Using Bones to Determine Worthy Exercises, Maximum Muscular Potential, and Rate of Progress (A Skinny-Fat Must Read)

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You appreciate muscle. Catch a pump! Feel the burn! (Or whatever else cool kids do these days.) You appreciate the nervous system, too. Catch some ZzzZzzZZZz's. Eliminate stress! Take naps! You even appreciate the biochemical impact. Inject that needle into your butt for crazzzayyy gains! (Not that you do, but you understand the impact.)

But what about bones? Have you ever thought about bones? Do you respect bones? Because bones have secrets. Ever wonder how to decide what exercises are good and worthy? Ever wonder about your maximum muscular potential? Because dem' bones  may be whispering the answers. Are you listening?

Embarrassing confession time

I can't remember ever bench pressing over 245 pounds. To convince myself that I wasn't a pansy for this, I told myself three stories. My pressing suck came from a combination of (a) apathy, because I gave more focus to my phasic muscles, (b) levers, because I’m 6’4” and only weigh 200-210 pounds,  and (c) wrist diameter, because I can touch my pinky finger and thumb around my wrist.

wrist

That last one has been of great interest to me as of late. Bones. Julius Wolff was a surgeon that created a now-popular law (not surprisingly known as Wolff’s law) that states bone remodels under the presence of external stress. (Goku knew this, which is why he trained under extreme supragravitational resistance on his way to Namek, by the way.)

So there’s this idea that bones and muscles wither away without gravity. What, then, would make bones and muscles grow really really strong?

Not surprisingly, gravitational like resistance. And when you look at the gamut of worthy training methods for just about everyone not on steroids, you’re almost always routed to two things:

  • barbell or dumbbell or whatever freeweight training
  • bodyweight training

For most of the exercises in the above two categories, you get a gravitational load on the entire skeletal system. You can catch a massive pump on a machine—obvious signs of muscle strain and tension—but there’s little in the way of gravitational bone loading. (You're often sitting down and moving things horizontally.) Not surprisingly, machines are often sub-par for doing the muscular dirty work. 

There's an interesting positive correlation, it seems, between the amount of bone loading and the impact on the neural and biochemical bits associated with an exercise. You may know that squats, deadlift, and other multi-joint movements are perhaps the most stressful exercises, and also have the greatest potential for boosting testosterone, growth hormone, and all of the other things that we consider good in the name of training. And why are chin-ups and parallel bar dips sometimes known as the “upper body squat?” All the weight is supported by the hands, and thus carried by the bone.

All of this is to say that muscle building is more than muscle tension. Strain away, if you please. If your bones aren't up for the ride, your muscle won't come along for the ride. Here's why.

Strong muscles need strong bones

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We often forget that the body is smarter than we think we are about understanding the body. It simply doesn't make sense to build muscle and connective tissue stronger than what the bone can “hold onto,” and it rarely happens. (Although, it sometimes does. This is called an avulsion fracture. When I broke my foot, I had one in my big toe. Most avulsion fractures without trauma, however, have other links, like pre-existing conditions. It's also more common in kids [makes sense, bones aren't fully developed].)

As David Epstein describes in The Sports Gene:

“Holway measured the forearms of a group of tennis players ranked in the top twenty in the world and found that their racket arms grew slightly differently from their nonracket arms. The racket-side forearm bones of the players grew around a quarter-inch longer than the forearm bone of the nonracket arm. And the elbow joint widened a centimeter. Like muscle, bone responds to the exercise. Even nonathletes tend to have more bone in the arm they write with simply because they use it more, so the bone becomes stronger and capable of supporting more muscle.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Epstein goes on to give a more accurate sense of what it all means.

Holway compares the skeleton to an empty bookcase. One bookcase that is four inches wider than another will weigh only slightly more. But fill both cases with books and suddenly the little bit of extra width on the broader bookcase translates to a considerable amount of weight.

. . .

Holway has found that each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of bone supports a maximum of five kilograms (11 pounds) of muscle. Five-to-one, then, is a general limit of the human muscle bookcase.

If there's a limit to muscle gained per bone strength, it's good to know that bones remodel themselves and get stronger, just like muscles. But is there a cap to bone growth?

Note: In a footnote, Epstein says that women are more like 4.2 to 1. Those using steroids are known to ecplipse 5 to 1. 

How much can bone grow? Is it genetic?

I've been able to touch thumb and pinky finger around my wrist my entire life, which makes me wonder how much can bone really grow?

