What are the factors that contribute to the difference in body size between people who work out at the gym and people who work physically demanding jobs?
A user asked the forum, “Why aren’t people who have physical jobs muscular?”. This sounds like an interesting question, let’s look at the top responses.
THEY DON’T USE BIGGER MUSCLES

“They don’t always use the biggest muscles, like the pecs, for what they do.
Give me a plumber or carpenter, and I’ll show you a dude that has the hand grip of a gorilla, though.”
PEOPLE WHO DO PHYSICAL JOBS ARE STRONGEST

“They may not be huge, but I guarantee you they’re stronger than they look.”
LOW-RESISTANCE WORK FOR 8 HOURS

“Not all physical work builds muscles the same way. Doing high-resistance muscle training for an hour every day is better for building big muscles than doing low-resistance work for 8 hours.
Not to mention, diet is as important as exercise in order to build muscle. You may see them working, but you don’t know what they’re eating.”
FOLLOWING NORMAL DIET

“Having muscle and it being visible are different.
Naturally, the vast majority of people won’t have much muscle definition on a normal healthy diet because there’ll be a layer of fat around it all, hence why bodybuilders are on specific diets and dehydrate themselves for further definition.”
THEY DON’T PUT MUSCLES UNDER STRESS ALL THE TIME

“People are talking about dieting, calories, and intensity and ignoring the OP’s question. I’m not necessarily disagreeing; I’m just tagging your comment.
When you work 8+ hours a day, you won’t put your muscles under stress all that time. You would be done after 30 minutes and then fired. What you do while working is use leverage to your advantage, so, for instance, a sledgehammer’s weight does the job for you. This will let you work without passing out because you’re utilizing your tendons for more leverage and not your muscles.
I think this anatomy basics is good for bodybuilders too to avoid having a health injury every 12 months. Muscles are cool, but worry about the ligaments attached to them.”
PEOPLE WITH PHYSICAL WORK HANDLE CONSISTENT WEIGHT

“I could be wrong, but my guess is people who work out have to gradually increase their workouts to continue to improve their physique. Lifting 100 pounds gets too easy, and they increase to 120, then 140, eventually 200, you get the idea.
Someone who’s, for example, lugging around packs of roofing tiles all day is getting a consistent weight, so at first they’d improve a bit, but only until it gets easy to lift, then they’re just plateaued.”
BODYBUILDERS GO IN DEHYDRATED AND ARE ANOREXIC

“TV and movies misrepresent what muscles look like. The so-called “muscular” people on TV shows and movies are dehydrated anorexic bodybuilders. People in real life with strong muscles don’t look like that.”
PEOPLE WHO DO PHYSICAL JOBS DON’T EAT RIGHT

“Bodybuilders dehydrated themselves for shows. At other times, they make sure to stay as hydrated as possible. You can’t lift while being dried out.
But to be honest, people are missing the obvious fact that bodybuilding is a specific sport that involves training beyond just lifting heavy stuff all day. You also have to have your diet on point to gain significant muscle.
The average person does not eat the right way for that, so even if they have bails of hay all day, they won’t necessarily look like a bodybuilder unless they have beneficial genetics.”
A LIGHTER LOAD DOES NOT DAMAGE MUSCLES

“The physical stimulus necessary to induce muscular hypertrophy often differs from the stimuli experienced by manual labor jobs. Take squatting, for example. The load the body is subjected to by a properly performed barbell squat is significantly greater, more consistent, and more mechanically sound than the load one is subjected to in construction jobs, which involve lighter, more cumbersome loads moved hundreds of times per day.
Lighter loads do not damage muscle to the degree necessary to induce the desired muscular adaptation to that load, i.e., voluminous growth.
To put it simply, lifting light for lots of reps won’t make you yolked. Lifting (relatively) heavier weights, with a lifestyle low in alcohol (manual laborers tend to drink), is more conducive to muscle growth.”
PEOPLE WHO DO PHYSICAL JOBS AREN’T DOING THE RIGHT EXERCISES

“Look up Olympic weightlifters. They don’t look like bodybuilders, either. A lot of them have visible guts, and their arms are hardly bulging with visible muscles in many cases, but they are some of the world’s strongest people.
Bodybuilders, including some of the people training in the gyms, are training to look good, not to be strong. People who do physical labor are getting stronger in whatever they are doing, but they aren’t doing the right exercises, diet, and techniques required to have that muscular look. That’s an entirely different thing.
Yes, this means bodybuilders are not as strong physically as you would think they are. Their muscles are built to look impressive, not to actually do anything.”
THEY AREN’T STIMULATING MUSCLES DIRECTLY

“They aren’t stimulating muscles directly, keyword “directly” enough to result in growth -probably on their feet all day burning calories -Diets could be affecting muscular development as well.
Probably have a lot of endurance for what they do, but unless you lift heavy repeatedly till failure, you won’t see many results. They do all tend to have strong forearms because that’s where a lot of the work is focused.”
NUTRITION IS A BIG FACTOR

“Nutrition tends to be a big factor. Getting a muscular and sculpted body is just as much a diet as it is exercise. Not to mention that gym exercise has been engineered to target specific muscles and muscle groups, while physical labor is just a general activation of the body.
They might not look like much. But challenge one to an arm wrestle and see for yourself.”
THEY ARE NOT GETTING ENOUGH PROTEIN

“Diet can have a big part in that. If they’re not getting enough protein in daily, it won’t matter how much physical work you put in.”
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