Has competetive bodybuilding hit the wall?

[Jay-Budaman]

In this months issue of Mens Fitness theres an article about something along these lines. It says that we aren't genetically built to pack on tons of muscle and in compares us to neanderthals, who were huge. They had huge bones and muscles and only 5-10% body fat. Our line of people went on to survive because we were better adapted, their all muscle bodies burned massive amounts of calories as opposed to ours. We also developed better hunting methods (ie. Not standing toe to toe with Sabre tooth Grizzly Mammoths). The article also says that had we been genetically programmed to build large amounts of muscle we may have not survived to this point in history. With todays technology however the same factors that contributed to the neanderthals dying out would not matter, so if a Neanderthal came to present day Earth and went on a serious weight training program and ate right, he'd probably kick Ronnie Colemans ass easily in a contest.

 

[KarlW]

I've seen shows about the Neanderthal/Homosapien thing. Very interesting indeed. The Neanderthals had tough lives, so in an evolutionary sense, they had to become big and strong. However, the Homo's had more evolved brains, and this is what allowed them to out-survive the dying species. Muscles meant little when you could think your way around problems. And so to this day, the human species does not need to be huge. It offers little benefits in survival terms.