegal immigration to destroy the wage base in our country, otherwise more of you could afford a nice healthy outdoor job in the trades.
My grandfather always had two jobs, at least - by the time I was born, he’d already retired from the railroad and sold his service station, and he and my grandmother owned and operated a restaurant. As his side job, he (manually) loaded and hauled pulpwood. I’ll never forget the summer that my father’s nephew worked for Granddaddy, pulpwooding. Wayne was in his early twenties at the time, Granddaddy was in his early sixties, and Wayne would come in from the woods every night, dying of exhaustion. Coming home from work for Granddaddy usually meant it was time to change out of his overalls, into his coveralls, and tinker on the truck, or rake the yard, or wash up and mop after supper. My cousin will still tell anyone that “that old man worked me into the ground!” My granddaddy remained super fit and strong precisely because that’s what he did every single day.
Frankly? If I’d been married to my grandmother for four+ decades, I’d have figured out some way to never retire, too. Going to the woods every day was as much for my grandfather’s mental health as his finances or physical health, I think.
I don’t know how long he’d have continued that - Granddaddy died of liver cancer at age 67. Until six months before his death, however, he could have bench pressed all of us!
I think he means that a large chunk of the entry level trade positions that used to be gateway ladders to an economically viable job or trade are now all filled with immigrant laborers (and a good many illegals) willing to take relatively low wages for construction trade jobs. Whatever your position on the long term effects of this he’s not incorrect re this trend and the demographics. Decades ago it used to be that a teenager or 20 something could get a decent entry level job in the trades or low skill physical labor positions. These positions are all pretty much owned by adult male immigrants at this point who will generally work harder for less money.
My only quibble would be that that niche isn’t “all” filled with adult male immigrant workers. Plenty of young non-immigrants still find fairly lucrative entry-level trade jobs; I know several. Those that want to anyway - there’s a reason that these positions tend to be filled by immigrants. American-born youth isn’t interested in farm or manual labour jobs.
I no longer do big-ass exterior jobs or new builds because actually I prefer less heavy lifting nowadays and working inside where it’s air-conditioned. I also do more decorative painting/plaster than I used to; it’s also a bit easier (usually.) My full-time helper is a 49-year-old woman who used to hang and finish drywall and she is tough as nails. In the last few months we’ve painted two supermarkets (inside, and one outside), a bunch of residential jobs, some faux and metallic plaster, stained three decks, the interior of a large church and a cinder block wall around a car dealership. Today she was one one job finishing up the inside of a custom (tile floors, striped walls) residential garage while I was painting exterior trim on a two-story house. Tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain tonight, I go stain a 1,000 square foot deck.
