Fitness Brainery » » Bricklaying Fitness from 1901 using Therbligs

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Bricklaying Fitness from 1901 using Therbligs

Morning!

Have you ever considered manual labor to be an excellent means of fitness?

Think about, oh, say, brick-laying - done properly, it can work your entire core, individual muscles, enable you to smoothly execute motions that actually end up delivering a solid, physical result and more!

I’m particularly fond of brick-laying as an exercise, not because I do it myself, but because of this particular clip.

Notice the horse-drawn wagons at around 1:53 into the movie, and the beginning of the brick-laying sequence at around 2:35 or so.

Now, here’s a question for you - do you recognize the director of this clip?

It’s by Frank Gilbreth, the father in the story Cheaper By The Dozen. He and his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, were the Father and Mother of Motion Study, a field that to this day is used for increasing industry productivity (You can see Frank’s book about Motion Study for free over HERE - check out page 26).

Done the Gilbreth Way (ie, Therbligs), the "motions per brick" decreased from 18 down to 5, and the number of bricks layed by hand per hour increased from 175 to 350.

All those reps! Just think about the physical fitness benefits! :)

It’s really neat to think about how ‘way back then, over 100 years ago, people were looking to streamline physical processes. True, it was for business productivity…but think about how it can be applied to well-being too!

Pass me a brick,

Barbara Ling

ps - did you know you can get books by the Gilbreths to this day? I used eBay to win my autographed copies (some from the early 1900s!) - here’s what available now.

Please click here to continue your search.

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