Quintessential Builds

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

I have been thinking about this for a week or so: are there optimal types of builds for specific types of training? For instance, we know that lanky white guys are generally great long distance runners and lean black guys are generally great sprinters. What about in the realm of anaerobic exercise?

What would be the quintessential “builds” for say a:
Power Lifter
Olympic Lifter
Strong Man Competitor
Body Builder

By build, I am referring to genetic predispositions, not what a competitor would look or be like after training.

2

So Ethiopians are all white? And I guess there have never been any white sprinters? Dude, I know it’s just a question, but careful with that stuff.

Also, who cares? Take what you’ve got, and make it better.

3

Top strongmen are usually pretty tall and huge.

4

Strongmen are usually strong…and men.

5

:wink: My favorite comic bit from Harry Paschall, a writer for Strength & Health magazine in the 1940s and '50s.

[quote]Aero51 wrote:
What would be the quintessential “builds” for say a:
Power Lifter[/quote]
Depending on the lift, short legs and/or short torso and/or long or short arms.

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).

Over 6’ tall, heavy.

Under 6’ tall, small joints, short tendons.

Other than that, there’s not a lot of “ideal” physical types because you’re likely to find a fair amount of variety at the top of any sport.

6

What’s the point of the question? I know I’m a tall, lanky white dude, who excels at endurance work whenever I put any amount of time into training it. But I hate it. Its boring and stupid. So I do stuff that I like.

7

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).
[/quote]
If that were true, women would have higher records. At a minimum, they would have higher pound for pound records. But they don’t. A better olympic lifter is the one that lifts more. The ability to squat deep is only a means to an end.

8

[quote]Silyak wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).
[/quote]
If that were true, women would have higher records. At a minimum, they would have higher pound for pound records. But they don’t. A better olympic lifter is the one that lifts more. The ability to squat deep is only a means to an end.[/quote]

Not necessarily, the coaches only argue that women have a better natural build compared to men, NOT that they should lift more weight. Its like saying men with wider hips and shorter femur to lower leg ratios are more likely to be good weightlifters than men with long femur:lower leg ratios and narrow hips. The “average” woman, according to these coaches, has more ideal proportions for the sport of olympic weightlifting.

9

I was just curious were I fit in if it really mattered that much to you nkkll. Thanks Chris for the solid info as always. From that cartoon I basically have the Pressers core and legs with the Dead Lifters arms lol. Kind of a funky build but whatever

10

Yeah, sorry if I came off as rude. I was just curious why you were asking.

11

[quote]nkklllll wrote:

[quote]Silyak wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).
[/quote]
If that were true, women would have higher records. At a minimum, they would have higher pound for pound records. But they don’t. A better olympic lifter is the one that lifts more. The ability to squat deep is only a means to an end.[/quote]

Not necessarily, the coaches only argue that women have a better natural build compared to men, NOT that they should lift more weight. Its like saying men with wider hips and shorter femur to lower leg ratios are more likely to be good weightlifters than men with long femur:lower leg ratios and narrow hips. The “average” woman, according to these coaches, has more ideal proportions for the sport of olympic weightlifting.
[/quote]
But that’s like arguing that short people make better basketball players because they don’t have to dribble as high and have better access to make steals. It sort of sounds okay as an argument, but it simply doesn’t play out in real life.

The argument that women have better builds for Oly lifting sounds okay on paper, but the fact is that if women competed against men there would be no top level female oly lifters. The best way to determine what build is best for a sport is empirical, not logical.

12

There are more factors at play in basketball than in weightlifting. There are different types of “good” basketball players. There are 5 different positions after all.

And, the evidence here IS empirical. Women on average have better proportions for being relatively “good” at weightlifting than men, on average, do. We are considering IDEAL builds. The ideal build for weightlifting is something akin to a 5’3" woman possessing average proportions to that height. That’s all that’s been said. Nothing about women being able to lift more weight.

