Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Menno Henselman on How Genetics Influence Muscle Building

Episode Date: January 21, 2017

In this podcast I interview Menno Hennselmans, from BayesianBodybuilding.com, and we talk about how genetics affects your muscle and strength gains and aesthetics. I thought Menno would be the perfect person to talk to about this because he’s one of the leaders of the evidence-based fitness movement, and one of a handful of people in this space whose work I regularly follow and recommend. So, if you’ve been wondering about how your genetics influence things like the rate at which you can gain muscle and strength, how big and strong you can ultimately get, how your muscles look as they develop, and more, then you’re going to like this interview. Here it is. 4:33 - How much do genetics affect speed of muscle growth & what are realistic expectations? 15:40 - What is the potential for muscle hypertrophy & size? 26:00 - What is the timeframe to reach your genetic potential? 28:50 - How do we predict the ceiling of our fat free mass? 38:20 - Is FFMI a hard and fast rule for the limits of a natural lifter? 52:10 - How much do genetics affect how your muscles look? 54:10 - How can you increase your bicep peak? 54:50 - Can genetics affect certain muscle groups responsiveness to training? 1:00:40 - What are muscle bellies and insertions, and how do genetics influence their look? 1:07:00 - Where can people find your work? ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST: http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/muscle-specific-hypertrophy-biceps-back-and-lower-body/ http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/muscle-specific-hypertrophy-chest-triceps-and-shoulders/ http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/3-reasons-calves-arent-growing/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger If You're a Guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger If You're a Girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

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for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O- A S T. And you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get What's up? This is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com and I am back with another episode of the podcast. In this episode, I interview Menno Henselmans from BayesianBodybuilding.com and we talk about how genetics affects your muscle and strength gains and aesthetics. Now I was excited to get Menno on the podcast because one, he has

been requested many times by listeners and two, I thought he would be the perfect person to talk to about this because he is one of the leaders of the evidence-based fitness movement and one of a handful of people really in this space whose work I regularly follow and recommend. As you'll see, he knows his shit. So if you've been wondering about how your genetics influence things like the rate at which you can gain muscle and strength, how big and strong you can ultimately get, how your muscles look as they develop, and more, then I think you're going to like this interview. So let's get to it. Mano, thanks for coming on the show. I've missed you a few times and I'm excited to talk to you.

You're actually one of the guests that a lot of the people that listen to me have been requesting. So here we are. All right. My pleasure, Mike. Great. Yeah. So the discussion is going to be about genetics and what role they play in gaining muscle and strength. And what I was thinking is, you know, I get asked about this fairly frequently. I've written a little bit about it. I've spoken a little bit about it, but I haven't had a real in-depth discussion on it. And so what I was thinking, we just kind of run down a few of the more common questions

that I get. And then I'm just going to kind of pass the mic to you and, you know, let you do your thing. Sure. Cool. So let's just start at the top here. So one of the questions that I get most frequently is, is how much do genetics affect how quickly you can gain muscle and strength? And then the kind of follow-up question is usually, okay, so then what are some realistic expectations for someone just getting into weightlifting in particular? I get that from a lot of guys that are new because they're on Instagram and they're looking at all these different people and they don't know what's drugs, what's not drugs, and they don't know what's real and what's not real in terms of timeframes and so forth. So I think that's a good place to start. Right. Starting with your first question,

how much do genetics play? How big is the role of genetics in how much muscle you can gain, how strong you can get? It's big. You know, to quantify how much researchers for these kinds of questions, they often express something as a hereditary coefficient, which is like the percent. It's roughly interpreted as the percentage that your genetics affect your results. So you can think of it as how much your genetics can predict relative to other factors like environmental factors, in this case being your training program your nutrition uh well you're sleeping all of those things sure and here we see that there is a very very significant

influence we can start with that it's um so big in fact that in research at least we have people that are deemed non-responders because on any given training program they don't grow any muscle at all or they gain any strength and i'm actually not really in favor of the term non-responder because in all my years of coaching experience and as a coach you often get the hard gainers and the people that have tried everything i have a lot of people that you know they've had five different coaches and they're like okay this is basically the last attempt i'm gonna make yeah and what i've seen is i've had one person that really probably couldn't gain any more muscle he could lose fat he could get a six-pack he could get he could build some strength at least but in terms of muscle

growth it was just it was so little that he was already like intermediate level so definitely yeah I was gonna say because you just said anymore so I don't yeah yeah so I don't think I'm not really convinced of the the presence of their actually being complete non responders but at least we see them in research and that's probably because they didn't respond to that given program over you know the time period and also how are the results measured I mean they're yeah exactly so and we know that different people react better to different programs we can get

into that as well yeah that's actually no that's a that's a good point we should talk about that I didn't put that on the list, but I also do get asked about that. So we have these people that at least do that given program, they don't respond. And other people, we see rates of increase in those kind of studies of, I think, two to threefold. So you have people gaining like 250% strength, which is huge. So they're more than doubling their strength level and other people they they don't really gain anything so we have this huge variance that is a fact but if we look at the hereditary coefficient we see that it's around 50 percent

and i think for obesity the most recent estimates are actually closer to 40%. So your genes would explain 40% of who gets obese and who doesn't. And that's actually less, 40% at least, than what we see in most other research. Because for people that don't know, I actually came from a background of economics, psychology, and statistics. And I made the career switch from business consultant to working as an online coach and so I'm familiar with a lot of other research areas as well and I know that in most other areas 50% is actually deemed normal so it's actually just seen as a normal average which is kind of almost seems

too coincidental right thank you have you have environmental factors and you have genetic factors and it seems that yeah there's a balance there yeah it's it's about one to one it's about 50 50. um so it seems too coincidental but it's true for a ton of things including you for example your personality so in that line you know like you can get screwed over by your genetics more in terms of strength training that you can get screwed over for your intelligence or your personality or your height, any other such factor. So in that line, you know, it's not that bad. But we do just see these huge variants. And I think a lot of people may be a bit thinking about it too gloomy because they look at the

extreme outliers, right? They hear about these non-responders and then they think of stories like the most famous, I think, that has actually been verified is Andy Bolton. I often use him as an example in my PT course where as the example of the most extreme outlier because I think he squatted, I think it was 500 pounds. The first session he was in the gym or something like that. Yeah, and with a 600-pound deadlift soon to follow. I know one person that is, I mean, he's not that much of a freak, but his first deadlift ever was like 405. And now he's pulling, a year and a half later, he's pulling 600 plus.

