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I've hear an interesting opinion irl that if you're a while collar worker you pretty much cannot gain any significant fitness. This doesn't mean that going to gym is pointless: it will save you from bordering on disability & diseases from hypokinesia such as obesity, but won't make you physically strong. How much time can you, realistically, spend in a gym? One hour every day is already a lot for most people. That's 6 hours per week, not counting Sundays.

Warehousemen spend 8 hours every day, 40 hours every week doing physical exercise. They don't even have to go to gym. Thus a warehouseman who does not care at all about his fitness will already be much, much stronger than a white collar worker who tries to live a healthy life and diligently goes to gym.

Our bodies are designed to adapt to challenges posed by their environment. They get strong, resilient, fast, agile, etc if and only if daily survival requires this (notwithstanding some weird outliers who just won the gene lottery). Only physical workers really need good physical condition and thus only physical workers get it. Spending your spare time in gym won't let you cheat out of this unless you can spend 8 hours every day in gym, which you can't, or else you wouldn't have much time left to sleep.

Is it indeed true that just being a blue collar worker already gives incomparably greater benefits than any white collar worker can ever get by trying to live a healthy life?

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    Going to the gym won't make you physically strong - are you kidding me? Physical work offers fitness advantages against office work, but you can't compare it with someone that trains regularly and has time to rest - thus, grow stronger. I believe your question compares apples to oranges.
    – Luciano
    Commented Mar 28 at 10:32
  • @Luciano The point is that gym-goers spend about 6 hours a week doing physical exercise, while physical workers spend 8 hours a day doing physical exercise. This is very comparable - gym goers get about 6 to 7 times less exercise than physical workers. Consequently they will get much worse results.
    – gaazkam
    Commented Mar 28 at 16:41
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    There is also the matter of occupational injury. While I work in software, I have friends and family in blue-collar jobs. Several had to retire in their 40s from the arthritis and injuries caused by that regular physical exertion. As the one meme goes, almost all of us are selling our bodies for money in one way or another (and, of course, the people in offices are often suffering from repetitive stress, sitting too long in one position, and the effects of spending long amounts of time away from natural light and in recirculated air).
    – Sean Duggan ♦
    Commented Mar 28 at 17:06
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    @gaazkam Gym goers demonstrably do not get worse results than labourers. If what you said were true, you'd see labourers who had never set foot in a gym winning bodybuilding and powerlifting competitions. What you are missing is the intensity of the physical activity, which is much higher in the gym. Labourers may work all day, but at no point during that are they exerting anywhere near to the point of muscular failure.
    – David Scarlett
    Commented Mar 29 at 4:18
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    @LulY I have only watched the beginning of the video, but just preemptively noting that bodybuilders don't train for strength (although some is gained) but appearance, so it's not really a good comparison any more than "professional wrestlers vs. Toughman competitors" for judging fighting skills.
    – Sean Duggan ♦
    Commented Apr 1 at 13:24

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Is it indeed true that just being a blue collar worker already gives incomparably greater benefits than any white collar worker can ever get by trying to live a healthy life?

No. Increased levels of occupational physical activity are associated with increased likelihood of long-term illnesses, whereas increased levels of recreational physical activity are associated with decreased likelihood of long-term illnesses,1 blue-collar workers don't tend to be stronger than white-collar workers2, and blue-collar work does not appear to decrease the risk of death due to cardiovascular disease.3

Warehousemen spend 8 hours every day, 40 hours every week doing physical exercise. They don't even have to go to gym. Thus a warehouseman who does not care at all about his fitness will already be much, much stronger than a white collar worker who tries to live a healthy life and diligently goes to gym.

This is not true. The reason why this isn't the case is probably that the intensity of the work performed by the warehouseman is so low that it does not provide the benefits that gym training does, even when performed at extremely high volumes (i.e. 40 hours per week).

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