If your nightly routine consists of scrolling through countless TikTok videos (guilty!), you may have come across the viral “pick up challenge.” For the uninitiated, one person attempts to lift their partner or friend off the ground, sometimes using only one arm, to test their strength. It’s an impressive feat—but is it just a way to show off? Does being able to participate in this challenge say anything about your health and fitness?
Being able to lift a person into the air doesn’t necessarily boost your running, cycling, hiking, or climbing performance. Or does it? We chatted with a certified strength and conditioning specialist to find out.
Does the Pick Up Challenge Have Anything to Do with Real Fitness?
“It may at first seem strange, but the pick up challenge could be an indicator of your longevity,” says Rocky Snyder, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and author of fitness guide Return to Center. “When it comes to lifting your partner with one arm, if you do it well, you are most likely living a healthier lifestyle than someone who cannot.”
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This is because being able to sweep another person off the ground and into the air requires good grip strength, balance, coordination, and total-body strength—all of which correlate to living a longer life, Snyder explains.
“Grip strength is used as an indicator of overall body strength,” Snyder says. “Typically, the stronger an individual, the more fit they are and the lower their likelihood is of diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle.”
Research backs this up: a large 2015 study in The Lancet found that for every 11-pound drop in grip strength over the course of the study (four years), participants had a 16 percent higher risk of dying from any cause, a 17 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease, a 9 percent higher risk of a stroke, and a 7 percent higher risk of a heart attack.
A smaller, but more recent 2020 study in the Annals of Medicine had similar findings: Those with the strongest grip strength had a significantly lower risk of dying from any cause and cardiovascular disease (specifically coronary heart disease) compared to those with the weakest grip strength.
Having good balance and coordination “decreases the likelihood of falling, which is often the precursor to death in the elderly population,” Snyder says. Indeed, a 2023 review in Frontiers in Public Health found that balance exercises reduce the rate of falls that cause injury in adults 65 or older.
While Snyder says the jury’s still out on whether the ability to lift your partner carries over to being a better athlete in and of itself, the fact that the ability to do the challenge is associated with less disease risk and a longer life means you’ll be able to do your favorite activities well into the future.
How to Build the Necessary Strength to Participate
If you do want to be able to participate in this challenge and lift your partner with one arm, what will help you achieve your goal? The best thing to do is practice this specific action, according to Snyder.
Snyder cites the SAID Principle, which stands for “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand.” This means the body will change according to the stimuli it encounters, he explains.
“Therefore, if you want to excel at lifting your partner with one arm, practicing that action is a great way to develop the strength and coordination needed to succeed,” says Snyder.
If this is too much at first, you may want to lift your partner in a swimming pool, he suggests, as bodies are more buoyant in the water and are easier to lift. Progress from the deep end to the shallow end over time, and eventually move to the land, he says.
“The important thing to remember is to practice the movement with good technique before trying to go for the gold,” he says. “Form is a priority over how much you can lift. Can you, with proper form, fatigue your body so that it adapts to the imposed demands by growing stronger and more efficient?”
In terms of gym exercises, you can add squats, single-leg deadlifts, and medicine ball or sandbag tosses to your routine to help you build strength that’s specific to the task of lifting a body.
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