Growing up during my formative years, I was never a teacher’s pet or anyone’s favorite in any capacity. Oh, how I resented the privileged few and their enabler supervisorial suck-ups who fawned over them. I vowed that I would never operate that way if ever in a position of authority. And now in a most hypocritical change of heart, I totally have my favorites with whom I’m far more pleasant and accommodating.
Unlike my childhood hierarchic foes who shaped my bitter and jaded disposition, I tend to go for the underdog Charlie-Brown-Christmas-tree types who are often dismissed. My idealistic reverse discrimination policy. I’ve never been particularly interested in the first-round draft picks or the kid with a parent on the school board, which might explain my lack of upward mobility.
Besides my favorites, I keep a mental list of superlatives: best athlete, strongest, grittiest, most annoying, and so on. The smartest athlete I’ve ever had in the weight room is an easy one, not even a close second. This young man did his undergrad work in physics at MIT and went on to earn a PhD.
We stayed in touch while he was a doctoral candidate in Boston, and one day he sought my advice on purchasing some exercise equipment. He was trying to figure out what size dumbbells would best serve his needs if he were to only buy one pair. This is a tricky question to answer, without an exact solution. Dumbbells are not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. What one exercise calls for may be quite different than what another exercise calls for. At best, you try to split the difference and determine what seems like a presumably versatile load.
After much deliberation, he settled on a pair of 55-pounders and promptly visited upon a local sporting goods store to carry out the purchase (literally). You have to understand that this guy knew everything there was to know about inertial mass, gravity, force vectors, work input, work output, and yet he never considered how he might get these things from the store back to his apartment. He carried them home alternating between two conventional methods as fatigue dictated switching from one technique to the other.
As a middle-aged man with shoulder issues, he attributes his orthopedic woes to that ill-fated day. And to this day he blames me for his sore shoulders and his hilarious, albeit stupid, Farmer’s Walk down Comm. Ave. Mensa intellect and academic talent don’t always go hand in hand with common sense. We’ll refer to him as Dr. X from here on out to avoid any potential libel lawsuits.
In a completely different tale of the unpleasant transport of strength training implements, let’s just say I didn’t have the most convenient training setup during my freshman year of college. The student fitness center had only metal plates (weights) and given the risk of property damage did not permit overhead lifting.
One of my local weightlifting contacts was good enough to lend me a pair of 15 kilo bumper plates for training, which then allowed me to do my lifts at the student fitness center. I carried those things, fingers uncomfortably stuffed in the bar holes, to and from the gym every time I worked out. At my best I had pretty decent grip strength. Lifting weight from the floor thousands of times a year is certainly helpful in that department, but I truly believe that my once-good grip strength is attributable to hauling those miserable things a quarter mile, five or six times a week for a school year.
Farmer’s walks, sandbag carries, and the like have gained in popularity in recent years. These kind of blue-collar strongman exercises can be a fun way to get back in touch with your primal self, and they’re quite functional. Moving stuff from point A to point B is what we do. Hiring movers, golf caddies, Sherpas, and couch potatoes notwithstanding.
I can’t tell you how many hulked-out gym heroes are useless when you need help moving a piece of furniture. But if you can walk with some hefty dumbbells in each hand (or one hand for that matter), a sandbag hoisted over your shoulder or while carrying it bearhug style – these sorts of things translate to life’s everyday chores.
Just think about carrying an air conditioning unit upstairs from the basement, grocery bags from your car, a laundry basket, or fishing for the right key to unlock the door while holding your kid with the other arm. We can talk about the benefits of upper back stabilization, postural alignment, and all the prehab/rehab upside, but, more simply put, you’re exposing your body to the kind of stresses that you’ll likely encounter in everyday life. And that is how to best prepare ourselves.
So, what’s the allegorical takeaway from those two unavoidable and sobering farmer’s walk episodes from back in the day? I’ve got above-average forearm strength while Dr. X got shoulder dysfunction, not to mention unfairly maligned in an article.
Even markedly functional exercise doesn’t always prepare us for what life throws at us. The gym is so attractive because you can very carefully choose what is hopefully an appropriate amount of weight, you can pick whatever distance makes sense, along with all the other training variables. When you’re taking something home from the store, you don’t have the luxury of warming up with lighter dumbbells or a smaller television set. The gym doesn’t have potholes or snow-covered sidewalks. Strength and endurance can very easily be compromised by precarious conditions.
An arduous trek home from a sporting goods store and schlepping bumper plates across campus everyday both demonstrate dedication and a love of training. With the warm weather upon us and things opening up once again, many of us are getting back on the horse.
Every journey, whether holding a pair of hundred-pound dumbbells or not, begins with the first step. Plan ahead, think things through, be a good decision maker, be a role model, don’t be a cautionary tale. If you’re in a gym, adjust accordingly, and if you’re a long way from home with something heavy in bad weather, book an Uber. Unless you’re a poor grad student living in a pre-smartphone world, of course.
— Certified strength and conditioning coach Norman Meltzer, the owner/operator of MW Strength and Conditioning in New Bedford, was known during his competitive weight-lifting career as “the Muscleless Wonder” for his lean, mean physique lacking in the traditional bulk associated with strength training. Meltzer’s experience and knowledge has helped pro, college and high school athletes and teams, and even regular people improve their strength and performance.
Schvitz’n with Norm
By Norm Meltzer