Author Topic: Scientific study of limits to endurance  (Read 3613 times)

Kim

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    • Fediverse
Re: Scientific study of limits to endurance
« Reply #25 on: 08 June, 2019, 12:14:01 am »
Surely navvying is a lot more anaerobic than marathon running or riding a long way on a bicycle?  Lots of digging, heavy lifting and hitting things with BFO hammers...

Re: Scientific study of limits to endurance
« Reply #26 on: 08 June, 2019, 01:54:58 am »
Surely navvying is a lot more anaerobic than marathon running or riding a long way on a bicycle?  Lots of digging, heavy lifting and hitting things with BFO hammers...

No. They consumed 7,000 calories a day because their work was aerobic.

Quote
A 'good hand' among early canal cutters could dig twelve cubic yards of easy earth a day — eighteen tons, or perhaps the space taken up by a large single-decker bus; a place big enough to set up house in. But that was easy compared to what came later. On the early railways a single navvy was expected to fill seven wagons a day. (In [56/57] fact they worked in pairs. Two were expected to fill a set, or train, of fourteen wagons between them). To do so each man lifted twenty tons over his head. Sometimes a pair of men filled sixteen wagons a day and even then the best of them were in the ale house by late afternoon. 'The men, who are the finest workmen in Europe,' said Hekekyan Bey, 'dig out twenty-five cubic yards of heavy clay each day — but their desire to run to the public houses and get drunk is so great that many of them perform their day's work in a few hours.'

In the 1870s Lincolnshire navvies in the Victoria Dock extension in London shifted twenty-five cubic yards of peat or eighteen yards of clay every eight-hour shift. On the Manchester Ship Canal, said John Ward, two men had to fill twelve four-yard wagons as part of a day's work — and that meant lifting twenty-four tons of muck eight feet, clear over your head. 'I defy any man to prove that any slaves in the whole history of the world were worked to the extent that English navvies are.'

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/7.html

Re: Scientific study of limits to endurance
« Reply #27 on: 08 June, 2019, 08:04:37 am »
Surely navvying is a lot more anaerobic than marathon running or riding a long way on a bicycle?  Lots of digging, heavy lifting and hitting things with BFO hammers...

Whilst it is very rare to see such work today, you can get approximations with abattoir workers and competitive sheep shearing. The work is totally aerobic and is a joy to watch through the complete economy of movement.

FifeingEejit

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Re: Scientific study of limits to endurance
« Reply #28 on: 08 June, 2019, 10:11:30 am »
Surely navvying is a lot more anaerobic than marathon running or riding a long way on a bicycle?  Lots of digging, heavy lifting and hitting things with BFO hammers...
They had to move the digging, lifting and hitting apparatus around (theyd probably already eaten the horses of they had them) , they also had to walk to work sites and back often several miles from accommodstion, and walk around the site and of course the most  important of navvy activity, fighting.

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Re: Scientific study of limits to endurance
« Reply #29 on: 08 June, 2019, 10:53:14 am »
Surely navvying is a lot more anaerobic than marathon running or riding a long way on a bicycle?  Lots of digging, heavy lifting and hitting things with BFO hammers...
They had to move the digging, lifting and hitting apparatus around (they'd probably already eaten the horses of they had them) , they also had to walk to work sites and back often several miles from accommodation, and walk around the site and of course the most  important of navvy activity, fighting.



Setting up the site would be the work of day-labourers. Navvies involved in excavation and muck-shifting were paid by the wagon-load, and there was no mechanism for paying them to do general labouring. It's the same on many building sites today. Tradesmen are on piecework, and general labourers do the connecting bits, which aren't amenable to pricing.

Similarly, you wouldn't expect racing cyclists to be involved in shifting the barriers, and putting up signs. It's interesting to consider 'organised' cycling as work. The output is miles ridden within a given framework. The framework varies, and some 'workers' are highly paid. They can be considered as the successors of manual workers with a continuous heavy workload. The bulk of participants are imitating the level of activity that was commonplace in industry and agriculture in the past.

The division between amateur and professional sport originated from the fitness and stamina of manual workers, and their need to be paid. The schism between the two codes of rugby was the prime example. That division between 'Gentlemen', and 'Players' has narrowed as the amount of physical work in manual trades has diminished.

The last bastion of hard manual work is in upland agriculture, and is celebrated in competitions in sheep-shearing and dry-stone walling. The Basques have a site of 18 officially sanctioned endurance and strength sports, scything is probably the most aerobically demanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_rural_sports

That was the culture that gave us Miguel Indurain.