When I was at Amazon Fresh, they were always pushing us to keep rate. Rate was the time you spent picking up groceries. You ran around with a grocery cart and picked up groceries in a giant refrigerator, and if you couldn't keep rate, they would fire you. After 10 hours of doing it, it gets grueling, and most people get fired.
For the longest time, I was one of the achievers. I made rate. I learned fast, and everybody said I worked hard.
One day, Amazon trained me to do the 'move' function. You take a bag and moved it to another shelf. It was hardly anything worth training for.
At the time, I was very conscious of bending my knees to avoid hurting my back, but I was less aware of the hazards of non-symmetrical lifting. Since the scanner told you where to go, and you had no previous knowledge of where you were going, the system was biased towards lifting one bag at a time. The bio-mechanically proper way to lift one bag is to lift at the bottom and distribute the weight evenly. However, since you are in a rush and the bag had handles, you tended to take those handles and lift like a shopping bag.
(image source = https://askmypt.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/leaning-over.jpg)
Now, lifting one or two bags on your side will not cause problems. It is when you repetitive lift bags for 3 or more hours a day, that problems will develop. You'll discover one side of your body that stronger than the other, and when your tired, you lift only on one side.
By lifting 19-45lbs on one side for several hours daily, you effectively train your body to lift lopsided. The harder you work, the more you adapt and the faster you get at performing this movement.
Soon you'll develop a muscle imbalance that you are not even consciously aware of. For all intensive purposes, I thought I was walking fine. Sometimes, my joints made popping sounds, but it was nothing I worried about during the hustle and bustle of the day.
When Amazon finally placed me back into the 'pick' function, I tried to work as hard as I did before, but my rate was slower. I thought I was just tired, but then it happened the next day too. I sweated in that refrigerator, trying to keep rate, but it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep rate.
Soon I lost the job at Amazon Fresh.
A week or so later, I tried to get back to working out in the gym, but my body was still adapted to lifting on one side. During a combo Mixxfit and Rizzmic class, I jumped several times, and even though the jumps were light, I was not aware of my tendency to lean. I hurt my ankle.
So there you have it. I hurt my ankle because I worked hard.
I worked hard in a position that taught my body to move in an unbalanced way.
Don't train your body to do one-sided movements. When you want to run or jump, and you will break every time.
If your not bio-mechanically balanced, you can have all the will power in the world, but you'll lose every single time.
It's my lesson for the day.
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