Mesomorphsįinally, mesomorphs are intermediate in relative leg and trunk lengths, appearing “normal” and considered ideally proportioned in limb and girth. This would be unlikely in Olympic lifting. So men like Ed Coan can start in the 75s as fully grown adults and then continue to grow into 110s and be successful at all stages. Their limbs must do a lot more work just carrying them around.Įndos do appear more often in powerlifting since thick muscularity is even more important and bar speed is not so important. Endos, especially with training, can be as muscular as mesomorphs. As such, they are generally better at the jerk than the snatch. Even prime of life 69s and 77s are usually a bit short in the limb. That is why you seldom see 56 or 62 kg athletes in the Masters. They do tend to have to fight to keep the pounds off in their prime and often pack on some weight after the need for contest discipline ends. It is the lighter categories where these will be found. Shoulder and hip width is greater than the others. Many just need to hit the groceries and get under the squat rack to find their true selves.Įndomorphs are the opposite – short limbs and more normal length torsos, which will appear longer. One should be aware that those skinny kids are not necessarily ectomorphs. There the long limbs and big hands can be used to advantage, but they will do so after falling way behind in the first two lifts.īut do not discourage your seemingly underweight novice trainees. In powerlifting ectos have not often been stars at the total but some can specialize in the deadlift. They hardly even exist in the lighter bodyweight categories. It is hard to gain and easy to lose in detraining – the classic hard gainers.įew ectos are successful at the higher echelons of weightlifting. These lifters have to eat a lot to get their body composition into favorable amounts of muscularity. So, some meso is desirable as well.Įctomorphs are mainly characterized by having long limbs and a short torso. It is hard to gain and easy to lose in detraining. These lifters have to eat a lot to get their body composition into favourable amounts of muscularity. To be tall you have to have proportionately longer leg bones. It helps to be tall to lift there and to have enough room to pack on the muscle. Any tall superheavies likely have some ecto characteristics. Lots of couch potatoes are built this way. His training added a lot of muscle, but when the muscular gains came slower the fat cells came easier with those infamous huge meals.Įven ectomorphs can get fat (“skinny fat” is the current gym parlance) if they over-eat and under exercise. The young Vasily had the long limbs and narrow hips of the ectomorph.
That belly actually was the result of a diet that tried to pack as much muscle as possible on his somewhat ectomorphic frame. Our late friend Vasily Alexeev (in the video below) will be given as an example of endomorphism, based purely on his large belly. Right? Is it all that simple? Not necessarily.Īs is often the case the pop culture gets these wrong. Another is a bodybuilder therefore he must be a mesomorph.
Many people think they can immediately categorize a body type. Muscular is considered a given, but someone can always point out a muscle-less wonder who was a world-beater. Many beers are consumed debating the ideal lifting body type. I will not enter into that debate, but I will discuss how the categories affect weightlifting since this has fascinated weight people for decades.īody morphology in weightlifting is very evident, and very important. Sheldon over-stereotyped his three categories, to the extent that perhaps more people did not fit into them than did. Sheldon believed these physical characteristics also influenced personality. Described briefly, the three body types cited were the thin (ectomorphs), the fat (endomorphs), and the muscular (mesomorphs). That is 1 for minimum endomorphy, 1 for minimum mesomorphy and 7 for maximum ectomorphy. Similarly the pure mesomorph was 1–7–1 and the pure endomorph was 7–1–1. In 1954 psychologist William Herbert Sheldon characterized all possible body types according to a three number scale that ranged from 1 to 7 for each of three somatotypes: endomorph, mesomorph, and ectomorph.Ī pure ectomorph would score 1–1–7.