What is that? That's good. And you would look at him, he just looks like a normal guy. Like now he looks a bit more muscular, but he's not some, you know, he's not the short, super stocky dude. He's actually like 6'4 and looks pretty muscular, fairly muscular, but you would never guess. Like he could he could i

told him he should go into gyms just make bets he could just make money that way yeah well that's actually that's another interesting aspect of genetics is that how much can you predict based on what you see right right so for strength we know that the variance is a lot bigger and it's actually really straightforward as to why this is why we see more variance for strength than for muscle growth. And that is because everything that affects muscle growth basically also affects your strength. Because given any sort of neural level, I often use the analogy of your brain being the driver and your muscles being the race car. So given any level of neural development, a bigger muscle means more total force production. So, or specifically, scientists would say that a larger cross-sectional area, all else being equal,

always increases total potential force output of that muscle tissue right and therefore we see that we have this variance in muscle growth muscle can you gain but the variance in strength is even bigger because not only we have we these morphological factors as they're called so factors like muscle size that affect your strength we also have other morphological factors like biomechanical factors for example the angle at which a muscle inserts on the tendon even a very minor difference in this angle or a panacea angle of the muscle for example these which you cannot see at all visually looking at like degrees and all of this being internal in your body can make a huge difference because we are talking

about these tiny angles that you can have a slight difference in angle that basically doubles the leverage the muscle has on a particular bone or joint and that basically means that it also can double the force output so you can have these two people that have the exact same amount of muscle mass and they also have the exact same amount of muscle mass, and they also have the exact same level of neural development, but one of them simply has these insertion points of the muscles and the tendons on bones that make that person a lot more suitable for heavy lifting. So they're actually producing the same amount of internal force,

and the muscles are doing the same kind of work, but it can be a twofold difference in external force output meaning they can lift twice as much weight while they only have to do half the work right man i mean i guess a simple analogy could be like the the lever and fulcrum type of you know where you just it depending on where how it's set up you can the the amount of force that goes in can be disproportionately larger in terms of what goes out yeah that's exactly right so you can also have that with cable pulleys in the gym for example a lot of my clients are surprised like they have a certain exercise and they're using a certain cable pulley and then the next session they use a different cable pulley like i couldn't

lift nearly as much weight but if you're just changing the amount of pulleys, that can double the resistance. So that's also why machine work, like a lot of people ask what is an impressive leg press? And my answer is there's no such thing. Because the different leg press machines can have such incredibly different leverage and action rates that, you know, on one machine you can barely press more than you can squat. And on a different machine, it's just like several fold. You can just put obscene amounts of weight on there. Right. And look at Ronnie Coleman and then you have these guys, you know, looking around and you have someone else step on the leg press and then they do the quarter leg

presses and they're like oh yeah i like press a thousand pounds and you know they can barely squat uh three plates of that so right yeah it's biomechanics it's not really uh strength makes sense yeah then um the other factor that we have that also explains how strong you are is basically you can group that together as neural factors. So it's like how advanced the driver is, how well the driver can control the car, meaning how well can the brain control your muscles. And also more peripheral factors like your neurons, like how fast can the signal transduce through your neurons and reach your muscles. to induce through your neurons and reach your muscles but it's largely analogous to the driver in the car or you can think of it as hardware and software how well can the software control the hardware you know if you have for the

computer people I'm not even sure if this is right because I'm not that good with computers but you can have I know that certain pieces of hardware you can overclock them depending on how well the software functions so you can have the same kind of graphics card but like physical material but if you have better software it can make more use of that same card right yeah i mean it's a good analogy so with these three factors you basically have the variance in strength and it includes muscle so much bigger variance there so yeah i mean just, just to summarize then, so you're going to have people whose muscles are just mechanically set up to be stronger. And then you have people whose muscles can contract more forcefully where, you know, like you were saying, the software, it just better uses what's available. And then what about in terms of just potential for hypertrophy potential

for size um i think you had mentioned a little bit about that earlier but that's that's really where i get asked i mean this is mainly guys asking because they're concerned that they're never going to be able to look like you know so and so and i mean you had touched on it with non-responders uh versus hyper responders i guess say. Um, so what are some realistic, if we just kind of looked at in terms of pounds in, let's say the first, um, if it plays out over, let's say five years. So for muscle growth for, for guys, and then also girls, I mean, I don't get asked very frequently by, by girls, but there are women out there that are concerned with it. Um, based on your experience and research, what do you say are some realistic expectations?

Assuming, assuming that, you know, they're following at least a well-designed training program and they, and they know what they're doing with their nutrition and, you know, they're not under eating or eating too little protein or doing anything, you know,

obviously wrong. Let me pull up the exact figures. I have this for my BT course. So scrolling. All right. figures I have on this for my PT course. So, first thing is that you should generally think of this as percentage of body weight increase because if you think of it as pounds, you know, it can be useful and you have a pretty common rule that novices like novice men, most men can gain about two pounds a month, like purely lean tissue I'm talking about, when they start training. So novices.

But beyond that, it gets very tricky because, you know, you have one guy that weighs 200 pounds, another guy that weighs 60 pounds. And obviously, you know, they're going to have a very big difference in how many pounds of muscle they can add so i really like to express everything in terms of percentage increase in body weight gain and the nice thing about that is then you also take the gender difference into account because contrary to popular belief men and women actually have the same muscular potential so given the same starting muscle mass, same baseline muscle mass, they can actually grow the same amount. And I have a very in-depth article on that on my website, The Natural Muscular Potential of Women, I think it's called.

