Why Can’t You Pick Someone up If They Touch Your Chin
Since I’m a weightlifter, I understand strength, and I expose viral bullshit, of course I found out about this challenge when a friend sent me a video with the caption, “Please expose.” But the trick is real if you’re sneaky – you can stop a stronger person from lifting you by putting your hand under their chin.
To be clear, this is not self-defense. The idea is that you (the little person) ask your friend or partner (the big, strong person) to lift you up by placing your hands under your armpits. If they are strong enough and you are light enough, it should be easy.
You only tell them one thing: the task is to do this by placing my hand under your chin. It looks like this :
I tried this trick on my husband years ago before it went viral and before the chin was added. I’m pretty sure I learned this on a kids science show when I was a kid myself, probably 3-2-1 Contact . This is a simple trick. He was completely bewildered when I “turned on gravity” and made it impossible to lift me up.
We tried the viral version of the challenge, discussing it as we go. It worked just as well as it did in the video, except now he knows how it works. As they say, never repeat a trick more than once, otherwise the audience will begin to understand it.
How the trick works
It’s stupidly simple: things are harder to pick up when they’re far away from you, and easier when you’re holding them close. You just force it to be about a foot away from you.
Think about how you would lift a heavy box that has just been delivered. You would bring it close to your body and hold it close to you when you lift it. Chances are you naturally do the same when you pick up your baby. A child who can be held at arm’s length; four-year-old, you will probably give a big hug.
Take a look at the video above and notice the daylight between the bodies of the two partners. When he picks her up easily, their bodies touch. When she puts her fingers under his chin, he can’t get her close enough. That’s because the chin-fingered position requires her shoulder to be parallel to the floor and her elbow to touch his chest if he tries to pull her closer. This results in an arm-length distance between her torso and his torso.
Details and options
If you want to do this trick without a chin, I’ve found it easy to just say, “OK, pick me up” with his hands under your armpits. Then you place your hands over his forearms, which is completely natural but also makes it impossible for him to get close. This is how I puzzled my husband for the first time.
However, I really like the chin trick. In some versions I’ve seen, you use your hand to tilt your kitten’s chin up. It makes it difficult for them to see what’s going on (there’s no visual clue about how close they are to you) and it’s just a nice little distraction. Also, if they manage to bring their body closer to yours—say, by shifting to the side—you can simply “lose” contact with their chin and announce that it failed and force them to start over.
What if you are stronger in this scenario? Now your trick is to close the distance between your bodies in any way possible. This helps to bend your knees and get as low as possible under the person. This gives you a little more leverage and also means they reach a little lower to keep your hand on your chin. All in all this gives you a few inches and you might be able to lift them anyway.
And the last tip: if you are a small person and really want to try it, but your partner is not strong enough to pump you up? Offer to make a small jump to get off the ground. I make my 7 year old daughter do this every time I pick her up and it really helps. If they can barely lift you up with little acceleration, go ahead and jump again as you do this with your fingers on their chin. The extra distance will negate this advantage.