13

I think you are misunderstanding what empirical means. If women don’t lift more weight than men, they don’t have an ideal build for weightlifting, empirically speaking. Empirically means you find the best weightlifters and see what they had in common.

If we’re comparing men and women in one class, then it’s fairly obvious to see that all of the best weightlifters, whether pound for pound or in raw poundage, were men. Naim Suleymanoglu may have been small, but he certainly didn’t look like a woman. I would say he had a pretty ideal build for weightlifting, empirically speaking.

The fact that weightlifting has less variables than basketball just makes it easier to compare empirically. You can argue about Jordan vs. Bryant, but it’s pretty straightforward to compare two weighlifters.

14

No. Empirically means you look at data, what you can see, touch, etc. The question is about builds, and which builds allow for the optimal performance in a given sport. The optimal build (generally speaking) is one in which the femur to lower leg ratio is smaller, the torso to leg ratio is smaller, the hips relatively wider, and the arms shorter.

The average woman fits this profile. The average man on the other hand, has wider shoulders suited more for upper body leverage, narrower hips, longer legs in comparison to their torso, etc.

Women, at the elite level, don’t lift as much as men because they cannot be as strong. Its physiologically and biologically impossible. But that doesn’t change the fact that they can still have a better build, again on average, than men.

Hell, I’m not even arguing that women are better weightlifters, or that they lift more weight. I’m arguing that their build makes them better suited to lift the most weight that their bodies are capable of lifting in the snatch and clean and jerk.

15

[quote]Silyak wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).
[/quote]
A better olympic lifter is the one that lifts more.[/quote]
Have to say I didn’t expect to cause this kind of debate, but it is interesting. Maybe I should’ve phrased it “… makes for a more efficient O-lifter.”

Coach Nick Horton had a blog post supporting his position. (Can’t post the link here, but it’s titled “Top 3 Reasons Why Women Make the Best Olympic Weightlifters.” To be fair, two of his points are mental [more patient and more coachable].) I also want to say Poliquin has made a similar statement about women’s builds, but I can’t remember where he said it.

[quote]nkklllll wrote:
The optimal build (generally speaking) is one in which the femur to lower leg ratio is smaller, the torso to leg ratio is smaller, the hips relatively wider, and the arms shorter.

The average woman fits this profile. The average man on the other hand, has wider shoulders suited more for upper body leverage, narrower hips, longer legs in comparison to their torso, etc. [/quote]
I think that’s a pretty solid summary. And, again, probably relates more to “more efficient” than necessarily “better”.

16

Sorry about that Chris. I have a bad habit of hijacking threads.

17

[quote]nkklllll wrote:
No. Empirically means you look at data, what you can see, touch, etc. The question is about builds, and which builds allow for the optimal performance in a given sport. The optimal build (generally speaking) is one in which the femur to lower leg ratio is smaller, the torso to leg ratio is smaller, the hips relatively wider, and the arms shorter.
[/quote]
No, the optimal build is the one that allows you to move the most weight. The data simply has to be something you can measure. In this case it is weight moved.

You’re approaching the question backwards by assuming that a certain build is optimal and then saying that those people who have that build are optimal. That’s not empirical because you haven’t actually measured a correlation between weight moved and body type, which is what you are trying to measure. Empirically, the ideal weightlifting gender is male because there is a positive correlation between weight moved and maleness.

Efficiency is a very difficult concept to define in weightlifting. You can try to say one body type is more efficient because it makes it easier to move the weight. But if that is true, then that body weight should be able to move more total weight which would come back to efficient being synonymous with better.

You could also look at efficiency in terms of energy expenditure. The problem here, though, is that the olympic moves are not optimized for energy expenditure. They are optimized to move the most weight possible. If I can power snatch a weight, that will probably take less energy than full snatching it. The mobility to reach a deep overhead squat position doesn’t really make me able to lift a weight with less energy expenditure.

And nkkkllll, I’m pretty sure I should take credit for hijacking this one.