I've read that article. I liked it. Yeah, you can check that for all the references or listeners can. But yeah, there's a lot of research from protein synthesis, from chronic training studies that actually looked at muscle growth, and also from elite athletes that cross-sectionally. And it all points in the same direction that muscular potential is actually the same. Although they do respond differently to different training programs. So men and women should not generally train and eat exactly the same but that's a different topic to the actual

figure and just just to not leave people in the mystery so then what's the big difference there it's that's where women start right is that they start with so little so the big difference between men and women in terms of muscle is that women start with so so much less right like the average woman exactly they just weigh a lot less and they have higher body fat percentage like naturally because boobs and well other factors as well but hips and you know got rear children you they start with a lot lower baseline level of fat-free mass. But given the same starting point of fat-free mass in terms of pounds or kilograms, the muscular potential is the same. So, and given the same starting weight, the potential is also very similar.

So, if you have a 170-pound male and a 170-pound woman, there's very little difference in what they're going to be able to accomplish in terms of strength and muscle growth. to be able to accomplish in terms of strength and muscle growth for power men from better which is why in most sports men do dominate but there's also cultural differences there so right that'd be anyway i would like to have you on another time talk about that that'd be interesting anything anything that uh any of the episodes that are more specifically geared towards women do particularly well because uh a lot of the stuff tends to be more male oriented so yeah that's true that's that's also what i discussed in the article there's this huge you know you're a client say discrimination but it's not discrimination it's just a disproportionate amount of men in the industry

and therefore a disproportionate amount of male coaches and coaches receiving male clients etc so it's almost a supply and demand thing there's there's a bias there that just kind of has naturally developed it's just differences in the market population right but as a reference by the way my audience is about two to one male to female and that's pretty consistent across my coaching applications, the clients I work with, Facebook. I haven't checked my website data in like a year, but I think it was the same there as well. I'm like 60% men, 40% women.

So there are enough women that it would be a productive conversation. Yeah. So the actual rates that I think are realistic based on the research, my experience that I have in my PT course, novice individuals can expect to gain about 1% of body weight per week. And that's basically cut in half as soon as you're at the intermediate level. And intermediate here means like seriously trained now one one percent per week no per month yeah per week so that's like well that'd be like so somebody is 200 pounds then you're talking about two pounds i mean because that that then that scale that scales down then in time right

yeah it scales down very well like okay good yes wanna make sure everybody because the guy's gonna be like what i can gain i can i can gain for my first year i can gain you know if i'm starting at you know 150 pounds i can gain all you know whatever 50 pounds in the first year that's the other thing remind me like in a second what the time frames which is attached sure um but yeah so for novice which basically means like starting with untrained, right? Okay. Completely untrained. Right.

1%. So yeah, that's aggressive. And that's, I think, realistic, but achievable for the average individual. Okay. And for how long do you see that playing out? Not long. Like you're talking about six months or so probably. Okay.

At best. But yeah, I think in your first year you can see very significant growth rates like i gained i started at 65 kilos myself and then i actually sort of unintentionally dropped down to 60 kilos and i was that's really really low weight because I was already six foot at that point, close to six foot one even. And then within a year, I bulk up to about 80 kilos still with abs. So I then spent about 10 more years basically recomping to get to that same weight but in contest shape. And then now in the last five years or so i managed to get to like six more kilos so yeah it scales down really fast but the thing is how many people start off on an optimized

program right almost nobody does right so everyone you know they have to trial and error they need to figure things out so it's even among my clients because it's still rare that you have a novice start off training completely optimally, doing everything right. Because either the adherence just isn't there yet or they have other goals or they're only willing to train twice a week. Even if they have the coaching, often it's still not gonna be they're actually maxing out on their potential right so yeah but yeah everything being right one percent per week of body weight okay I can't be games like lean tissue okay well maybe like a little fat and would you would you say that that's right down that's for a person with average genetics or

you say that's for a person that responds better than average or just the average person okay yeah and this basically this basically cut in half as soon as someone reaches the intermediate stage so that you'll be like 0.5 and then it's cut in half again once they reach the advanced stage and you're looking at like 0.25 percent all per week of body weight so that's like it's very little that's what a lot of people they don't recognize on the skill unless they're meticulously tracking everything yeah yeah and then also i mean your diet has to be pretty consistent in terms of even macronutrients there because if your carbs are going up and down you know it's hard to see what's really happening with your weight yeah if you drink alcohol you wake up you're it has diuretic effects or you're dehydrated

if you have a bowel movement one day but the other day these things can have variations in body weight that are a lot larger than what you will gain on a weekly basis as an advanced individual right and that's probably why i mean you're you're probably looking at your average weight over time in that in that scenario right yeah and as a reference what i did which is now in a year or two years maybe i did everything i could for a year and i would consider myself like an elite level trainee not because i'm like world-class in absolute terms but in terms of my genetic potential I think I'm pretty much there unfortunately but I did like everything in my power to gain as much muscle as possible which I usually do but that year I made sure I was meticulous with everything and I made very sure to record for two weeks straight under the most stable conditions i could achieve with set

carbohydrate intake set water intake everything record caliper measurements certain appearances and i basically concluded from that that i gained one pound of lean tissue and i was really happy with that because i expected zero so i was still likely making progress which was very good news to me because that's what basically what i wanted to find out but yeah when you're at the elite level as a natural trainee you're looking at yearly progress so yeah you're looking at very sharply diminishing returns to your training time and that's what i was referring to earlier like the time frames we attached to this now i'm going to make a very controversial statement, but I think based on what I've seen in terms of people that train optimally

and also some historical data of individuals like Steve Reeves and people that train really hard in the classic era, I think you can come very close to approximating your genetic potential within three years of optimal progress. Now, distinction here being very crucial, that optimal progress is not total training time. You can easily, and I've done so myself, waste three years of training time. I probably wasted at least three or four years before I really got my act together.

Exactly, it's common even. So this is absolutely not sort of training time. Like if these people are like, oh I've been training for three years, I'm there. No, no, no, absolutely not. Yeah, you've been exercising for three years. There's a difference there. Yeah, i'm talking about three years of doing everything right and making the best progress you can make so theoretically if we have a certain individual say a completely robotic individual then i would be confident that a very good coach could make that person achieve his or her genetic potential or come very close to it within three years achieve his or her genetic potential or come very close to it within three years. And probably 80 percent of that, something like that, 80 percent is actually a figure that comes from a lot of data.

