[quote]Dave_ wrote:
No offence taken DK, in fact thank you for the well thought out reply.
Actually, just for your interest, I am almost exactly your height (about 1/8" under 5’11") and began training at around 150lbs. Granted I was stronger but in terms of size, an ecto is simply an underfed and undertrained meso.
Somatotypes are a very flawed and pretty much useless idea, don’t place limits on yourself based on some textbook nonsense.
I just think that your money and efforts could be better spent, that’s all. I made my fastest gains when I worked in a warehouse over the summer and ate donuts and sandwiches all day long. If money is not an issue, then by all means go for it.
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Well, I don’t agree with your view on somatypes, but also don’t completely disagree. At work there is two guys - one is a classic ecto, and one an endo. I don’t care how much the ecto will lift, take steroids, etc, he will never be able to make it to the size the endo could. And I don’t care if the endo got cancer and underwent chemo, he would never be the size of the endo. Just the physical bone structure is different.
There is big amounts of change either could do, putting on quite a bit of muscle, getting smaller, etc, but there is some limit that either could make it too. This is definitely a extreme example, and most people fall more in the middle, but thought I would make the point. Myself, I’m sure I could hit over 200, maybe 10-15lbs over that - but without hitting the roids probably not much more than that.
So essentially I’m saying an average natural guy can add about 80 or so pounds of muscle over his lifting career, which I would say should be pretty apt. Some more, some less.
On a semi-unrelated note - is this a first for T-Nation??!?! An actual reply back and forth that didn’t result to name-calling and flaming back and forth?!?