Biceps Potential for Building Mass - Distance Between Elbow and Edge of Contracted Biceps.| Critical MAS

Biceps Potential for Building Mass - Distance Between Elbow and Edge of Contracted Biceps.| Critical MAS

Mar 24th, 2012 by MAS. 

Exactly 5 years ago I posted my thoughts on Fitness Role Models. My understanding of fitness has changed a lot since then. In that post, I listed a few guidelines to pick a realistic fitness role model.

1: Same Sex This should be obvious.
2: Same Height Visit CelebHeights.com or Yahoo! Sports for this data.
3: Similar Age The photos should be within a decade of your current age.
4: Body Type Are you lanky (ectomorph) or stocky (endomorph)? Pick appropriately.

I made an error on #4. I divided the world into 3 somatypes and in reality it is more complicated than that. Last year I learned that the muscular potential of ectomorphs has extreme variance. In the book The New High Intensity Training by Ellington Darden Ph.D., I came face to face with two formulas that had escaped me in my many years of training and researching fitness. Darden has worked with thousands of individuals engaged in strength training and has collected lots of data. Here are his 2 muscular potential charts.

 

After reading those charts, I put down the book, took my measurements and discovered with no surprise that my muscular potential was “very minimal”. Then I thought about all my ectomorph role models and went on an image search. Sure enough in every case that I could find where an ectomorph went from scrawny to brawny, they had tighter spacing on their bicep edge.

Seems my realistic role models weren’t realistic at all. I spent over a decade slamming the weights trying to bulk up. Although I gained some muscle, I also gained fat and was frequently sore or injured from pushing my physique further than it wanted to go. I had painkillers, X-Rays,cortisone shots and even a surgery. I wasted thousands on supplements, protein powder and energy bars. All in the quest to gain more muscle.

These days I have no fitness role models. Once I dropped the excess weight and inflammation, I was happy with my results.


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EVALUATING YOUR BICEPS POTENTIAL


Let's begin with the biceps. Take off your shirt and bit a double-biceps pose in front of a mirror. Look closely at the inside elbow area of both arms. Now, pronate (turn your hands away from your head) and supinate (turn your hands toward your head) your hands. Notice that when you supinate your hands, your biceps get more peaked. That's because the primary function of your biceps
is supination of the hand.

Go back to the double-biceps pose with your hands fully supinated. The bend in your arms, or the angle between the bones in your upper arms and forearms should he 90 degrees. Look at the gap between your contracted biceps and elbow. How wide is the gap?

Before you measure it, relax your arms for a few minutes and while you're relaxing, do the following. Take your right hand and place your fingers and thumb across the crook of your left elbow. You should he able to feel the large tendon of the biceps as it crosses the front of the elbow joint and inserts into the radius bone of the forearm. In fact, as you gently contract your left biceps, dig your tips into the elbow gap and get a good feel of the cable-like tendon. Follow the tendon up the arm until you feel where it connects to your biceps. It's the distance between where your biceps meets the tendon and where the tendon crosses the elbow joint that you need to determine.

Hit the double-biceps pose once again. Make sure your hands are fully supinated and that the bend in your arms is 90 degrees. Have a friend measure with a ruler the distance between the inside of your elbow (look for the crease in the skin on the front side of your elbow) and the inside edge of your contracted biceps. BY the way this distance will be the same distance before you ever started training and if you train for many years no matter how much muscle you pack on that distance will never move its genetical determined.

Do it for both yourleft and right arms
.
What do the resulting figures mean?

Although this is certainly not an exact science by any means, my experience leads me to make the following generalizations:

Biceps Potential for Building Mass - Distance Between Elbow and Edge of Contracted Biceps.

Biceps length Potential
½ “ or less long - great
½”-1” -  above average Good
1”-1 ½” - average average
1-1/2” to 2” - below average poor
2” or more - short very minimal

The bodybuilders with the really massive arms all have 1/2inch or less distance be- tween their elbows and contracted biceps. In other words, in their biceps they have long muscle bellies, short tendons, and great potential.

Sergio Oliva, the man with one of the most massive muscular arms in the world, has biceps muscles that are so long there are no gaps between his elbows and contracted biceps. That's right-no gaps, Sergio's arms would actually measure larger if he could fully contract his biceps by bending his elbows more. Sergio is one of the very few people in the world who has muscles that actually limit his range of movement. But even so, there are thousands of men today who would gladly trade their biceps for Sergio's.

While no one questions the importance of well-developed biceps, the muscle that con- tributes the most to the mass of the upper arm is the triceps.