The 80-20 rule, it's based on actual empirical data because most functions in life have a power law if they're not normally distributed. So 80 percent is probably a good estimate for the first year, something like that. But again, stressing that this is the period of time doing everything right. So I think people in general in the industry, they underestimate what you can achieve, but they overestimate how long it takes. So it doesn't require like you see people, it will it will easily take 20 years to reach your genetic potential i don't think so i think there the body simply does not have that kind of adaptation because evolutionarily speaking it makes no sense to have an adaptive system that is either capable of or requires 20 years of training to reach its full potential

i mean what kind of evolutionary stimulus are we talking about that you know requires 20 years of training to reach its full potential i mean what kind of evolutionary stimulus are we talking about that you know requires 20 years of doing something before your body has mastered it right it's it just doesn't occur in nature so i think in most things you would do looking at more years before your mastering skill but yeah I think that about sums it up. And then just on that point, that's a good segue into the next question. Cause that is something I'm also asked frequently about is, is, is how to predict. And again, this is usually, this is usually guys that are new to training and they want to know, is it even possible for you to look like so, so, so, and so what are your thoughts on the, I mean, it's based on a bit of

research, but there's, um, some core, like, I mean, it's just information out there correlating, you know, basically your, your, the ceiling of, of your FFMI, what that can be naturally. Um, and then at what point, you know, is it clearly drugs at what point is it in the gray? Like, do you think there's any, do you think there's any semi-accurate way for somebody new to weightlifting uh to go realistically you know i could probably get to somewhere in this range or is it something that you know they just have to it's going to take years and then at then they can make a prediction yeah let me pull this up because i my PT course, I have reference data on the FFMI. All right, yeah, it's here. All right, so the FFMI, for people that don't know, is the Fat-Free Mass Index.

It's like BMI, which is Body Mass Index. But BMI kind of sucks for strength and ease because it's just a relation between weight and height. It doesn't say anything about your fat percentage. Right. It's more for population analysis, right? Yeah, exactly. It's for people that don't lift because then you can assume a certain level of fat-free mass based on their gender and height. Because if someone's not training then, you know, their protein intake is somewhat normal, you can be sure that they have a certain level of muscle.

And age, right? Because as they get older, they're going to lose it. Yeah, exactly. Although, actually, it's mostly disuse and not age itself, but that's another topic. So you have body mass index, kind of useless, and that's why we have the fat-free mass index that researchers developed to look at how muscular you are because it relates your fat-free mass index that researchers developed to look at how muscular you are because it

relates your fat-free mass to your height and it completely ignores fat mass. So it just says how much clean body mass, which is roughly a proxy for muscle mass you're carrying. Now researchers have studied this and there is a very infamous or famous study that basically concluded that a fat-free mass of 25 is as good as it gets for a natural trainee. So there are a lot of very serious problems with this study and consequently the idea that a fat-free mass index of 25 is about as good as it gets. Just to put it in perspective just so everybody knows so like if what's do you know your ffmi is so if people want to look at your physique and go so what is this what does 25 look like like i know i'm right around 24

and so people that know that i will look like you know so like i'm a much more muscular than the average person type of guy so 25 is pretty big do you know yours actually i'll fill it in right here just just to give just to give listeners a visual on what does that look like you know so my normalized thought yeah you're a big dude at 25 yeah well i it depends like in person it varies so i think a lot of people it goes both ways like some people are like oh you look bigger in the pictures and i think i do because you know pictures are always degraded you're flexing and you're pumped and everything. And the leaner you are you get that effect where you look bigger like you look you know your your weight almost doesn't make sense for how big you look. Yeah in general like the leaner you are

the better you can look on photo but the worse you look in a t-shirt. Yeah so did you get when you would get really lean for shoots and stuff to get like if you wear a long sleeve shirt where people are like do you even what happened did you do you even go to the gym anymore yeah the why i have two redeeming factors there um because uh for one my forearms get crazily vascular so if there's like some some sleeve not covering my forearms it's like there's no mistake just because my forearms are so vascular and second thing is why um a lot of people actually think i look bigger in person mostly i think it's the difference between people that have seen a lot of very big dudes and they see me in person and like i'm not that impressive i have a bigger

impression from the photos but on the other hand you have people that haven't really seen a lot of truly big guys and then when they see me they're like oh six foot one 200 pounds is actually you know a big dude so and i have like my shoulders are genetically my best body part so i have quite wide shoulders and combined with height is that especially here in asia and like when i was touring in india people are like holy crap yeah you're like godzilla over there yeah exactly because i'm like literally a full head taller and very broad shoulder so that's funny yeah it all depends on who you ask sure but anyway fat free mass index you have that study that conclude 25 is about as good as it gets but all that study really did is they got together a bunch of like muscular guys

strong guys like they had some truly high-level people in there like international bodybuilders power lifters that won set records and they basically concluded that in that sample 25 was as good as it got thing is it was just getting a bunch of people together. So, you know, there's there's no way to conclude from that that's Just because in this sample it didn't occur that it's not possible right so and actually that same study concluded that it is possible because they analyzed the records of pre steroid like legitimately almost could not have been steroid

physiques Like Steve Reeves and like the the 30s early 40s where steroids simply were not in circulation that or you'd be having you were looking like a serious conspiracy theory level stuff to think that these people were on steroids and and you think you think that with Reeves because I mean testosterone was pretty widely available at that time right Reeves was actually I mean testosterone was pretty widely available at that time, right? Yeah, Reeves was actually sort of in the transition period where I think Reeves was natural, but there are some people, I think there was a letter of someone saying that he wasn't. Yeah, I remember reading about it and I was like, huh, interesting.

