A Practical Application of Strength - It feels better than it looks!

I had an experience today that I wanted to share. I'm in Eugene, Oregon and for the last few days we've had crazy amounts of snow followed up by an ice storm. As a result we've had a lot of downed trees because of the weight of the ice.

Today a tree limb came down, landing on my car. Luckily it didn't smash anything but the branch was sitting against the car and I had to remove it before I could move the car or I would probably break something. I don't have a chainsaw and didn't have a lot of options. I also wanted to get the branch off of the car asap because things were still falling.

Sooo close!

The limb was enormous!

I don't know how much this thing actually weighed but it was heavy. I was able to lift this branch up and hold it while my girlfriend rocked the car out of the icy spot it was in and moved it. All told it was probably only a few minutes but it was a few minutes of me picking up that huge branch by front-squatting it and then basically jerking it up over head a few times while trying not to let it smash back down into the car.

I was winded by the time I was done and I'm a little sore now but I'm really happy. This is really the first time I've ever required a practical emergency application of this kind of strength since I started lifting and I was completely capable of taking care of it. If this same thing happened a few years ago I would have been completely helpless until someone came and carted this thing away and I'd be walking to the store for emergency provisions.

I love the feeling of being capable. I started lifting so I would be healthy and better prepared for adversity. Every second I've spent in the gym paid off today.