What happened to “it’s not healthy”?
What you want to look like is up to you. Some of the “best looking” people are the least healthy, many athletes die young from heart conditions and other issues relating to their poor health- and that’s before we start to include health effects of drugs and procedures commonly used to achieve certain looks and just focus on things like overtraining and the toll of many common fitness “diets” on the body.
So there are fair odds that either of the folks on the right panels- we can’t assume the bottom right man is unhealthy though odds are above average that he is. The top right panel- a real human with that build? Oh yeah. Almost certain probability of health issues.
How we want to look is your to use of course, and wether or how much we want to consider health into it when we decide how we want to look.
If you wanted optimal performance- the ideal performing figure would generally be in between the top right and bottom right picture. Lots of muscle mass as well as double digit body fat. When you see most people who’s cruelly work and compete using their strength- those folks tend to be what is often called “fat buff,” in fact they may just look “fat” because you can’t see the definition of their muscles and their huge abs protrude out and have a layer of fat making them even more pronounced and obscuring the “6 pack” or better below. When you can see every single popping muscle that is usually a body fat lower than what is healthy long term and …
If you’ve never had body fat that low it feels like shit. Irritability, fatigue, confusion etc. if you try to lift some giant heavy mass your body doesn’t have the fat cushion around organs and such and you can literally kill yourself by flexing too hard.
Look at power lifters. Most do not look like body building Mr./Mrs Universe winners.
Thick abdomens instead of carefully sculpted V shapes… because your core supports your ability to use power in your arms and legs or resist weight you lift. That’s why it’s called “body building.” Yes you gain strength and other benefits but it’s focused on looks. Choosing muscles to give you a certain shape above functional ability or health.
Now, top right, bottom right, in between the two- none of those are the general optimal build for endurance competition or things like most running or sports or fighting etc.
if you want to be the best tennis player you can be your body will tend to end up looking like a pro tennis player. If you want to be the best basketball player you can be you probably won’t end up looking like an NFL line backer or Arnold. Functional training focusses on building a body optimized for a certain set of tasks.
And surprise- some random person off the street that isn’t likely to make any calendars or be the most “attractive person” to take their clothes off might be healthier than all of them because there are specific workouts for overall health! Yeah.
Somewhere around 20% body fat for men- which by “media” standards is pretty tubby but in real life is “average ish” and maybe some muscle tone- flexibility like yoga, some moderate activity on a regular basis, a balanced and sensible diet- not 200g of protein a day or no carbs ever or all meat or whatever- that sort of thing is generally going to make the “healthiest” person. Here’s a sad fun fact- it doesn’t matter so much how hard or long you go in the gym if you are sedentary most of the day. A “fat guy” who spends most of his day doing a combination of walking and siting and standing- never any one for too long before he does the other, does some moderate and light physical movement throughout the day like moving stock around and lifting things here and there- who sprints occasionally and occasionally walks long distances and up flights of stairs- they’ll probably be healthier and “better shape” than someone who sits most of the day and then hits the gym hard for an hour or so…
Before mostly sitting around and then laying down for bed. Look- say you need to take 1000 breaths of air a day. You can’t just hold your breath until 11:00pm and then take all 1,000 at once. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t go 3 days without water and then drink 3 gallons all at once and have the same health as someone who drinks a little bit through the day each day. Activity is the same. Some is better than none generally- and there is a such thing as too much or too much at once, but when we speak on health, few things are “healthy” to have none most of the time with these huge binges to “make up for it.” Exercise and activity are the same. If you go most of the day or week without activity or exercise and then try to cram it all into condensed sessions… that’s not going to be the same.
If you’re lifting weights and not doing flexibility work your overall health and fitness are likely suffering long term. Flexibility training damages your body the same as other “workouts.” Stress causes damage to tissue and in response the body repairs that tissue and adapts it to better suit the way you use your body. You have a finite ability to heal. This is why you can’t just work out all day for a few months straight and get the results of someone working out an hour or two a day for years. At a certain point your workouts do more damage than your body can heal before you work out and damage it again. A top class competitive training plan is going to generally go for finding the upper limits of what you can heal and using various means like massages and recovery work and nutrition and sleep and various supplements and other things to help expand your natural limits of healing.
But since your body only has so much capacity to heal at any time and maintaining gains takes a certain amount of regular stress and damage to keep up- you have to choose where you want to focus. Despite being super lean like runners you don’t see many guys looking like young Arnold winning sprints and running sports. Running is a different activity and to work those muscles takes away from the healing and building of muscle towards size and shape or strength. So if you’re doing flexibility work and damaging connective tissues so that they have to repair themselves as more flexible- you’re taking away from the amount of muscle fiber you could be gaining and for most people- the time you have to use to work out as some now has to go to flexibility. Which flexibility training tends to be time consuming.