Yeah, so he was like a bit in the mixed era, but it went way before that as well. And let me pull it up as well. So the reference 28.0 is the largest natural trainee ever recorded. That's big. So yeah, that's, you know, three points above 25. And I'll give the other reference data as well here so normalized fat-free mass index 28 is the largest natural training ever scientifically documented here's the other thing we have a case study of

another world-class natural pro bodybuilder that was followed with block work for a very long time period during his whole contest prep and his fat-free mass index was 25.4. So there again goes the idea of it not being possible to get above that level, it's just rare. So that 25 level is where the average person probably, it's a pretty decent sample that they're not going to get above 25 while they're six pack lean right make distinction there because you know sumo wrestlers are actually among the largest most muscular individuals on the planet if you look at cross-sectional data and a lot of these guys they don't do strength training

and they basically just sit around to need all day well they do a lot of uh yeah they they're really really fat and it's basically just a genetic fact that the more fat you have the more muscle you can carry sure that's why they're so incredibly muscular underneath the huge amount of fat yeah we also see this in many power lifters bodybuilders and it's the infamous story of people saying like all my fat free mass index is this and you know i have these standards and my my biceps is this amount of inches so all these guys are all really small let's talk again when you're in contest yeah go go let's start at 10 body fat let's start there and then let's see how things are looking and then let's go you know this being a true 10% like full six-pack yeah apps level yep so no not 10% like of guys they do think I'm close to 10% because

they almost have apps in the right in the right lighting where like twisting exactly like super selfie lighting my space angle yeah no like abs no flexing type you know yeah in reality most muscular trainees have serious abdominal definition at about five fifteen percent body fat so for a muscular individual if you do not have any abs are okay they are harsh bodybuilding frame of reference would be you are fat. For bodybuilding terms, not having any abs at all, there's no reason for a natural bodybuilder to ever go that high in body fat percentage. I agree.

But again, this being body fat, bodybuilding standards, right? Sure, sure. So that's a good point. So on that FFMI data, so I mean, that's also, I've written an article about it and kind of presented in that this is interesting information. I think it is valuable and it gives us insight. But, you know, it doesn't mean it's a hard and fast rule. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. So it's what I did with the calculator in my course. I express it as a actually is not yet in the course,, but for building a calculator at least for cybernetic fitness and it expresses the probability that this can be attained naturally. So you could frame it like that and then you know 25 comes about the level that there is a significant chance that this individual is on steroids but it is very possible to attain naturally so as always you know people want the magic andrew and it's like when you're you've done a test at college

and people ask how did you do they're not really asking how you did they're asking how they did because they want to compare themselves to you and that that's the same when people ask, you know, is that guy natural? They really don't care if that guy is natural. They want to know, can I look like that? Exactly. And it's a nonsensical question because you look different, you have different genetics, you'll never know if that person was natural or not.

It doesn't change anything. All you can do is maximize your own muscular potential, be the best B you can be, as the cliche goes. It's a cliche because it's absolutely true. The army fucked up when they moved away from that. That was a better slogan than whatever they changed. They changed it to army strong or something. Be all you can be is so much better.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that's all you can do so yeah yeah look at all these guys and it doesn't make sense doesn't have any practical information for your life i agree and i mean to that point it's even where a lot of people i mean drugs are very prevalent in not just sort of bodybuilding but in weightlifting in general and just because people would be, would be surprised if they knew what people, and I've said this many times in the gym or on drugs and are not on drugs. Cause just cause someone, uh, looks, you know, by bodybuilding standards, pretty bad, like, you know, they're overweight and, uh, they don't really have much in the way of proportionate

muscle development. You know, a lot of people that are on drugs, that's the state that's, that's what it is. That's what they've gotten out of it. You know, and then on the other hand, you have people that look quite good, that stay lean, that have done a good job building their body in an intelligent way. And, you know, they look great and they're not on drugs. So, you know, there are obvious cases when people are scrolling around Instagram. Yeah, there are guys that there's no question, absolutely no question. Their shoulders are bigger than their heads and their FFMI would be, you know, whatever, 30 plus, of course, drugs. But, you know, to that point, it's hard to really know because just because someone looks good doesn't mean drugs.

Just because someone looks bad, but they're just kind of big and strong, you know, that could absolutely be drugs. Yeah, exactly. You know, that's the other reference point I had here is really interesting. In that study, they also looked at steroid users to compare them with the natural trainees. And the average steroid user had a fat-free mass of 24.8. So actually below the supposed natural limit. Yep.

And let me see if I can pull this up somewhere as well. it yep and let me see if i can pull this up somewhere as well i have also calculated the hot free mass indices of individuals that are clearly not natural right okay yeah so i don't have their fat free mass in this is here but yeah these two percentages that if you would do the math on the probability the percentage that they are in fact natural uh you get that guys like ronnie coleman uh jay cutler dorian yates it's zero percent sure just there's no rounding uh like statistically there was just there's no chance in hell you're gonna look like that naturally yeah which aligns with common sense right right have you seen just that point

have you seen the picture of a few pictures of ronnie coleman because he said himself on i was like some interview or something that he started doing steroids at 23 i think he said and yeah yeah yeah actually um i'll find it after this i've written about it and i even linked to where he himself was talking about it and but if you see pictures have you seen pictures of him even like by his, I don't know why he'd be lying. Then he was open about it saying, yeah, this is when I started doing it.

And you see pictures of him at around that, like right in before he got on drugs. And he, to this point, I guarantee you his FFMI was quite high. He was fucking huge, like impressive. I mean,

bigger than he, he could have been one of these guys on instagram you know with a million plus followers even before drugs yeah but i actually i'm not sure of ronnie coleman's history like what age he attained what but i had it on good account that he attained his pro cards before he started drugs so i'm not sure if that matches i think yeah i mean again and when we get all, I'll find it, I'll email it to you. That may be, I, I, it was like over a year ago or something. And I came across it where he was talking about, I believe that's true. I believe that was like

the timeline because he got introduced to it by another professional bodybuilder was like, dude, you need to try this shit because look, you're ridiculous. You know what I mean? He's like, okay. Yeah, that's that's now i absolutely believe that like i've heard that about ronnie coleman too and like some other guys they're just already obscenely big before they started using drugs and i mean that makes sense because at the top elite level those are individuals you'd expect to find right right? They have it all. They have the genetics and the drugs and the dedication. And it's like that with any sport. I mean, you have the best football players or even just anyone that makes it to the NFL was a genetic freak their entire life.

