If someone writes a book and someone else doesn’t “get it”, is it the fault of the author?
the fact you can’t understand what I’m upset about says much more about your ability to read between the lines than anything else. For example, I can read your post and determine you think I’m either an asshole or don’t know how to properly express myself, which is why I clarified that I can write 
You can be in shape but still have problems like bad backs, knee problems, arthritis, etc. Stuff like that doesn’t prevent you from basic exercise, but you most likely won’t be able to carry a bunch of heavy furniture like that.
Everyone at some point in his or her life becomes some kind of burden to someone or something in one way or another. You could easily find yourself paralyzed from a freak lifting mishap and then be a burden. You don’t live other people’s lives so it’s not your business to judge their physical fitness unless they ask for your advice. Different people are different.
Too take people into your life as they are, not as they think they should be. Is this person someone you care about? Someone you have an obligation to? A friend? A relative? Is this person too poor to hire movers? Be as generous or as stingy as you want with your time, but don’t pretend it has something to do with them. It’s all on you. If you agree to help, then you accept that person’s ability and strength as it is, not as you think it should be.
You’re two one who brought up being a “man.” It’s up to you to explain what you mean by it.
Wanting help is not pathological. Being less strong than you think they should be might be a physical limitation but not a mental or a character pathology.
Grrrrrrrrr! Elliott strong! Elliott lift couch! Elliott smash walnuts with mighty cock! Elliott REAL MAN! Grrrrrrr!
And which you keep coming back to defend over and over and over again, interspersed with kvetching about how other people should just ignore it.
Look dude, if you’re saying “Okay, forget the 200 lbs, it was a stupid example, my point is just that people of whatever lifting capacity ought not to try to carry stuff that’s too heavy for them”, then stop trying to justify that specific number. If you do insist on continuing to try to justify that specific number, stop complaining that other people are criticizing your choice of it.
If the author is as incoherent and inconsistent as you’ve shown yourself to be in this thread, then yes.
To be fair, there’s no reason it couldn’t be both. 
Amen to that. As someone quite strong and enduring for my age and gender but definitely not in the couch-carrying class, I have had some truly impressive pro movers working for me.
How to make pro movers happy even if there are stairs:
Yeah, most idiots cannot see how they are idiots.
Leather couch with built-in recliners? Bulky and heavy. Not much different than the dreaded sofabed, not quite as heavy but a more awkward lift with weight very likely unevenly distributed. And idiots sometimes do not secure the recliners so things extend at bad moments. Hard to get and maintain a good grip.
Let’s give an unwarranted pass on not bothering to verify the stairs were a straight shot and that the couch needed to be set down for a second (half a minute!). Bottom guy sets his end down on a step first sure that it is secure and then top guy lowers his end. Before letting go top guy has bottom guy verify the bottom is secure and that he can maintain its position.
Heavy sofas on stairs can cause serious injury. Leaving someone holding a bottom end up by himself was reckless and stupid. Inexcusably so.
Again, glad you did not cause your friend serious harm. Do him a favor and never help him again.
I can touch 200 lbs. for 30 seconds !
Also, once we have determined who are not men, can we move on to who is Devo?
Amen brother
Or maybe shittalking the average male for your stupidity. You are carrying the upper end of the couch up the stairs? Sooooo you’re shittalking someone for pushing the entire weight of the couch up the stairs while you hold the upper end clear of the steps and then you stop at the top, set your end down and watch them struggle?
I retract the comment I made about you sounding like an idiot, you’re an asshole, the type who gets people hurt.
I don’t think so.
There is also the fact that as you hit your 30s and older issues like slipped discs, torn muscles and pinched nerves become a more serious threat.
Last time I helped someone move we had 6 people. Of those six people, three developed moderately serious injuries that each took months to heal. Fuck that. Hire college students.
Honestly this thread has just devolved into pedants being overly specific with how they interpret things and people projecting details that I never even expressed onto my story
I don’t really know how many times I have to clarify that I checked the stairwell was clear before starting to move the couch or that 200lbs is an example of a weight that I figured most people can hold indefinitely before you guys stop saying “Yeah but what about THIS specific interpretation that I’ve made up because I want you to be stupid”.
You’re all right, but you’re also assholes.
Welcome to the boards.
elliott, it really doesn’t take any pedantic analysis of your textual exertions to note your relative lack of intelligence. Most of us need only read statetements from you like
to figure that out. The fact that you’ve also repeatedly insisted that the inability to lift such a weight means the unable person isn’t “fit” is another dead giveaway that you’re an idiot.
I’m happy to clarify these things for you, and if you should need help understanding other objections, let me know. Just, maybe ask some others as well.
I’m just saying. Don’t make me do all the heavy lifting for you.
you’re the asshole who barged in here claiming that anyone who couldn’t hold up 200 lbs is “weak.”
look, your problem is that you think “being healthy” = “being a weight lifter.” You totally screw your own argument when you talk about people’s health today vs. years ago. And I, like others, say you’re full of shit. I have scores of photos of my grandparents and their friends from the 1940s-1960s. Yes, they were definitely not as fat as people are today. But you know what else they weren’t? Muscular. I looked at a few photos of my grandfather from about 1955, and he was (by modern standards) scrawny. And this is a guy who served in WWII in the Navy, and worked some excruciating manual-labor jobs afterward.
and people weren’t really healthier back then, anyway. They may not have been suffering from obesity-related metabolic diseases, but they were suffering from conditions brought on by workplace conditions, environmental conditions, or infectious diseases. My grandfather I mentioned above? One of those jobs he had after the war was working in coal mines, which gave him Coal workers’ pneumoconiosis a.k.a Black Lung. He spent the last 5 years of his life degrading until he died from it at 65.
lifting weights wouldn’t have saved him. So shut it with your “if you can’t lift some random number of pounds I’ve dreamed up you’re not a man” bullshit. my grandfather was in WWII and worked hard jobs which eventually killed him. So please understand if I don’t give one wet runny shit how much you can bench press.
I was going to say C- minus trolling, but he’s certainly gotten some people to engage. I’ll call it a solid B.
He’s not a troll. Just an asshole.
You *are *weak if you can’t deadlift 200 lbs. That’s an objective fact. Like I’m willing to let the rest of you call me an idiot based on your own suppositions or whatever you need to feel good about yourself, but 200 lbs is what a highschool freshman should be deadlifting by Christmas. The most recommended and respected beginner barbell routine has you hitting 200 on your deadlift by week 9 at the absolute latest. The vast majority of lifters will hit it far sooner.
Your anti-intellectualism (on a forum for a column dedicated to fighting that) is kind of appalling. Claiming that weightlifting isn’t a core part of fitness is downright wrong. The benefits of building muscle are scientifically proven.
Please prove how a weight that an untrained individual can work up to within 2 months is a heavy weight? That’s like saying that something you’ve learned in kindergarten is intellectual or being able to draw a stick figure is artistic. Its the bare minimum that anyone who is at all interested in the hobby would consider “trained”. Its not me being a dick, its me just stating an objective fact. If you can’t lift a weight that requires the minimum of training to lift, you’re not weak.