[quote]BrickHead wrote:
[quote]MytchBucanan wrote:
[quote]NikH wrote:
I don’t think it’s “scandinavian genetics” that makes a person bigger. I think it’s the lifestyle.
In the US people eat alot more food, alot more processed food, and exercise less on average than in Scandinavia.
Students in the US have generally less exercise in the school curriculum in my opinion, and also in their freetime they are less active.
In Scandinavia kids used to play soccer, basketball,icehockey etc afterschool by themselves for hours and on weekends.
When I went to middleschool in Finland, we would spend 6h in school, play soccer outside during breaks (we had a ball with us), go play more soccer after school, go play basketball during weekends, have pullup competitions etc. During winter it would be icehockey, and we even had some days organized by school when we would just play hockey the whole day once a month and the school would organize lunch etc. Also, it wasnt a “sports school”, I was in the “math-class” . Kids would join lots of sports clubs, for instance I was in the schools swimming team, track team, basketball team, soccer team, and then on my own competed in Judo and a shorter time in basketball.
When I got to US for highschool it was quite the opposite. During lunchbreak or breaks in general nobody moves around, people enjoy going to movies/out for a coffee more than exercising. Classes were longer but more slowpaced. Also, the varsity team had practise only twice a week. I am not saying it’s bad, it’s just a different lifestyle.
In general I think Scandinavian kids are more healthy, but kids in the US learn to work better. But it’s changing now probably in both countries with the computers and x-box, also at age 18 teens start to drink shitloads on average in Scandinavia (since it’s legal).
I dont think people in general are these “Vikings” you see on TV-shows anymore. Maybe when they were still chopping wood, and eating tons of fish.
on another note:
If I was to change the average American school, I would add more mandatory exercise, healthier food (seriously,- why do you serve soda, pizza and french fries to growing kids in a school cafeteria?), faster paced lectures/classes.
If I was to change the average Scandinavian school, I would add more homework and motivation (americans are better in motivating), tutorials, discussion. And there’s this strange idea that it’s ok to not do homework sometimes.[/quote]
Those activities would not give someone a bigger bone structure. I think there is such a thing as nordic or Scandinavian genetics. Like the example I gave of a coworker (who was full blooded Finnish) but lived in USA his whole life. He never worked out and was still a beast.
They just tend to be big people.[/quote]
Exactly.
Just for fun we can as amateurs try to do some classifying and see who the biggest are, even though I can be wrong because I’m no anthropologist. I do find this stuff interesting though.
Nordic: Dennis Wolf, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Dorian Yates, Michael Francois, Marcus Ruhl, Gunther Schlierkamp, Larry Scott, Dave Draper, Reg Park, Gary Strydom
Mediterranean: Marc Dugdale, Rusty Jeffers, Franco Santoriello, Franco Columbu, Michael Kefelianos
Alpine: Mariusz Pudzianowski (probably some Nordic admixture)
Dinaric: Milos Sarcev
East Baltic: Zydrunas Savickas
[/quote]
Finnish people are not that big.Swedish and Dutch are way taller and a bit heavier.There are many big tall Polish.But the tallest and biggest are Montenegrians.

