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- Joined
- Jan 20, 2005
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- 105
I'd prefer to keep this thread about Chris; his situation is obviously much more important than mine.
Dante and I were emailing back and forth as friends. We weren't talking about weight training, size, or anything along those lines.
I sent him a photo of my oldest daughter at her first t-ball practice. I was in the background of the picture shagging errant throws from the kids. I was surprised that I didn't look as fat as I expected to in the picture.
From that, I mentioned that I was surprised to see how much I weighed at a recent doctor visit. I was 260lbs and had expected to be a lot less. We don't have a scale at our house and I hadn't been weighed in some time.
But, it's not as though there is some miracle with my weight. My whole family is around that weight. My father has been 260 lbs his whole life. All my uncles are around the same size. My Father's brother is the "lanky" one in the family because he's 6'2", but he's considered lanky because his 250lbs is spread out over a few more inches.
I remember getting a bad grade on an assignment about "averages" in elementary school. One of the questions was "what is the size of the average man?" I wrote 6' 250lbs, because every man I knew was about 6' and 250lbs.
I remember my mom having my dad do aerobics with her when I was a kid. He got down to 200lbs and looked like an anorexic. His neck looked tiny and he looked like a bunch of bones. I remember another time where I took him to the gym in high school. I wanted to show him how strong I was getting. He decided to try the bench press.....he had no idea what he was doing, grabbed the bar unevenly, brought it down to his stomach instead of his chest, lifted it up crooked....but he did 225 for 10 and 315lbs for 3. He had never lifted before and was in his 40's.
He coached my baseball teams growing up and could never wear the team's hats because he has a fat head. He can't wear fitted hats either because they usually only go up to 7 5/8th.
I'm only saying that to let people know that the fact that I'm 260lbs isn't outrageous in my family. All the men are that size.
I just expected to be 'fatter' at 260lbs. I'm certainly not lean, and don't think I look like a bodybuilder by any means, but I hadn't seen a picture of me in some time and was surprised to see that I still looked more muscular than I expected.
That is all this was about. Dante and I talked about it, and I suspected that some of it is from the heavy training. Very heavy training will stress the tendons and ligaments, forcing them to thicken. Bearing heavy loads will thicken bones, as an adaptation to stress. Heavy training will probably cause more contractile tissue thickening compared to other 'size' adaptations of increased vascular density, higher nutrient stores, increased fluid and glycogen content in the muscle, etc. It will also increase nerve innervation to the muscle fiber to increase % of tissue signaled to contract.
I would assume that those types of changes would be more 'permanent' than the types of adaptations that increase muscle size from lighter lifting.
Remember, the vast majority of a cross-sectional area of muscle tissue isn't actual contractile tissue. Anyone that's eaten beef jerky can see how much a mass of muscle 'shrinks' when it's dried out to nothing but the actual tissue. Training, specifically bodybuilding training, increases muscle size through many areas (mostly what I wrote above). The increase in volume that comes from more capillary density, dilated blood vessels, increased microvascular number/dilation, increased nutrient stores, etc., most likely affects muscle "size" much more than an actual increase in contractile fiber thickness.
So, that's all it is. As long as my Father is the person that impregnated my Mother, I would expect to be a big fat guy my whole life. So, the weight isn't really a surprise. I do feel that the 15 years of heavy training is likely a part of the reason I look more muscular than I would expect at this weight.
I was only a "bodybuilder" for about 3-4 years. The rest of those 15 years was spent training for football or powerlifting. Most people get the "bug" because of Arnold, my "idol" was Bill Kazmaier. So, I spent many more hours training to get stronger than I did training to look better with a tan and posing oil on.
I know it's hard to think any other way when you're actively training to get bigger, but I don't have any feelings either way on my size. I'd like to look "in shape" for my wife and to promote health to my kids, but I don't care to be the 'big guy.'
In fact, if being big does anything in school....it probably hurts me. I can only imagine what the professors think when I walk in to a Quantum Mechanics course on the first day...I'd imagine it isn't as positive of a thought as they have when they see the skinny kid walk in with the "May the F=ma be with you" shirt on....
As for the rhabdomyolysis, they finally diagnosed me with Lupus. My body attacks its tissues with antibodies. It has affected my connective tissue the most...so that is why I keep getting the rhabdomyolysis and myopathy readings from my tests. It's not a huge deal, it's just something I'll have to deal with.
I had no intentions of writing a novel here, but I figured I'd post so that people can get back on track with the original intent of the thread.
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