Jun
12th
2013
Weightlifting · 4:52am Jun 12th, 2013
The subject of weightlifting is something I know almost nothing about. I've made some mention of working with weights in the course of physical therapy in Clean Slate, and there will be more weightlifting soon, this time including Apple Bloom. So I'll open the floor to some speculation.
1. What weight training exercises would work best with the pony form?
2. For those exercises, what would be a typical (adult male) amount of weight to lift?
3. And compared to the human average, how much do you think an earth pony adult should be able to lift? More or less? How much would the average earth pony filly lift? How about a stronger filly like Apple Bloom?
Well, general consensus is earth ponies have the strongest muscles, but pegasi can lift the most. Pegasi are shown pulling wagons through the sky, and even Fluttershy can fly an entire cart full of frogs, which can be excused by pegasi magic making things they are touching weigh less. So Rainbow Dash can lift a larger load than AJ, but when it comes to pulling stumps, AJ has her beat solid. (unless Rainbow can crash into the stump at speed, in which case splinters will fly)
Now these are *averages* since Twilight can dead-lift a space bear and float it through town, while Trixie can only levitate a piece of rope.
So we have:
Physical Lift - Pegasi(cheaters!) > Earth Pony > Unicorn
Physical Drag - Earth Pony > Pegasi > Unicorn
Move - Unicorn (with enough, they can move the sun), Earth Pony, Pegasi
Sound about right?
1. Drag weights. Attach a harness, and at the end of a cable is a sled loaded down with either weighted plates or heavy objects. Once fully loaded, whoever is harnessed in starts dragging the weights around. Different mediums also provide increased or decreased difficulty, such as the difference between mud and grass.
2. I can't accurately put an amount to the average adult male doing this exercise.
3. Compared to average adult male, a grown earthy pony should be lifting between 2-3x. Big Mac tows a plow, which are pretty heavy and he is well above average (I would guess around 4-6x). For an average earth pony filly, I would suggest between .5-.8x. An above average earth pony filly should be able to accomplish between 1-1.5x
The show may have cartoony stuff, but Humans are basically twigs. We stand really, really tall for our body mass, and that makes us appear much 'larger' than we really are. Even if in your headcanon ponies are only two feet tall, they would still have more muscle power than the average human before whatever magic would add to the equation.
Anyways, you can always fudge it a bit by describing the nonspecific volume of the weights instead of being specific with the mass.