Active lifestyle instead of weights

[John19]

Most of the people on EF say that in order to gain mass you need to lift heavy and you should try and cut out aerobic activity. But recently I got a job for a removalist company and found that I had gained weight but was losing fat. Also, looking back it seems that in the past I have gained more weight from doing this like pushups and pullups than lifting. Does anyone else find that they are in better shape from simply living an active lifestyle than doing heavy weights?

 

[Madcow2]

Your body reflects your lifestyle. At some point it will be very hard to continue to put on muscle with lower intensity/endurance type activity. A lot 'preceived' supperiority might depend on what exactly you were doing for training before (i.e. moving heavy stuff is very much full body and if you did a lot of machines before rather than concentrating on big compound freeweight exercises this is massive). In the end, it's about your goals and what you want.

 

[Protobuilder]

Does anyone else find that they are in better shape from simply living an active lifestyle than doing heavy weights?

Better "shape"? You mean, physically fit in general? Then, yes. Simply lifting weights won't make you "fit" all around. It may in some cases, I guess. But there are lots of elements of being "fit" beyond building muscle mass. Big gym-goers who do no other training will be less able to demonstrate aerobic fitness or anaerobic endurance in tasks such as sprinting while bearhugging a heavy bag, etc., then those who train those energy systems as well. To me, weight training is an important PART of an overall training regimen.

 

[djeclipse]

If you have a manual Labour job that requires you to lift a lot of weight every day you're going to be a lot stronger, have a better grip etc. then someone that sits at a dest for 8hrsa day.

My GF's dad has worked in construction all his life and he is a physically strong guy, he's got a really strong grip and a strong core from cairying around and moving shit all day. and he;'s never worked out a day in his life.