Originally Posted by Sjared

1) Studies have shown that better health and longevity are correlated with slenderness and thinness. While comparing people with poor muscular tone with people with good muscular tone seems to suggest muscles make us younger and healthier, this doesn't mean that the more muscles we have the healthier and more longeve we are. Slenderness and the right amount of muscles are correlated with better health and longevity. Bulkiness and "bigness" are not.

In other words, low BF% not overall size is more important.


3) Muscle growth is optimized by fat gain. So the more we try to build our muscles the more the body tries to increase our body fat. There are many reasons for this. One of this reasons is that kinetic energy is one-half mass times velocity squared. This means that in order to transfer more energy the body must be heavier not just stronger. We have just to think of sumo wrestlers or weights throwers and even olympic powerlifters.

It doesn't have anything to do with kinetic energy. The body only puts on significant muscle when it thinks it can afford to spare calories and nutrients to build them. This is more efficient during times of excess caloric intake, when fat is being developed to some degree.


4) This explains why it's possible to optimize body composition by losing a little fat and gaining a little muscle at the same time, but it's impossible to gain lot of muscles and losing lot of fat at the same time. Muscle gain will always trigger and encourage fat gain and fat loss will always trigger and encourage muscle loss.

Yes, but thats not to say you cannot achieve any net benefit through cutting/bulking cycles or eating close to maintainance and gradually changing body composition.

5) Many bbers over 30 tend to put on quite a few body fat. It is distributed all over and intramuscular so they can still boast about their big physique as being all lean mass while there's a lot of fat distributed evenly and mixed with the muscles. They might be considered "fat builders" and for the very way our body is made it's almost unavoidable to become a "fat builder" once your only goal is to be big and get bigger. Some become fat builders immediately. They eat and eat and boast about their growth which is actually way more fat than muscles. Some become fat builders after a period of metabolic adaption once anabolic saturation kicks in.

How many non-BB'ers do you see balloon up in their 30s? Its not a BB specific problem when the metabolic rates slow down due to age.

9) Besides the body doesn't tolerate much extra weight on its frame. With the years whatever extra weight on the frame tends to be a major burden. Speed and coordination decrease, posture gets worse, ligaments and joints start to hurt or wear out and the spine gets compressed. Puffing for a simple flight of stair or a walking up the mountains becomes the norm.

Maybe once you get truly huge but most of the guys I see with an extra 20-30 lbs of lean mass have more coordination and explosiveness. Weightlifting doesn't turn you into a lazy bum. Also, joints don't wear out in old age any more in weightlifters than non-weight lifters.

10) Speed, coordination and explosiveness create an adaptation for maximum energy efficiency. Optimizing the muscle for energy efficiency means making them smaller. A marathon champion isn't so skinny because excessive cardio burned his muscle but because his body adapted the muscle to the maximum cardio efficiency possible by making the muscles smaller.

A marathon runner doesn't need terribly strong muscles. I"m not saying running a marathon is easy but in terms of anaerobic capability, a marathon runner doesn't have or need much of it (as opposed to a sprinter). And yes, the excessive cardio seems to cut a good deal of muscle while still holding a higher level of BF% in many runners I've seen.