So guys who are “buff” but neglect their flexibility training to focus on size or strength of “show muscles” tend to be slower and more prone to injury and health issues. The other problem with appearance training is that when you focus on “show muscles”- that’s a term used for people who want a “6 pack” and the big biceps and big pecs and maybe the big shoulder muscles and traps- the stuff that tends to make people swoon or feel intimidated when you take off your shirt- they often miss supporting muscles- ones you usually barely see or don’t see or aren’t “sexy” but are part of the complex movements and physics of the human body and help with strength and balance and not injuring yourself.
Muscle imbalance- so pretend your arm is replaced by a mechanical arm that can lift 2,000lbs. You lift a car over your head! Wow. And then you likely die. Your arm can lift 2000lbs but your abs can’t hold up that weight. Your legs can’t. If your bikes didn’t break you’d crumple like a wet noodle. That’s if your arm didn’t rip from your body. Your shoulder didn’t dislocate or you didn’t tear apart the muscles in your back or chest or abdomen straining. That’s an exaggeration of muscle imbalance. When you pick up a grocery bag it is more than your biceps or arms doing the work. In sports, especially ones like baseball and tennis we hear a lot about “torn rotator cuffs..” certain shoulder movements strain tiny muscles that don’t really add much power to your arms or add much size or shape to the body in general, but are critical in keeping your skeleton and flesh where they should be. In supporting your structure as you use your strength or power and move around in general.
Neglecting these muscles or developing other muscles and systems to exceed the ability of support muscles tends to end in injury if you ever actually use a portion of your potential from your more developed or more powerful muscles. “He skipped leg day…” traditionally for men legs aren’t a “show muscle” on the streets. They aren’t traditionally the thing most women find attractive or notice in a man. They aren’t what tends to make us see a guy and think he’s a hunk or “buff.” The arms and chest and to an extent the abs are what tend to be seen as “hot.” “Sexy.” “Cool.” Showing off type muscles. Filling out a tshirt or looking good by the pool. Less fat means your muscles show more in general as well.
When we gauge a man’s size we tend to focus on his upper body and traditionally “larger” is better in men to a point. So the “prison bod” aka “skipped leg day” is one that tends to focus mostly or entirely on arms and maybe chest and possibly abs. This is usually an unbalanced body. Stronger in one area than others and the muscles and skeleton are a “push pull” system where whenever we move or when we use our movements to interact with other objects and people our bodies are pushing and pulling and distributing force across systems. Imbalances mean that your “best” muscles can handle way more force than others in your body and so eventually as the force of an action is transferred though you, of it reaches one of those asked points that can’t take that much force you will likely have an issue. Potentially a bad one that will injure you.
Beyond that posture and natural law tends to rely on muscles and bones and tissues pushing and pulling. Imbalance of the muscles can cause you to develop pains and other issues from static forces.
So I mean… I don’t really supper this meme. I think the left panel guys are maybe misguided or things are oversimplified. We put a lot on abs for example and many people work hard to show great abs but for how well known ab routines are and how much attention we pay and and treat them as a symbol of dedication or performance.. you have back muscles on the other side. What happens when the front muscles are super strong and the back muscles are super weak and those same muscles control a tube of Nelly fixed to your spine that bends using those muscles…? Yeah. A likely injury. Be safe. Be smart. Do you, but enough with the body shaming and bs assumptions and narratives.
What you want to look like is up to you. Some of the “best looking” people are the least healthy, many athletes die young from heart conditions and other issues relating to their poor health- and that’s before we start to include health effects of drugs and procedures commonly used to achieve certain looks and just focus on things like overtraining and the toll of many common fitness “diets” on the body.
So there are fair odds that either of the folks on the right panels- we can’t assume the bottom right man is unhealthy though odds are above average that he is. The top right panel- a real human with that build? Oh yeah. Almost certain probability of health issues.
How we want to look is your to use of course, and wether or how much we want to consider health into it when we decide how we want to look.
Look at power lifters. Most do not look like body building Mr./Mrs Universe winners.
Thick abdomens instead of carefully sculpted V shapes… because your core supports your ability to use power in your arms and legs or resist weight you lift. That’s why it’s called “body building.” Yes you gain strength and other benefits but it’s focused on looks. Choosing muscles to give you a certain shape above functional ability or health.
if you want to be the best tennis player you can be your body will tend to end up looking like a pro tennis player. If you want to be the best basketball player you can be you probably won’t end up looking like an NFL line backer or Arnold. Functional training focusses on building a body optimized for a certain set of tasks.
And surprise- some random person off the street that isn’t likely to make any calendars or be the most “attractive person” to take their clothes off might be healthier than all of them because there are specific workouts for overall health! Yeah.