While I am rarely on social media these days, I used to be a Facebook regular, both for professional utility and personal entertainment. One day, Facebook presented me with a prank video of a relatively thin weightlifter pretending to be a health club custodian and shocking more musclebound exercisers by easily lifting their heavy barbells.
Maybe I watched the video because when I was a personal trainer, I used to perform custodial duties when I was not busy with clients, and I was curious to see a fellow gym janitor featured in a video. Or maybe I took the time because way back in my college weight room, other students occasionally offered confused looks or comments when I lifted more than they expected. Regardless of whatever my reason for pausing my scroll on the video was, I watched it. We know the way these social media algorithms work is that once you watch one video, you can expect a downpour of similar videos to soon come your way. Sure enough, this faux custodian has several other videos that quickly showed up in my feed, and while the exact circumstances seem to vary, the punchline is always the same: shocked onlookers in disbelief that someone so small can lift such heavy weights.
That got me thinking about other life experiences I have had in which size-based expectations of an athlete turned out to be off base. As far back as eighth grade science class, I learned that strength is a function of more than just muscle mass. For example, the location of where the distal biceps tendon attaches to the radius bone influences mechanical advantage, which means that a relatively scrawny person with a more advantageous attachment point might be able to curl more weight than a more musclebound individual with a different attachment point. Technique also matters, which is why the sixth grader I played tennis with shortly before the pandemic could hit the ball so much harder than I could.
Back in 2013, I competed in the U.S. Mountain Running Championships (The event was open to everybody, so please do not mistake me for some elite mountain runner.) and finished after scores of men who were older and/or heavier than me. Sure, age and body mass influence running ability, but so do factors such as mechanical efficiency, VO2 max, health conditions, racing strategy, nutrition, sleep, training, tapering, and even footwear.
A few years after that race, I wrote an article for Boston Baseball regarding Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval and the flak he was dealing with because of his weight. The editor suggested the title, “Leave the Fat Kid Alone,” which I liked because it succinctly captured the point I was trying to make about both Sandoval and the general weight stigma that pervades our culture. Sure, maybe Sandoval did not look the part of a baseball player in the eyes of some, but remember that there were approximately 5,500 minor leaguers (according to the Major League Players Association) toiling in the minor leagues while he was earning millions of dollars in the majors because he possessed skills that most of them – including some with more societally-acceptable physiques – lacked.
Having just logged back into Facebook for the first time in a while, I checked one of the aforementioned prank videos because I was curious to see how my fellow viewers reacted to it. Looking at one specific video, I see that of the approximately 34,000 people who selected a reaction emoji, over 28,000 chose the thumbs up while approximately 4,000 people selected the laughing smiley face. My reaction to the videos? On one hand, I was impressed, just as I am when the elite Boston marathoners zoom by me or when my nephew solved a Rubik’s cube in virtually no time at all. On the other hand, the videos made me a little sad since they are only “funny” because they take advantage of a social stereotype. In other words, take away the onlooker’s astonishment and the humor vanishes. In a healthier culture, they would be nothing more than clips of dudes lifting weights, and what would be funny about that?