@Background Pony #C618
 

 
I don’t see what point you’re getting at here. It may be ridiculous to have any of those sort of animals playing in the basketball field. But just like in that quote the movie said, it wasn’t against the rules. (Except that last oddly specific one) And since it wasn’t in the rules, it was fair game. The biggest issue in that movie’s case is, said animal would still have to be talented enough in basketball to qualify in the first place, which is why we don’t actually see that in real life.
 
Then again, people might be smart enough now to include in the rules, ‘humans only’. I would say they would write it as, ‘no animals’, but little known fact, humans are animals too. Either way, that inclusion in the rules wasn’t the case for that movie, according to the clip you showed. I don’t know the movie myself besides that clip.

@Background Pony #C618  
A lot of people don’t have the upper body strength or joint stability to do a full pushup, bruh. You know what’s a good way to build up enough upper body strength and joint stability to do a full pushup? Doing knee pushups.

@Background Pony #E6FA  
This argument holds no water.  
That’s like saying it’s okay to use my knees when doing push-ups because “no one said I couldn’t”.  
It goes completely against the point of a ‘push-up’, which is using only your arms to lift your body weight.
 
I know it’s a bit awkward to quote this review at this time, but…  
https://youtu.be/s9QdLt_3KCY?t=294

@MadVillan
 
Fair enough.
 
My point still stands, though. The “serious mode” pony abilities have indeed changed (or, rather, cemented) since the early days. Rainbow has always known how to pegasus, but AJ has only recently learned how to earth pony.

@G.S.
 
And RD was doing this like 6 years ago.  

 
This is a comedy cartoon, physicis and things like pain or strength aren’t ever to be taken seriously since they’re always used for gags.

Well, that scene from FWF was, like, 7 years ago.
 
Nowadays she’s doing stuff like this:
 

@TexasUberAlles  
Fun fact, this would be after Applejack had finished working while Rainbow Dash recently got up from napping. This means this shot was when Rainbow Dash was rested, and Applejack was all worked up, meaning this would be Applejack’s off day.
 
You would think that since they’re tied here, that would mean Applejack would win afterwards, right? Turns out, that’s not true. Apparently Rainbow Dash has only gotten stronger on her front side. She may be lazy with work, but she’s not lazy with training and exercising.

Also canon:  

 
It’s almost as if competition between top athletes often comes down to who’s having an on-day or an off-day.

@Background Pony #E6FA  
We can debate who is stronger until the cows come home but you’re factually wrong when you say she uses her hind legs more.

@TexasUberAlles  

And then it turns out that the reason the map sent Starlight to make the princesses see eye to eye is so that they’d be drift compatible.

@Darth Sonic  
All the Mark 4 fans around here are gonna be in for a nasty shock when the Storm King shows up and sets off an electromagical pulse that disables their digital Friendship rainbows– it’ll be up to the analog Mark 3s like Minty Danger and Mark 1s like Starglow Alpha to save Canterlot.

@TexasUberAlles  

 
It’s like we’re taking about Pony Jeagers.

@TexasUberAlles  
So for an earth pony to have magically enhanced strength that clearly makes them stronger than the other races is like for a unicorn to cast advanced spells and the individuals with strength magic are exceptional. That would mean Big Mac has earth pony strength while Applejack hasn’t. Their primary ability equivalent to the unicorn’s levitation would then be that they could grow things faster and better. I guess that makes sense.  
Ponies of all races seem to be able to become much stronger than humans anyway.

@Background Pony #E3D6  
Most Pegasi aren’t very strong flyers and most Unicorns are kinda dag at general magic, though; every tribe seems to have similar ratios of exceptional individuals, at least as far as the episodes bother to show us.
 
They’ve been introducing more over the last couple of seasons, but for most of the show, it’s been very rare to see the Big Mac class Large Stallion Body used for any Pegasi or Unicorns outside of the Royal Guard.

@TexasUberAlles  
It’s weird that only a few earth ponies seem to possess more strength when fligth and magic seem available to almost all pegasi and unicorns respectively and some of the other races overpower the earth ponies in feats of strength even when they trained a lot. So maybe the power these ponies are showing isn’t something that earth ponies explicitly get but something like a combination of good genes and training and the reason more earth ponies show that kind of strength is solely because they rely on physical strength more than the others and have genes that possess stronger tendencies towards strength because it’s more important to them. We already know that Lauren didn’t intent for strength magic when she wrote that so maybe strength is simply their special talent when they do extreme things like that. This is further supported by Big Mac being much stronger than Applejack even with similar genes since he is a male and he got more training and Maud having strength she actually needs for her special talent.  
So being an earth pony just makes it more likely to have a really good special talent liked to strength or the genes that will make your training worthwhile.

@Background Pony #E6FA  
As worked up as you are about this (for some odd reason? lol), and it never occurred to you to actually listen to the dialogue in the episode where AJ said right there onscreen that Cheater Horse cheated at more than half of the events? She was also well behind in the Running Of The Leaves until she cheated by moving the sign around, and when AJ thought Dash had tripped her and had it pointed out by Twilight that she’d upended herself, she responded by immediately overtaking Dash from far behind.
 
@MadVillan  
That’s only 3 ponies though  
Three Earth Ponies oughta be plenty, though, since you only need four to pull an entire train at breakneck speed.  

@MadVillan  
Oh, they definitely are… Just like Starlight.

@Darth Sonic  
That’s only 3 ponies though, you could easily say they’re outliers as well.

@MadVillan  
Big Mac, Maud… What’s the name of that super filly from the Diamond Tiara redemption episode?

@Darth Sonic  
Aside from Bulk, Who are the physically strongest ponies?

@Background Pony #E6FA  
What did he say that wasn’t canonical, hmm?

@Background Pony #E3D6  
All the physically strongest Ponies have been Earth Ponies, with Bulk Biceps being the only outlier there.

@PonyPon  
Why would she specifically mention tending the land, tho? Just because that was the most important thing to her that earth ponies did. Being farm ponies. Or maybe because they specifically had the strength to tend the land as an ability that we already kind of saw Applejack doing to grow things. It seems like an ambiguous statement and for Tirek it didn’t seem to matter what he was absorbing as it just increased his power. I get why people would think it’s physical strength but if earth ponies really had so much more strength then why didn’t Applejack win with flying colors?  

@Background Pony #E3D6  
Most people took that as physical strength rather than that magical power.

@PonyPon  
“Without their strength, they will not be able to tend the land.” = They lost the power of growing stuff.