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Comment by 0xdba | Hacker News Reader

Weight lifters can go beyond 50+ lbs, safely, only if the weight is basically in barbell (or dumbbell, or whatever) format. A large 100lb box isn't being lifted by any smart weightlifter alone.

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The World's Strongest Man format contains a number of events that are probably a lot closer to real workplace lifting tasks than barbell events are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Strongest_Man#Compet... . Though of course those full competition weights are very much an upper bound and wouldn't be viable as everyday one-man lifts even if you hired elite strongmen to be your warehouse operatives.

OTOH 73kg (160lb) full beer kegs still get a fair bit of one-man manhandling, and to be a proper professional scaffolder you have to be able to lift a full-length scaffolding pole (just under 30kg, apparently?) from flat off the ground to straight up above your head, partly one-handed in one smooth movement, several times a day routinely.

Hopefully no one that handles beer kegs for a living is lifting full ones. They have special dollies for handling beer kegs, they even have special attachments for fork lifts for picking them up. I've never been to a brewery where anyone was picking up beer kegs by themselves.

You've also never been to a bar where the owner is too cheap to buy one of those dollies. Or rather you have, but you've just never been to the back of the bar where a porter is lifting those full gets up and down a rickety set of stairs.

as the person below commented strongmen train for the "atlas stones" event which involves lifting (arguably more difficult) spheres weighing from 50 to 339 pounds and placing them atop a shelf. there are also plenty of people that do "tire flips" (myself being one such person) where you lift and flip tires ranging from ~100lbs to >500lbs (and i'm not some kind of 99 percentile lifter).

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