18

[quote]Silyak wrote:

[quote]nkklllll wrote:
No. Empirically means you look at data, what you can see, touch, etc. The question is about builds, and which builds allow for the optimal performance in a given sport. The optimal build (generally speaking) is one in which the femur to lower leg ratio is smaller, the torso to leg ratio is smaller, the hips relatively wider, and the arms shorter.
[/quote]
No, the optimal build is the one that allows you to move the most weight. The data simply has to be something you can measure. In this case it is weight moved.

You’re approaching the question backwards by assuming that a certain build is optimal and then saying that those people who have that build are optimal. That’s not empirical because you haven’t actually measured a correlation between weight moved and body type, which is what you are trying to measure. Empirically, the ideal weightlifting gender is male because there is a positive correlation between weight moved and maleness.

Efficiency is a very difficult concept to define in weightlifting. You can try to say one body type is more efficient because it makes it easier to move the weight. But if that is true, then that body weight should be able to move more total weight which would come back to efficient being synonymous with better.

You could also look at efficiency in terms of energy expenditure. The problem here, though, is that the olympic moves are not optimized for energy expenditure. They are optimized to move the most weight possible. If I can power snatch a weight, that will probably take less energy than full snatching it. The mobility to reach a deep overhead squat position doesn’t really make me able to lift a weight with less energy expenditure.

And nkkkllll, I’m pretty sure I should take credit for hijacking this one.[/quote]

I’m not assuming anything. What we see consistently at the highest level of the sport is that the vast majority of those lifters have the proportions I’ve listed. An even greater percentage of female lifters have those proportions. Or you can look at it from a physics perspective. Either way, you come up with a body type which, all other things being equal, allows for much more weight to be lifted in the snatch, clean&jerk, and squat.

What this is boiling down to is that you have a VERY different concept of what “best” means than I do. We’re talking about two completely different things at this point. It seems to me that if I were to point out a woman who had never lost in her weight class of 48kg and held the world record in the snatch, clean & jerk, and total with a total of 222kg, then Jon North, who has never won an international event, outweighs her by almost double her bodyweight, and has a career best total (in training) of 358kg, would be the better lifter by your standards.

I don’t agree.

In that same vein, it seems like you would say that Ilya Ilin is a better weightlifter simply because he has a larger total than Naim Suleymanoglu. But Naim has more gold medals, and has the greatest sinclair total of all time.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t agree with that sentiment.

19

Yes, Jon North will outlift a small woman. That much is obvious. But you’re obscuring reality by focusing on that. At 60kg, Naim outlifted every woman that ever lived of any size. Tatiana Kashirina, the woman with the all time highest total, outweighed him by a factor of 1.7. And he outlifted her. Explain to me how that equates to women having a better build for weightlifting.

And even if you look at Naim as an outlier (which he certainly is even among exceptional weightlifters), the world records for men in the light weight classes are beating all but the super heavy women. By 69kg, the world records for men are easily passing all women by tens of kilos.

My point is that if you’re having a mixed gender weightlifting competition, you better hope you are male if you want to win. If we’re not talking about mixed gender competitions (since as far as I know they don’t exist), then it’s not really relevant to state that one gender has a better build than the other since there isn’t much basis for comparison.

20

[quote]Silyak wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

5’3" to 5’6", preferably female 5’3" or shorter (No joke, a few coaches have made the case that a women’s natural lower body strength, flexibility, and wide hips makes for a better O-lifter).
[/quote]
If that were true, women would have higher records. At a minimum, they would have higher pound for pound records. But they don’t. A better olympic lifter is the one that lifts more. The ability to squat deep is only a means to an end.[/quote]

To echo this school of thought in response to the OP:

You’ll find out pretty quickly what you are and aren’t built for. Some movements you’ll start stronger and be able to add weight to more quickly and for others you will have to fight for every pound you add. Just lift and find out what suits you, and more importantly what you like doing.