They were better. They were the best. They stepped on the field at whatever, six years old, and were just better than anybody. And that was basically the story of their life until they made it to the NFL. Yeah. whatever, six years old and were just better than anybody. And that was basically the story of their life until they made it to the NFL. Yeah, that's actually an interesting thing about the relation between genetic potential and dedication. In my experience, it is strongly negative, being that the most talented individuals often do not have the dedication that especially intermediate level trainees have.

In my experience, I think the optimalize about intermediate level trainees have in my experience i think the optimalize about intermediate level or even is just completely negative with uh the more hard gainer you are the more you're willing to do like in the netherlands for example we have this gymnast jury from helder there's a great example i thought about posting that during the olympics because there was this scandal that on the day before his event, I'm not really sure of the particulars, but on the day before his competition or something, he was partying, using cocaine. He had a history of cocaine use as well. So, you know, you're talking about someone performing in the Olympics, and they cannot muster

the dedication not to go drinking and using drugs the day before the event yeah i mean that's if you compare that to like amateur level bodybuilders that i'm coaching if you would give that dedication to you held her world domination yeah we would have a specimen yeah yeah so yeah there's a a friend of mine. He was, he ran track in high school and he was like one of the fastest kids in, in Florida.

He didn't really, he didn't take it very seriously, but I mean, he would go to, you know, before a run, he would just like go to McDonald's and just eat a couple of hamburgers and show up and not really even warm up and then just run really fucking fast,

faster than everybody. And never, he just didn't pay attention to anything. It was something he did and talking about genetics his dad uh had a was briefly in the nfl as a running back so i mean he just he just had it he was just like yeah whatever and he didn't care so he didn't like go anywhere with it but you know if you would have i'm sure he could have really gone far yeah that's the thing if you if you just have it you don't appreciate it right like if you only have if you have to work for it, you appreciate it. 100%.

Same thing with money. If kids that come from rich families, if they just inherit money or just have always been around money, it doesn't mean anything. It's just who cares. Absolutely. Anyways. Yeah. So great. I think that's a good encapsulation of FFMI.

And I think you're mentioning this PT course, which when we get to the end, you can tell everybody where they can find this information, where they can find your stuff. Because I know people are going to be wondering now, where's this calculator? I want to see it. And I think it's good for just people to know, if you go look at, you can use Menno's calculator if it's available. Obviously, it's going to be, it's part of a course. But also, if you just look at FFI calculators in general, you can get an idea of, I think it's fair that I would say, I don't know if you agree with this, Menno, but 25 to 28 is probably the realistic upper limit for most people that are getting into weightlifting. Yeah. So I can give some more figures here because I haven't pulled up anyway. Cool.

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger will still be 0%. Like there's no way so and let's just give his numbers real quick so people know like he was what six foot one is his height six two yeah i think yeah it was about my height i think so six foot one and he was on stage not 90 no it was i think it was like 100 kilos stage right about i think it was like 100 kilos stage. Right. I think it was like 230, 235 pounds maybe. Yeah. So way beyond natural potential. And lean, but not necessarily as lean as what we've seen in more recent decades.

Not modern bodybuilding lean, but for any standard lean. Very lean, yes. Yeah. And then we have some, so I also did these calculations, Martin Bergen and Alberto Nunez, both great physiques. We'll be looking at 86% probability that they're natural. Now, without making any claims about whether they're natural or not, for a lot of people these are physiques that can be obtained naturally. Right.

Nafalia Melo, like 98% probability of being naturally achievable. Not too surprising because she doesn't compete in bodybuilding or anything. Right. Frank Zane and Ziz, you're looking at the range of 21% probability of being natural. Interesting. That makes sense with Zane. But what was, I mean, Ziz's what what what information you're putting in there i'm curious yeah i'm not sure i just have this percentage but yeah this it fluctuated a lot

i probably had this is top numbers so you know because he was very open as drug use i feel like his physique earlier on uh when he was a bit smaller but he was very lean that look is uh i mean i think that's attainable i mean it's going to take quite a bit of time to gain that enough muscle and obviously you're not gonna be able to stay that lean all year round naturally or at least not without ruining your without feeling like shit but you know i would think that someone could naturally achieve that look and maintain it for a little bit. And if they want to do pictures and whatever. Yeah. I mean,

I don't, I don't have, I think this is like body. I mean, it's waste was smaller. And I think aesthetically, you know, he,

he beats me in several ways, but you know, when I'm at my leanest and I've gotten to where I would be comparable, at least in terms of like size and leanness, I just don't look, I didn't, you know, as good as he did at

his leanness because his body's just better built for it yeah exactly just he had these insane shoulder traps and chest insertion points that just make his muscles look so much fuller than mine as well whatever look and then you have that small waist with then you know exactly and the last figure i have is mark fit uh not as well in evidence-based circles i think but he's like 92 achievable naturally he's just he's really lean mostly and his level of muscularity is you know very respectable but not uh something that you would accuse someone of steroid usage for right awesome so i think that's great and and to to to just uh point out that you're talking about achievable naturally so people that are listening it's not that he's

saying these people are natural or natural whatever but it's just that's a good reference point of going is it possible yes there's a very good chance it's possible. Or in the case of Frank Zane, no, not so much. Yeah, exactly. So there might be the odd individual that can actually look like Zane naturally, but, you know, it's the odd individual. Yeah, statistically speaking, unfortunately, anyone listening is probably not that person. Yeah, exactly. And that's the other thing even if you attain that fast free mass index you will not look exactly like that person because you have different

insertion points different muscle lengths the best genetically blessed individuals often have very full muscle bellies which creates a just completely convex concave look that many humans find pleasing to the eye, find aesthetic. Whereas you don't have these empty spaces like some individuals have. They have short muscles. So if they get really large muscle, it looks unnatural like these bolts they have. And it doesn't flow as well as other individuals. Also, for example, your abdominal structure. Some people just have this crazy textbook like six-pack app and other people have an eight-pack and other people they they don't have separation at all in certain

pieces of it or it has this huge gap in between yep or like i mean me i have i have staggered abs and it's kind of like a four six something in between it's just you know unfortunately that's just the way i came which is this is a good segue into i think one of the this is the point that i get asked about a lot is this point of how so what what do genetics what's there how much do they determine how your muscles are going to look or uh there's there's i guess two parts to that like how big can individual muscles get um obviously with guys it's a lot of questions about chest and biceps and occasionally calves. And girls don't usually ask about how big certain muscles can get, but these days it's kind of about butt, I guess more than anything else. So I think this is a good segue into that.