According to Epstein, some. But not a lot.

“We've had people come in for consultation and they want to increase their muscle mass for aesthetic reasons,” Holway says. “We measure them, and if they're close to five-to-one we ask them how long they've been at this same level of development or strength. They'll say for the last five years or seven years, and they haven't been able to surpass it.”

Once you hit this point, muscle building attempts are often futile. The only kind of extra weight you'll be adding is fat.

The saddest news is that, realistically, your bone structure is largely genetic. Or, at  least, beyond your control if you're reading this. Doing things when you're younger (and more plastic) will change the normal path of bone growth. And this is why I have a hunch about gymnasts. 

Gymnasts and upper body bones

Compare an average kid that is relatively inactive for the first twenty years of his life to a gymnast that started at five years old. The gymnast, during a critical growth period, was telling his body that arms needed to be different. Where most kids dangle their arms from their socket and never really load them, a gymnast lives on their arms as if they were legs. (Here again we see the gravitational resistance factor.)

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When you look at the upper body development of competitive gymnasts, is it that much of a surprise? Aside from the skills that they do, they started training (signaling to the body) at a young age (when change was easier and more likely) that the arm bones needed to be stronger and more dense.

It this were true, it would also explain why teaching an adult gymnastics skills generally follows a different path than teaching a kid the skills. Young gymnasts have the stronger bones to support to muscle needed to grow. Adults might not be so lucky, as they didn't adapt their arms to be weight bearing.

Just a hunch, but interesting to me.

What this means for you

By now, you're undoubtedly depressed. You might have this small skeletal frame, and you might have done nothing but play Super Smash Brothers your entire life. (Sounds a lot like me.) Bad genetics. Bad environment. Bad epigenetic conglomeration that spat out a bad phenotype.

No wonder my gains suck! I'm just not built for it!

Hold on. There's a good chance, if you're saying this, you haven't attacked barbell and bodyweight training with vigor with zero results to show for it over the past five years. You have room to improve, you just have to approach this with the right mentality.

You may have heard of Casey Butt's Maximum Muscular Bodyweight and Measurements Calculator. If not, well, now you have. I typically think you shouldn't focus on your “maximum potential” because you can shortcut your outlook and expectations, but here's how I used it to my advantage.

Back when I was 190 pounds and teeming with muscular desires, I was always looking for the perfect program. I wanted something to change me overnight. Previous bulking and cutting stints proved futile.

Instead of going on another grand failure of a muscle building experience, I instead thought about where I'd probably be satisfied enough so that I wouldn't obsess over muscle building. To do this, I looked at two things.

  • My maximum muscular potential, per Casey Butt's calculator
  • High level athletes of a comparable height that were jacked and also retained athletic ability

The latter ended up being NFL wide receivers. At my height, most fizzle into 230 pounds. (There was also Andreas Thorkildsen, 6'2″ and 200 pounds.) I think Butt's calculator estimated me at 220.

I said that at 210, I'd probably be happy. This meant I had 20 pounds of muscle to gain, and then I applied it to the football theory of life, and the fact that most athletes you gawk at are ten years into training. This meant I had five years to gain 20 pounds, which put things into a much more manageable light. That's only five pounds per year. I can do that. 

Instead of trying to pack it on all at once, I now had perspective and training became less of a do-or-die thing. I just trusted that if I went in and did my thing, giving consistent mindful effort, that I'd have to gain five pounds in one year.

Put it in perspective

Bones are often unappreciated, but I think they hold valuable lessons.

Want to know whether an exercise is going to be worthy? Chances are, if it loads the bones on top of gravity, you're on the right track.

I think the most important lesson bones give us is this: you aren't just recovering your muscles. You aren't just eating to replenish glycogen. You're eating and recovering to give your body what it needs to change on a gigantic scale — one that you can't even conceive.

According to Buddy Morris (who I was lucky enough to learn under): the stress of training is a greater stressor than that of a broken bone because it encompasses the entire system. It effects the cardiopulmonary system, detoxification, hormonal, metabolic, central nervous system, neuromuscular system, and the immune system. None of which recovers at the same time. (See this video for full quote. I paraphrased.) Basically, the stuff we do is tough on the body.

Realizing that bone is also remodeling with training, makes me appreciate the beauty of making even the most minuscule improvement. It takes time. Step back. Breathe. Give yourself years, not days, to recreate yourself. There are lots of things going on underneath the skin, and they need time to do their thang.

 

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Photo credit: skull teeth, skullsgymnast