The Mighty Morphs
Tri-pronged approach to understanding your body built.
The phrase “know thyself” cannot be any truer than its literal interpretation for fitness fanatics and body builders. Once you are able to identify your natural body type, you can specifically target elements of your training in order to improve your physique to more efficiently add muscle, lose fat, and, or improve your cardio capacity.
There are three basic distinct types, each with its own specific characteristics. These are ectomorphs, mesomorphs and endomorphs.
Each human being, body physique regardless of gender, race, colour, or current appearance falls in one of the categories by default. Building more muscle and losing fat can indeed be sparked by various training programs, but you can’t, believe me, you cannot directly change the way you look and feel without a proper nutritional plan or more commonly referred to as “diet”.
It has to be one part training/cardio, one part rest and one part nutrition. What you consume is just as important as your training sessions, so are genetics, time, rest and psychology.
A good personal trainer should have a good understanding of the three basic human body types together with baseline knowledge of physiology involving the human nervous system and thyroid and hormonal output. But remember that all this will also depend on a bit of experimenting.
With the above information as your foundation guidelines or first step, 50 per cent of your initial start-up is done.
Ectomorphs
Ectomorphs are generally the skinny, lean body typed people. Their body oxidises food very slowly, that means it burns or processes foods consumed very fast. They have high thyroid function and hormonal output. Ectomorphs have very low body fat percentages and carry relatively little muscle. Many people who are ectomorphs consider themselves to be “hard gainers” and are often confused on the correct approach for adding mass or size.
Set out your weight training with compound exercises such as the bench press, squat and deadlift, using a scheme of about 5-8 repetitions every set. Consume high carbs because your naturally fast metabolism.
To gain significant muscle mass:
? Incorporate: compound movements and heavy lifting but lesser in frequency.
? Keep: repeat count low, preferably 5- 8 reps.
? Rests: can be longer between sets but keep workouts short.
? Cardio: should not be a priority but done mostly once or twice a week to keep up with stamina.
? Never: Use caffeine especially as a pre workout stimulante.
Mesomorphs
Mesomorphs have normal thyroid function, fairly high anabolic drive, which means their bodies are testosterone and growth hormone dominating and they have efficient and balanced appetites. Mesomorphs are blessed with enviable genetic foundation for building muscle and staying lean. If you have this body type you have an efficient metabolism and your body responds well to muscle stimulation and building from weight training.
You fall in as balanced oxidiser, that is your body utilises foods at a pace not allowing too much fat storage or over use of calories leaving you with no fuel for recovery or muscle building.
A Mesomorph’s primary goal
? Do perform cardio workouts regularly but no more than three times a week.
? Incorporate intensity techniques like drop sets, pyramiding and forced reps to kick up growth hormones.
? Do selections of compound and single joint movements to hit each muscle group from a variety of angles.
? Don’t overtrain. It will weaken your immune system.
? And don’t neglect the importance of rest as a means of recovery from training. It helps to reset and effectively maintain your efficient metabolism.
Endomorphs
Endomorphs have a reduced metabolic rate, but there are ways to jump start it into action. Your main goal should be to speed up your metabolism if you fall in this somatotype and intend to improve your physique. You may even have fairly dense muscles but cannot see them because of all the fat covering them.
Endomorph’s primary goal is to lose body fat while preserving mature muscle:
? Keep your metabolism high by eating five to seven meals a day.
? Do cardio four or five days a week. Before breakfast on an empty stomach is an excellent time to mobilise and burn up stored fat (you can also try having coffee prior to training to help burn fat).
? Do your workouts at a faster pace, taking shorter rest breaks between sets no more than 60-90 seconds).
? Don’t place too much emphasis on massive strength training. Instead keep repetition range between 10 to 15 times. These increases volume and will help take off the fat.
Often you are given a training, nutrition or conditioning plan that may just be a “Universal one for all” plan. This, nine out of 10 times will lead to failure or next to zero progress. We want results; everyone’s bodies are different so how can we in all fact expect one routine to work for all. Speed up your results faster by first understanding your body type, then adapting a routine that works best based on your metabolism, hormones and body structure.
* Albert Veeran is a local publisher of the Bodyworks Fitness Magazine and the FYI Lifestyle Magazine. He is a body building and weight loss adviser, motivational speaker and an independent body building and physique show promoter. Email: bodyworksinfo@ymail.com.