You can predict. It's actually hard to predict. You can predict it a bit because you cannot change your insertion points, the length of the muscle at least not visually you can actually change the muscle length but it doesn't make a lot of visual difference because it's internal it's muscle fascicle length but a muscle is actually going to change shape when you train it and it's inevitable and you can change it to some extent like for example the traps being an obvious part you can emphasize the upper or lower traps to a lesser extent you also have different heads of the hamstrings for example and a lesser extent still you have the different heads of the two heads of the biceps you can emphasize you get one bigger so you have bigger peaks or you get the other bigger and it's it's

more flat and full but you cannot really predict that well how it's going to change and to a large extent especially for a natural bodybuilder where the end goal is just maximum muscle growth in pretty much every muscle group then you know to that extent in a very long-term perspective it's not really up to your control so there your muscle size is going to shape is going to change as a result of the growth. But it's a limited change and one you cannot really do much about. So you have a certain way that you look and either relish it or go cry for the rest of your life. Because. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the long and short of it.

yep i mean that's that's the long and short of it um yeah talk about talking about biceps in particular because that's also then that's a common thing is biceps peak uh so you know you're saying that you can influence it a little bit what does that really look like though and what does that look like in terms of of training so let's say someone's listening saying i wish i had more bicep peak is there anything they can do specifically you can a little i'm going to refer people to my muscle specific hypertrophy article there because i it's a bit dated article but it still describes very well uh especially this like what you can do to emphasize different heads i'll link it down i'll link it in the uh like description stuff so people can go read it all right that's good yeah and i think you asked one more question about genetics that I missed.

Yeah. So just the last couple of points were the size of how big can, you know, how much does genetics play a role in individual muscle groups? So just as how individuals can be hyper responsive to weightlifting, is it also true that certain muscle groups can be hyper responsive? Because, you know, people seem to have what is generally referred to as a genetic strength that muscle group that for some reason you know just exploded and then other muscle groups like for me my experience has been my chest and my biceps have always just been high responders to where i've actually like toned down the volume because i felt like it was getting a little bit it forced me to like my shoulders always seem to be just very stubborn. And so the bigger my chest and biceps got, the more my shoulders looked bad.

So I had to like – but my calves, for example, have been a never-ending source of frustration. I hereby dub that the Schwarzenegger genotype. Big biceps and chest. And no calves. Yeah. Well, you still had some calves but yeah yeah i'm talking about myself here although i have a little i have something now i mean i work for it it's just it's just slow yeah same here the nice thing is that based on the very limited research we have we know that different muscle groups can have exceedingly different genetic potential and again based on the very limited research that we have,

I'm not really convinced of this, but at least in animals it suggests that there is in fact almost no relation between different muscle groups and their genetic potential. Now I'm pretty sure that there are certain genetic factors, also some that we know of, certain genes that you have, certain systemic factors like how much testosterone you have being a very common, although actually over-weighted one. And these determine muscle, muscular potential for your whole body. But in principle, some core components like how many satellite cells you have, how much myonuclear addition can take place, these very internal components of the muscle tissue itself that you cannot

see, and that vary in each different muscle group, they are very, very influential for how much muscle can be built, and they can vary a lot in different regions of your body. So you commonly see individuals that have like strong points and weak points. For some people, it's quite pronounced. Other peoples are more like in between everywhere. And, you know, what you don't really see, and this is actually a good example of that, where I say, I think this is limited research that we have. Like some people take it to extreme and they say, well, there's no relation because that's what the research says.

But how often do you see an individual you know that has like truly really impressive upper body or pecs and just no biceps for example right it doesn't happen no so you know there is a correlation there it's just it's obvious but yeah you you definitely have strong points and weak points yeah and there's also muscle fiber types that can come into play too, right? Like, you know, I just in my, I was really just kind of curious on calves in particular, I came across some research that just indicated that some calves, some people's calves are high in fast twitch and some people's calves are higher in slow twitch. And that alone can explain a bit of why some people have, know good calves and rarely ever if ever train them and then other people like me will train them quite frequently and you know with higher rep

ranges lower rep ranges really work at it and and get not very much out of it yeah that's true and the thing with the calves actually has our specific article on that as well i have three reasons your calves aren't growing and the thing with the calves is that actually the genetic potential doesn't appear to be lower and what you see in almost all elite level competitors is that there is a nearly one-to-one-to-one ratio between the neck the calves and the upper arms in terms of circumference upper arms in terms of circumference but the calves do have the potential to suffer or shine greatly depending on the attachment point of especially the gastrocnemius and the length of the tibia so what you probably have and what i have too is that you have quite long lower legs yes and the muscle uh is attached quite high up on yeah so it has to stretch a longer distance yeah and it's it's just that one part you can get like a nice if you flex

it you get this nice bulge but if you're just standing then it doesn't appear very impressive because you have this long lower leg and indeed it's stretched over a significant part whereas other people the calves just sort of flare out more it's like an exaggerated version of quad sweep some people have a lot more of it than others i also have very little quad sweep just like arnold schwarzenegger actually a very similar uh structure not the size unfortunately of the quads of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whereas other people they just flare out way to the sides. So same with the calves. So for calves you can have my calves for example, they're the same size as my neck and my arms at least, last time I checked.

