The Bodybuilding Physique

There are other sports in which athletes develop big muscles, but bodybuilding is about the maximum aesthetic development of the entire physique. The ideal bodybuilding physique would look something like this - wide shoulders and back tapering down to a tight waist, legs in proper proportion to the torso. Big, shapely, and proportionate muscular development, with full muscles tapering down to small joints. Every body part developed, including such areas as rear delts, lower back, abdominal's, forearms, and calves. Good muscular definition and muscle separation.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect athlete in any sport. Athletes always have strengths and weaknesses. In bodybuilding, all of us who have competed in the sport have had weak points that we strove to over come by specific types of strength training and posing techniques. Nature makes some physiques better than others, more ideally proportioned, more responsive to sports training.

In past years, there have been champions like Frank Zane, who had beautiful aesthetics and was a master poser, but who many thought lacked the mass and density they would like to see in a champion. Franco Columbu won two Mr. Olympia's in spite of being much shorter than you'd think would be possible in a champion competing at that level. Dorian Yates won many Mr. Olympias, deservingly, but he has also been continually criticized by some for being much too thick and blocky and lacking the overall aesthetic and athletic look they feel bodybuilding ought to be about.

It may seem strange that having too much muscle can be a drawback, but although bodybuilding is about big muscles, it can be a disadvantage to be too mesomorphic, with thick slabs of muscle rather than aesthetic tapering ones. Many seemingly massive bodybuilders actually have fairly small skeletons and joints, which help to give muscles that more aesthetic shape. Most people are surprised that, even at my heaviest competition weight, the average individual could still nearly close his fingers around my wrist.

In any sport in fact, in any area of life it's a fact that some people have more talent in specific areas than do others. In the same way, bodybuilding champions are made, but also born. You have to have the right kind of genetics. You can't train to change your skeletal type or propor tiems (although you build bone strength and size when you do muscle training). Keep in mind, however, that what kind of genetic potential you have is not always obvious. Sometimes you need to train for a few years to see what kind of potential you may ultimately have.

And it's also a fact that the "race doesn't always go to the swift." Some times you need to overcome obstacles to develop to your full potential and it is often the case that the most gifted athlete does not always learn to work hard enough to rise to the top in a sport. Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner told me that when he was in high school he wasn't the best in any sport in which he participated. But by hard work over the years and learning all of the skills involved in the decathlon's ten events he was ultimately able to win the coveted title of "Best Athlete in the World". Sometimes, it pays to remember the story of the tortoise and the hare.

But whatever your genetics, the kind of training you do is what influences the type of muscular development you achieve. To be a really good bodybuilder, you need to create muscle shape, and this happens when you train every part of a muscle or muscle group, at every angle possible, so that the entire muscle is stimulated and every possible bit of fiber is involved. Muscles are really aggregates of many smaller units bundles and bundles of fiber and every time you use the muscle in a slightly different way you stimulate different combinations of these bundles and activate additional fibers. The bodybuilder attempts to achieve total development of every muscle in the body, to create the fullest possible shape in each muscle, to have the muscles proportionate to one another, and to achieve an overall symmetry that is as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Developing the body this way requires a complete knowledge of technique. You may want to change the shape of your pectoral muscles, peak the biceps more fully, or achieve a better balance between upper and lower body development, but these results do not come about by accident. So the best bodybuilders are those who understand how muscle tissue works, how training actually affects the body, and what sort of techniques lead to specific results.