Grunt Work

One of my favorite movies growing up was Platoon, the 1986 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. The movie featured an outstanding director and cast, many of which who have continued to have successful careers. The character portrayed by Charlie Sheen, Taylor,  provides a narrative insight during the film.

Well, here I am, anonymous, all right. With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of them, small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Bend, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? They're the bottom of the barrel, and they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves grunts, 'cause a grunt can take it, can take anything. They're the best I've ever seen, Grandma. The heart and soul.

The Grunts did all the jobs no one else would do, humped supplies in and out of the “bush” and carried the weight of the war on their backs. I would bet they had really strong backs!

If you have ever done hard physical labor you would know that you need to be pretty strong as well as have the endurance to carry out the tasks needed throughout the day. The term grunt work is still used today to describe the work performed by these labor tasks. I’m lucky enough to say I’ve had the opportunity to do this type of work. I think it builds character and it gives meaning to the term “going out and earning” When you have finished a day you know you have definitely earned a day's pay.

Personally I’ve carried tons of heavy stuff in my hands and on my shoulders, crawled through attics and crawl spaces, dug trenches, stacked supplies, dragged equipment through the woods and countless other tasks that required some type of brute force. For me it’s always been a way to maintain fitness even though I wasn’t going to a traditional gym or had a specific training plan.

In the trend of functional fitness these are the type of tasks we are preparing ourselves for. In the process of trying to derive the best exercises that will enable us to do that type of work I see a trend that actually moves us further away from performing those tasks. It becomes more of a race to see who can be more creative or can create the most innovative regime. While all of this can be helpful I wouldn’t want to move to far away from performing those back breaking tasks.

If you wanted to be a better carpenter, pick up a hammer. If you wanted to become a better mason, better start working on mixing some mortar. In fitness this is called specificity.

I haven’t always had the best tools at my disposal in order to train so I’ve had to be creative. I’ve dug up large stones and used them to carry around. I’ve split rounds of wood by hand and the ones that were too hard to split I carried them around too. Last winter I filled up two, five gallon buckets with water, set them outside and let them freeze. It was such a cold winter they stayed frozen quite some time and I used them for farmers carries (outdoors of course). I didn't have medicine balls but I had some old tires to sling around. I was doing the “grunt work” and getting stronger because of it.

I’m not saying you have to start looking around your garage for things to throw over your shoulder but if you are going to a gym there may be tools that can help simulate real world movements. Sandbags and medicine balls are great tools for this as well as dumbbells (they are not just for curls).

A couple of simple rules to follow if you would like to add this type of training into your fitness program:

1. Find someone to guide you through it. If you have never done this before get some solid advice, you wouldn’t start building a house if you didn’t own a hammer.
2. Warm up. It’s never a good idea to do intense work without it no matter how tough you think you’ll look with a boulder on your shoulder.
3. Do it on both sides.  While i can't say I did this while I was performing such tasks for occupational purposes, for training purposes we want be smart and stay balanced.
4. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. This should go without saying but if you can't see where a certain movement might apply you are probably right.
5. Once you feel you're done, do a little more. There might be a cost versus benefit factor here but in life there is always just a little more work at the end to ensure that we did a quality job. Don’t leave your job undone!

Now that you’ve been given your orders complete your mission and get your grunt on!