But it doesn't appear that way, like depending on what clothing you wear, et cetera. So the calves in particular have a very big difference in appearance, whereas their actual muscle growth potential can be quite good. That's a good point, actually, because looking at my calves, flexed, they look quite different than unflexed. And even measuring them with – there's a guy that works with me who has visually more impressive calves and we've measured and and we have like i don't know he might have a little bit of size on me but he has the the muscle insertion point is just you know for for for visuals visual appearance his is better yeah okay so the last point this is something you did touch on um is is so that's that's in terms of of size and genetics and how they play a role in response to weightlifting. What about looks? So you've been mentioning things like, and people hear this stuff like insertion points and muscle bellies. And, um, you know, if you could just quickly kind of explain to people what this

means and how does it play out visually and how the, do the genetics, uh, how do genetics, you know, influence how we're going to look like, you know, you can have two people that just do a bunch of the same chest type of training for six months. And why does one of, why does that one person have that square armor plate, perfect looking chest type of setup and the other person is maybe rounder and droopier or whatever. Um, and the reason why I think it's worth touching on is there's a lot of, uh, there are a lot of people out there, trainers, coaches, trainers, coaches that will claim that, you know, getting that perfect looking chest that most, that, you know, that most guys want is just a matter of training the right way that like, if you don't have it,

it means you're just training incorrectly and you need to give them money and they'll show you how to do it yeah the thing is like uh the muscle insurgent and origin points they are fixed you're not going to do anything about that so um that's the part of the appearance that's just you can do nothing about so this means that some people will have a bit longer muscles and they have a larger muscle belly relative to the bone than other people which means that people get this really full muscle muscular look and when they're really muscular it's like muscle all over the body just flows into each other a great example that is Phil Eve who has that everything just flows into each other whereas other individuals it's more the

joints and the bones they're a lot more pronounced because there is room there there's a larger tendon or longer tendon or the for example the biceps which is a good proxy that you can use for yourself you can if you flex your bicep to 90 degrees and then you can see how many fingers you can Squeeze in there. Yep, and if you can squeeze four fingers in there, for example That is bad in terms of muscle length and it means that even if you develop a huge biceps You can get a great peak but it's just not covered the entire arm. So you're never gonna get that Phil Heath like flow Yeah, it's gonna be more like the tennis ball look as opposed to the football exactly so these factors and also for your chest and for your abs like we

discussed they they're fixed so in that regard the muscle shape is something you cannot do anything about and it's also something you therefore shouldn't worry about yeah if you cannot control therefore shouldn't worry about yeah if you cannot control it don't worry about it yeah so just get the best the best abs you can get yeah exactly and I think almost everyone ends up being quite happy of what they're at because we said almost no one is screwed in every regard yeah so you might not have you know that the armor plate looking chest and the full six-pack abs but you know maybe you have a very aesthetic back or you do have like the quad

sweep or the or the calves you know and there was other people so you might look at my physique for example you're like oh look at those broad shoulders but then you know your quads or your calves might be a lot better so almost no one is screwed in every regard yeah okay great so yeah i think that's that's just that's a good summary of it and i would add to that for just people listening again you'll kind of know this as you you put a couple years of training in and build your foundation of muscle and then and i would say also i think body fat percentage is worth mentioning um in that you know you're going to look quite different as a guy at 15%, uh, you know, then 10%, or even as you get under 10%, I think like the chest in particular, uh, I know that with me, with, you know, the,

the fatter I am, the more rounded my chest looks and the, you know, it's again, it's, I just, it's just not the look that i like but then if i get lean and then get very lean my chest does have a flatter look and has a better look so there's also that just just uh for people listening that you it's hard to know really what your aesthetic potential is until you get into the lower body fat ranges i think yeah absolutely and that's one of the more reasons that i think everyone, like, it's one of the best experiences in your life to get down to a really seriously lean body fat percentage at one point. Well, not just teach you all these aesthetic things, but you'll

learn so much in the process. It's really one of the things everyone should do, like the non BS bucket list. Yeah, no, I agree. Would you say though that you know you have to be able to give it up though too without because you know there's that now where anything if you get really lean anything higher almost just is less satisfying and now you have like this new standard that you've kind of set for yourself yeah that definitely but that's one of the nice things you learn that there's always a trade-off. And then you learn like a lot of people, they just think I want to be as lean as possible.

Then once you've actually been that lean, like now for me, I was in contest shape for a really long period because during my last contest prep, I had to switch show and then i had to move about seven times or so and i ended up being basically in contest shape for i think in total probably about nine months wow which is it takes its toll yeah so um now i've i really generally don't care about being that lean anymore so um i'm just got another system yeah i'm in i'm in asia now and all these different foods are used to try and i'm like you know i can get that lean again in a few months yeah i have all of all the tools and it's just a matter of putting my mind to it and then i'll do it but there's no point in me staying that lean long term yeah right now so that's a nice thing you get the control

and you are aware of the trade-offs and it really puts things into perspective yeah i agree that's a good point all right well we could go on for probably quite some time talking about all kinds of things um so to wrap up here where can people find you and find your work and then also you were mentioning a PT course. I know people are going to want to hear about that. Yeah. I, uh, you can find basically all my stuff and my team stuff on bayesianbodybuilding.com.

And if you want to just spell, spell that out to people. Yeah. Bayesian. Well, just link it like Bayesian. Yeah. Yeah. And we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and looking into a few other things.

But those are the big ones, and you can find them all as well. We have a newsletter, so you can just check it out, see if you're interested. Yeah. And just I'll throw in there that I don't follow regularly too many people in this space just because I find it's not productive. But you're one of the guys that I regularly read and you obviously know what you're talking about. And so I recommend everybody listening, go follow Manuel, follow his work, and you will learn things. I hope so.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So are there any projects that you have that you're working on now that are coming up that you want people to know about? Not particularly. I'm knee deep in an English PT course and a Dutch PT course and just doing a lot of coaching at the moment. Cool. We're expanding social media outreach. So we're going to post a lot of infographics on cool new studies.

Nice. Awesome. Okay, great. Well, I think that's a wrap. I really appreciate, again, you taking the time. It's been very informative. I know people are really going to like the interview because, again, these are questions that get asked, and that's why it's on my list. I'm like, I need to do a podcast. I need to find someone really good on this. So, I think you've delivered perfectly. So, I think you'll probably get some feedback from people. My pleasure. Awesome. Thank you. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness

and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.