how to determine your genetic potential by h.i.t.
GENETIC POTENTIAL
ARTHUR JONES said over twentyfive years ago that most bodybuilders strongmen are not realistic in their goals.
They want something that is beyond their genetic potential-namely great mus- cular size. In other words, their goal is simply not possible!
he went several steps further by saying that the major genetic factor behind great muscular size, especially in the arms, is extremely long muscle bellies in your biceps and triceps. And the length of your muscle bellies is 100 percent genetically deter- mined. What you were Born with is what you must live and die with.
Many of the bodybuilders especially Boyer Coe, Casey Viator, Sergio Oliva, Ed Robinson, Manfred h. mariuzsi p. and Arnold
have very long muscle bellies in their arms. It is no wondher that they have some of the biggest and best-shaped biceps and triceps in the world.
It is a known physiological fact that the longer a person's muscle, the greater the cross-sectional area and the overall volume of that muscle can become. Simple phys- iology reveals that for a muscle to be wide it has to be long. A short muscle could not be wide because its angle of pull would he so poor it would not be able to function effi- ciently. Thus, the body would not permit a short, wide muscle to exist.
How do you determine if you have long, average, or short muscle bellies in your upperarms?
The key factor is where your biceps and triceps muscles attach to the tendons that cross your elbow joints.
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 cablelike 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 mas- sive 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.
EVALUATING YOUR TRICEPS POTENTIAL
The length of the triceps, compared to the biceps, is harder to determine. The difficulty lies in the fact that the junction between the three beads of the triceps and their common tendon is more difficult to measure and evaluate.
The triceps-as the name implies-is composed of three beads: lateral, long, and medial. All three beads attach to a large flat tendon that runs across the back of the elbow and connects to the forearm bone.
Take off your shirt again and look in the mirror. Turn to your side. With your elbow straight and your arm by your side, contract your triceps. You should observe, if you are reasonably lean, a distinct horseshoe shape to your triceps. The lateral head of your triceps forms one side of the horseshoe, the medial head forms the other side, the long head is at the top, and the tendon occupies the flat space in the middle.
What I've observed over many years is
that the men with the really massive triceps
of a horseshoe shape to the back of their arms. The flat space in the middle of the horseshoe is partially covered by the unusual length of the long head at the top. And the lateral and medial beads on the sides resemble upside-down soft drink bot- tles. What's left of the tendon is about the
size of a rounded-off-at-one-end credit card. Sergio Oliva, for example, has no horse-
shoe shape at all to the back of his arms. Bill Pearl's triceps are much the same as Ser- gio's, as are the triceps of Ray and Mike Mentzer.
To determine your triceps potential, here's what to do. With your elbow straight and your arm by your side, contract your triceps. Have a friend measure the distance from the tip of your elbow to the top of the inside of the horseshoe. In other words, you are measur- ing the longest portion of the flat tendon.
Remember, the longer the tendon, the shorter the muscle. Or the shorter the
tendon, the longer the muscle.
Here are my generalizations for estimating your triceps potential:
Triceps Potential for Building Mass
Distance Between
Elbow Tip and
Top of Inside of
Horseshoe Triceps Length Potential
3" or less long great
3"-4" above average good
4"-6" average average
6"-7" below average poor
7"or more short very minimal
You can still have a massive triceps- even if you have a short, long head-if your lateral and medial beads are long and thick. The triceps chart, therefore, is not as accu- rate as the biceps table.
My advice is to use both the biceps and the triceps charts in a very general, non- definitive manner.
LOOKING AT THE PROBABILITIES
What are your chances for building a really big pair of arms? The type that would place you in the top five of the Mr. Olympia
contest?
First, as you might already suspect, the odds are not good. At best they are perhaps one in a million. In other words, out of every one million men in the United States, only one has the potential to have arms like Boyer Coe or Casey Viator.
Since there are approximately 242 million people in the United States, and only half of them (121 million) are male, that means
there are 121 males in this country with unusual genetic potential for building mus- cular, 20-inch arms.
Second, if you do have the genetic poten- tial for building big arms, you probably already have big arms-even if you don't train. And if you do train, you probably already believe you understand the basics of bodybuilding because you have big arms. In fact, many of you probably have average, or slightly above-average, genetic potential.
Others of you will have much better-than- average genetic potential and you will
achieve much better-than-average results.
But what can you ultimately become? How big will your arms he if you reach your
genetic potential? In other words, what is a realistic goal for your upper arm circum- ference?
A REALISTIC GOAL
Joe Roark, lists the following formula for the average trainee:
To calculate your upper arm potential, THIS IS JUST A GUIDE DON'T HOLD ME BY IT
multiply your wrist size in inches by 2.3.
For example, if your wrist size is exactly 7 inches, then 7 times 2.3 equals 16.1 inches. "But who wants a 16-inch arm?" you might he thinking.
Well, 1 promise you, a lean muscular 16- inch arm actually looks bigger than it is.
Furthermore, you've certainly got to get 16-inch arms before you move higher up the tape. And if you already have legitimate 16- inch arms, then your goal should he 17 inches. Or if you have 17-inch arms, then shoot for 18 inches.
In the final analysis, he realistic and take it one step at a time.
thank you wayne
