What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj on www.SeanNal.com.
And in this video today I want to talk about why getting too hung up on your exact body
weight and muscle measurements is not only unnecessary but how it can also be counterproductive
as well.
Tracking your overall body weight and measurements is obviously a useful tool to monitor your
progress objectively, just so you can see what kind of gains you're making overtime.
But it's really important to remember that if you're training primarily for aesthetics,
meaning you want to build a lean muscular well proportioned physique, the ideal measurements
and the ideal weight are going to be relative to the individual.
Meaning that how a different body weight or different muscle measurement looks visually
can vary hugely from person to person depending on their specific body structure.
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So, as I was saying, getting hung up on exact numbers, so maybe you find out that a natural
lifter whose physique you admire is, say a hundred and eighty pounds with sixteen and
a half inch arms and so you want to replicate that.
That's not going to be the best way to go about things.
A sixteen and a half inch arm, for example, that can look very different from person to
person.
Someone who's five foot five with that specific arm size is going to look really big and very
muscular, whereas someone who is six foot four, they're not going to look nearly as
big with that exact same measurement.
Height, overall bone structure, limb length, muscle shape, these things all affect how
your physique looks as a total package and how “aesthetic” you look at any specific
body weight or any specific set of measurements.
You know, it's all going to be relative to your specific frame.
For example, one of the guys that goes to my gym, with probably one of the most impressive
physiques there out of anybody, he's five foot eight but he only weighs about a hundred
and fifty-five pounds.
Which sounds pretty light, but if you saw this guy in person you'd probably guess he
was something more like a hundred and seventy pounds or more.
But because he's lean, he's got that solid dense muscle development, round muscle bellies,
he looks a lot bigger and heavier than he actually is.
And if he got any bigger then he probably wouldn't have that ideal look he's going for.
He'd probably end up too bulky looking.
I even get the same thing myself quite frequently, you know, if I'm shirtless or if I'm wearing
a tank-top, a lot of people will guess that I'm somewhere between, like, a hundred and
eighty to a hundred and eighty-five pounds.
When in reality I'm only one-seventy and my arms measure about fifteen and three-quarter
inches flex.
So objectively I'm actually not that big, but I'll have the appearance of being decently
muscular if I'm at least wearing a tight fitting shirt.
Just because my individual body structure is set up that way.
I'm five foot nine.
I’m naturally a bit smaller framed, shorter limbs, decent muscular development relative
to that frame.
So muscularity and aesthetics are more of a subjective visual thing rather than a concrete
thing based on exact numbers.
Another huge contributing factor here is going to be your body fat percentage.
So, if you're lean and have good muscle definition showing through then you're actually going
to look bigger when you're shirtless or in a tank-top because that muscle definition
creates the illusion of having more overall size.
I remember a couple years back when I dieted it down for professional photos I started
around a hundred and seventy-eight pounds and ended up dieting down all the way to the
low one-sixties.
And I had, probably three or four different people in the gym come up and comment on how
they noticed that I'd been putting on more size.
I was lighter than I'd been in many years.
I can't even remember the last time my bodyweight was that low.
And it felt really weird stepping on the scale and seeing such a low number than I was typically
used to, and yet my physique looked bigger and more muscular than it did in comparison
to when I was fifteen pounds heavier.
Now, the flip side of that is that you're going to look smaller in close.
So it really just depends on what your individual goals and your individual priorities are.
But, yeah, in terms of body fat, if you're relatively lean at say twelve percent body
fat and you're comparing your arm size to someone who's sixteen percent body fat, or
vice versa, that's really not even a fair comparison in the first place.
The more fat you're carrying, the bigger your measurements are going to be obviously, but
the less definition you're going to have.
So, again, all of this depends on the individual.
Now, the reason why getting really hung up on exact body weight or measurements is a
bad idea isn't just because it's unnecessary but it can actually be harmful, too.
The first reason for this is just from a mental perspective.
You know, if you're caught up in that comparison game, if you're scrolling through Instagram
or YouTube, and you're comparing your individual body weight and your individual measurements
to other lifters, it can really start to mess with your head a bit because you might be
comparing yourself to someone whose specific measurements aren't even realistic or wouldn't
even be necessary for you to achieve, because they have a different body structure.
That or you're comparing yourself to somebody who's at a different body fat percentage,
which, again, makes a huge difference.
And the second reason here, and this is something that happened to me back in the day when getting
just as huge as possible was my primary goal, it can cause you to rush the process and end
up putting on excessive body fat because you're chasing specific a specific body weight or
a specific set of measurements.
I remember being really hung up on the idea of getting to two hundred pounds because it
just seemed like a round impressive number, and so I ended up full on dirty bulking and
stuffing myself with tons of food trying to get there, when in reality a huge portion
of what I was gaining was pure body fat.
And I didn't end up realizing it until it was way too late.
Remember that muscle growth is very slow, gradual process and it's not a linear process
either.
There's going to be diminishing returns the longer you've been training.
And there's a set limit on how much muscle you're going to be able to carry without getting
excessively fat.
And that amount is going to be based on the person.
Someone at five foot nine, like myself, who wants to stay in the, you know, mid to low-teens
body fat wise, they're probably not going to want to go beyond about a hundred seventy
to a hundred and eighty pounds.
Whereas someone who's six foot two can comfortably go to a higher body weight and yet still be
very lean.
So, if you're after that well-proportioned aesthetic look rather than just being really
big and, you know, softer and more bloated looking, you got to keep that in mind.
There's no reason to just chase higher numbers just because they sound good on paper.
It all depends on you.
You know, what type of look you're after.
And chasing exactly numbers can often work up -- end up working against you because of
that.
What bodyweight and measurements are good for is: number one, as a progress tracking
tool so you can see how your actual body size is changing over time.
And secondly, they can be useful for comparison purposes if it's with somebody at a similar
body structure and a similar body fat percentage.
You can use that just to get an idea of some rough numbers you could aim for to get a similar
look.
But beyond that, if you're training for a lean muscular, well-proportioned look, it
alternately comes down to you.
It comes down to how you look in the mirror rather than what the measuring tape says.
Different body weights and different measurements can look drastically different depending on
the individual, and so it's best to focus on them only relative to your own height,
your own body structure, body fat percentage, and how you personally want to look.
So, thanks for watching, guys.
I hope this was helpful.
If you want to grab a complete step-by-step plan that will show you exactly how to make
the very most of your physique, in terms of maximizing muscle growth while staying lean,
and while staying well-proportioned.
The workouts, meal plans, supplement guides, along with one-on-one coaching then you can
grab my complete Body Transformation Blueprint by clicking the icon at the top of the screen
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