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Have you seen how many people complain about carrying a 2 to 5 lb laptop a few miles? No wonder strength is down across the board. Go dig a hole every now and

Have you seen how many people complain about carrying a 2 to 5 lb laptop a few miles? No wonder strength is down across the board. Go dig a hole every now and again. Do some sandbag training. Play on the monkeybars with your kids. DO SHIT and lift heavy stuff when you can.

stuckagain 10y ago
I'd be surprised if the average American alive today has ever walked a few miles in his life.
- rexreed 10y ago
  All at once or do you mean over their lifetime? In the first sense, possibly correct but probably not. In the second sense, without a doubt incorrect.
rusk 10y ago
> Go dig Without a doubt, one of the most satisfying all-body compound exercises you can do. Spend a day digging and you'll have pains in places you didn't even know you had muscles.
throwanem 10y ago
Or just wander all over the place. It's not just good exercise; you might half-slide, half-tumble down a hundred-foot hill and find this at the bottom: http://i.imgur.com/2zfbnc9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2zfbnc9.jpg (And a nest of bees at the top, on the way back up! There is nothing I know of that'll send you up that last twenty feet of 45° slope faster than to bump into a deadfall log and hear it start angrily humming.) Those blue jeans you might make so much of wearing to work every day? This is the sort of thing they are made for. Give them a workout, and yourself as well. You'll feel a lot better for it!
nicolas_t 10y ago
I'm in France currently and it's been a while since I've seen monkey bars in a kid playground. Along with swings and sand, they've been deemed too dangerous by the authorities. With the current playgrounds, I don't think kids have a lot of opportunities to build up strength. Less than we did as a kid.
- aptwebapps 10y ago
  Sand? What's the danger with sand? Eye injuries?
  - ddebernardy 10y ago
    Nothing dangerous insofar as I'm aware, but small children tend to put the stuff in their mouths. At which point, probably think about people stepping in there with dirty shoes, cigarette ash and butts, cat/dog/bird pee and poo, etc.
    - chrismaeda 10y ago
      It's a good workout for their immune systems. I let my kid eat all the dirt he wants.
  - bmelton 10y ago
    Not good enough at absorbing impact, ergo, deemed unsafe[1]. Last I recall, the recommendation was to replace it with wood chips, but I think even that's been superseded to be rubber chips instead, which also happen to be considerably more expensive. To my eye, I deem spurious any science that concludes their findings with 'grass is unsafe', but at the same time I must acknowledge that sure, many of the things we did as kids were dangerous, and just because it was normative to me doesn't mean that it should be normative -- in the same way that kids no longer ride in the backs of pickup trucks, or try to loop around the swingset. That said, it's still pretty hard to get over the fact that the ground is considered actively harmful enough that we would close down playgrounds in response. [1] - http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000195 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
    - aptwebapps 10y ago
      Perhaps you mistyped? The conclusion in the paper you linked to was the opposite: Granitic sand playground surfaces reduce the risk of arm fractures from playground falls when compared with engineered wood fibre surfaces. Upgrading playground surfacing standards to reflect this information will prevent arm fractures.

stuckagain 10y ago

I'd be surprised if the average American alive today has ever walked a few miles in his life.

rexreed 10y ago
All at once or do you mean over their lifetime? In the first sense, possibly correct but probably not. In the second sense, without a doubt incorrect.

rusk 10y ago

> Go dig Without a doubt, one of the most satisfying all-body compound exercises you can do. Spend a day digging and you'll have pains in places you didn't even know you had muscles.

throwanem 10y ago

Or just wander all over the place. It's not just good exercise; you might half-slide, half-tumble down a hundred-foot hill and find this at the bottom: http://i.imgur.com/2zfbnc9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2zfbnc9.jpg (And a nest of bees at the top, on the way back up! There is nothing I know of that'll send you up that last twenty feet of 45° slope faster than to bump into a deadfall log and hear it start angrily humming.) Those blue jeans you might make so much of wearing to work every day? This is the sort of thing they are made for. Give them a workout, and yourself as well. You'll feel a lot better for it!

nicolas_t 10y ago

I'm in France currently and it's been a while since I've seen monkey bars in a kid playground. Along with swings and sand, they've been deemed too dangerous by the authorities. With the current playgrounds, I don't think kids have a lot of opportunities to build up strength. Less than we did as a kid.

aptwebapps 10y ago
Sand? What's the danger with sand? Eye injuries?
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  Nothing dangerous insofar as I'm aware, but small children tend to put the stuff in their mouths. At which point, probably think about people stepping in there with dirty shoes, cigarette ash and butts, cat/dog/bird pee and poo, etc.
  - chrismaeda 10y ago
    It's a good workout for their immune systems. I let my kid eat all the dirt he wants.
- bmelton 10y ago
  Not good enough at absorbing impact, ergo, deemed unsafe[1]. Last I recall, the recommendation was to replace it with wood chips, but I think even that's been superseded to be rubber chips instead, which also happen to be considerably more expensive. To my eye, I deem spurious any science that concludes their findings with 'grass is unsafe', but at the same time I must acknowledge that sure, many of the things we did as kids were dangerous, and just because it was normative to me doesn't mean that it should be normative -- in the same way that kids no longer ride in the backs of pickup trucks, or try to loop around the swingset. That said, it's still pretty hard to get over the fact that the ground is considered actively harmful enough that we would close down playgrounds in response. [1] - http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000195 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
  - aptwebapps 10y ago
    Perhaps you mistyped? The conclusion in the paper you linked to was the opposite: Granitic sand playground surfaces reduce the risk of arm fractures from playground falls when compared with engineered wood fibre surfaces. Upgrading playground surfacing standards to reflect this information will prevent arm fractures.