[leoc]

The World's Strongest Man format contains a number of events that are probably a lot closer to real workplace lifting tasks than barbell events are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Strongest_Man#Compet... . Though of course those full competition weights are very much an upper bound and wouldn't be viable as everyday one-man lifts even if you hired elite strongmen to be your warehouse operatives.

OTOH 73kg (160lb) full beer kegs still get a fair bit of one-man manhandling, and to be a proper professional scaffolder you have to be able to lift a full-length scaffolding pole (just under 30kg, apparently?) from flat off the ground to straight up above your head, partly one-handed in one smooth movement, several times a day routinely.

[fiftyfifty]

Hopefully no one that handles beer kegs for a living is lifting full ones. They have special dollies for handling beer kegs, they even have special attachments for fork lifts for picking them up. I've never been to a brewery where anyone was picking up beer kegs by themselves.

[Teever]

You've also never been to a bar where the owner is too cheap to buy one of those dollies. Or rather you have, but you've just never been to the back of the bar where a porter is lifting those full gets up and down a rickety set of stairs.