I’m an electrician and a lot of the older guys at my job have so many knee and back issues but I always see older people who went to the gym every day look and feel great
In: Biology
Being at the gym even for an hour probably really just equates to like 10 minutes of actual lifting. For a lot at least. Compare that to hours & hours of physical labor.
Not to mention you’re doing movements that are safer. Many people forget about form when working because they want to get done. Let’s say you have to deliver a lot of boxes. You’re probably going to bend over incorrectly just because you want to hurry up as where the gym you’re going to lift correctly/breath and take your time.
1-2 hours usually 4-6 times a week doing controlled exercise in good form with breaks VS 8-12 hour shifts 5 days a week at least with minimal breaks and often no consideration for posture or injury.
Even if you go to the gym every day, it’s not close to a full time manual labor job. You’ll often be doing the same task for hours or days at a time.
However, sitting at a computer or driving all day will actually kill you, so I’ll take manual labor (I gave up my sales career and started a trade business)
> I’m an electrician and a lot of the older guys at my job have so many knee and back issues but I always see older people who went to the gym every day look and feel great
In addition to the other responses, there are two other reasons I can think of for your observation:
**1. Survivor bias.** When you see older people who went to the gym every day who look and feel great, you’re only seeing the ones who didn’t stop going to the gym due to knee and back injuries. For all you know, there is an entire other set of former gymgoing oldsters who do have such problems. This means that the older electricians and older gymgoers populations may not be all that different as it appears. Also, even if the populations don’t differ as much, it may be that people in a gym setting feel less likely to complain about their bodies (maybe as a point of pride) as someone would at work.
**2. Possible different subpopulations in terms of voluntary health behaviors over the lifetime.** It’s possible is that older (60s+) electricians, as a subpopulation, aren’t nearly as likely to go to take care of their health and fitness (including their weight, which can have a huge negative effect on knees and back) as carefully as dedicated older gymgoers. Similarly, older electricians, on average, may not be being as dutiful at doing really rigorous strengthening exercises to provide as much support for their vulnerable joints as older gymgoers.
Gym can definitely mess you up. Read the story of Ronnie Coleman. Guy never missed leg day except for 13 surgeries. Oh and he hasn’t been able to walk on his own since 2020.
Bath are equally destructive if you don’t carefully do it correctly. I’m 50 and work in “the trades” and I can tell you I’m in better physical shape than a lot of my friends who have traditional office jobs.
It’s absolutely true that if you spend 20 years on your knees laying carpet, it’s going to mess you up. But spend the same time sitting at a desk breathing recycled farts and black mold from the HVAC system, is pretty bad as well.
People that go to the gym 12 hours a day 5 days a week DO have the same injuries and permanent damage to their bodies.
Another thing that isn’t being mentioned is chemical exposure. It’s one of the reasons a lot of tradesmen were telling their kids to go to college.
Sure things are safer now than it was when the boomers were kids (And let’s be fair- boomers were the ones being told to go to college) but you could usually tell who the manual laborers were in retirement homes cause they often had Mesothelioma, farmers lung, or other chemical exposure diseases. My grandpa turned down an offer to join an HVAC company his buddies founded and he outlived everyone except the secretary and the accountant.
…by 65…
The people at the gym are probably stretching before their labor and most likely have better eating habits.
Construction workers usually smoke and don’t give a fuck about their bodies. I use to be one.
To all this on-point information, I’ll add one more ingredient for body self destruction.
Repeated vibration destroys your nerves, coordination and your ability to heal. Long term use of electric tools like nail guns, jack hammers, and any vibrating hand tool is incredibly damaging. Nerves are the slowest thing for your body to repair, if it even can.
It doesn’t even take years. One day of holding a jackhammer wrong, without breaks, is enough to make your hand and arm tingle and prickle for life. Even a Dremel held too long will do it.
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