ECTO-ENDO? What am I? Does it Matter?

[Jenergy]

I've been reading Arnold's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding and I love it. It's no nonsense and I appreciate that. However, reading up on Somatotypes again makes me scratch my head. I first learned about it when I was getting my certification (ACE) and again when I read BFFM (Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.) But I honestly cannot classify myself. It's one of those details that probably doesn't matter much in the end, but I'm just curious what I would be. On the one hand I have the small upper body bone structure of an ectomorph, but thick legs and thick ankles like an endomorph. I also tend to store body fat easily, but also loose easily. I am skinny-fat. So where does that put me? I'm not a mesomorph, that's the only thing I know for sure. And it seems like an endo-ecto just can't exist. Any ideas where I would fall? I can post a picture if that helps.

[MrB1g]

Based on Avi you don't look endo.

How long have you been training for? It's not that easy to pick if you're new to training.



Not really worth thinking about though. You are whatever bodytype you are, to many people use it as an excuse on why they can't gain size or lose weight.

[KyleAaron]

The truth is that only a small percentage of people fall into one of the three categories, everyone else is mixed. It's like "race", very subjective and not really very useful.

Whatever you are, to get bigger you have to lift heavy and eat more. If you want to get smaller, lift heavy and eat less.

All the rest is commentary.

[Jenergy]

Based on Avi you don't look endo.

How long have you been training for? It's not that easy to pick if you're new to training.



Not really worth thinking about though. You are whatever bodytype you are, to many people use it as an excuse on why they can't gain size or lose weight.

I am new to training more or less. I was a triathlete and did some light weights very inconsistently for about 6 months 2 yrs. ago. I stopped everything but swimming when I was pregnant and then after my baby was born I started p90x. I'm not sure if that would count as real training or not. Since then, the past couple of months I've dabbled in crossfit and some splits I've picked up off BB. So I guess that's the long answer to your question, but, yes I consider myself a newb. ;)

[Jenergy]

The truth is that only a small percentage of people fall into one of the three categories, everyone else is mixed. It's like "race", very subjective and not really very useful.

Whatever you are, to get bigger you have to lift heavy and eat more. If you want to get smaller, lift heavy and eat less.

All the rest is commentary.

I guess the only reason I am interested is because I do have a difficult time losing fat. I lose weight very easily, but a majority of it is lbm. That's why I have such a high bf% and am still underweight. Body recomp is really hard for me. Just wondering if the better way to go about body recomp for me would be through diet or exercise. From what I've read, an ectomorph shouldn't be doing to much cardio in order to preserve muscle mass, but an endo would definitely need to cardio to shed off the excess fat.

I don't know. I can lose weight no problem, but getting below 20% bf seems impossible for me!

[KyleAaron]

I guess the only reason I am interested is because I do have a difficult time losing fat. I lose weight very easily, but a majority of it is lbm.
If you've done mainly cardio, that'll be why.

Cardio + caloric deficit = lose fat and muscle
Weight training + caloric deficit = lose fat and retain muscle

You have to give your body a reason to hold onto muscle. If you do cardio, well you don't need big muscles to walk or cycle for hours, so your body burns up the muscle, too. If you do weight training, your body decides to keep the muscle - it's being used.

Nothing to do with ecto/endo/mesomorph stuff.

[Jenergy]

If you've done mainly cardio, that'll be why.

Cardio + caloric deficit = lose fat and muscle
Weight training + caloric deficit = lose fat and retain muscle

You have to give your body a reason to hold onto muscle. If you do cardio, well you don't need big muscles to walk or cycle for hours, so your body burns up the muscle, too. If you do weight training, your body decides to keep the muscle - it's being used.

Nothing to do with ecto/endo/mesomorph stuff.

Thanks again. You are great. That makes perfect sense. (Lightbulb moment!) So I've basically just been training completely wrong for my body for the past 5 years! That sucks. But hey, at least I can turn things around now. I have already, from what I've been reading on here and elsewhere. I dropped the cardio I've been doing all along other than my weekly yoga and body jam class and have been lifting in the 4-8 rep range. This has only been going on a couple of weeks though. It remains to be seen how my body reacts.

[KyleAaron]

Good attitude. What matters is that you progress, what you did in the past - good or bad - doesn't matter. I used to have a 40" chest and 39" waist and got puffed running to the train, another time in my life I leg pressed 770lbs plus two guys on the thing. So what? All past.

In your lifting, all you have to do is lift more today than you did yesterday. More weight, or more reps, or more sets. If you squatted 90lbs 3x4 yesterday, today it should be 95lbs 3x4, 90lbs 3x5, 90lbs 4x4 - whichever you like, or a combination. It just has to be more than you before.

Your body changes because you stress it. You stress it because you ask it to do more than it was doing before. More weight, more reps or more sets. That's simplest to do if you pick 3-6 exercises and just do them. If you squat 90lbs 3x4 today and leg press 150lbs 4x10 tomorrow, was that more? Who knows. But if you squat 90lbs today and 95lbs tomorrow, that's definitely more, well done, keep going.

You don't have to do heaps more, just 1lb, 1 rep or 1 set is enough. It all adds up. 3 workouts a week over the year, 1lb a workout would be another 156lbs. Or another 156 reps. Ideally some combination of the two. Most likely you'd stall somewhere along the way and have to change your approach, but you'd still add pounds to your lifts, get stronger and fitter. And your physique would have changed.

Keep the good attitude up and you'll achieve your goals.

[sonti]

I would say not to worry about it :)

If you wrote a thread "Are you meso/ecto/endo?"... 90% of women on here would claim to be meso... I don't think so :)

[Jenergy]

Good attitude. What matters is that you progress, what you did in the past - good or bad - doesn't matter. I used to have a 40" chest and 39" waist and got puffed running to the train, another time in my life I leg pressed 770lbs plus two guys on the thing. So what? All past.

In your lifting, all you have to do is lift more today than you did yesterday. More weight, or more reps, or more sets. If you squatted 90lbs 3x4 yesterday, today it should be 95lbs 3x4, 90lbs 3x5, 90lbs 4x4 - whichever you like, or a combination. It just has to be more than you before.

Your body changes because you stress it. You stress it because you ask it to do more than it was doing before. More weight, more reps or more sets. That's simplest to do if you pick 3-6 exercises and just do them. If you squat 90lbs 3x4 today and leg press 150lbs 4x10 tomorrow, was that more? Who knows. But if you squat 90lbs today and 95lbs tomorrow, that's definitely more, well done, keep going.

You don't have to do heaps more, just 1lb, 1 rep or 1 set is enough. It all adds up. 3 workouts a week over the year, 1lb a workout would be another 156lbs. Or another 156 reps. Ideally some combination of the two. Most likely you'd stall somewhere along the way and have to change your approach, but you'd still add pounds to your lifts, get stronger and fitter. And your physique would have changed.

Keep the good attitude up and you'll achieve your goals.

Thanks, that's some great advice! I really appreciate you taking the time. I'll definitely be keeping that in mind next time I hit the weights. I've usually only upped the weights or reps after a few weeks, but after each time is going to shake things up A LOT! That's awesome. It will be a fun challenge.

Also, when you say pick 3-6 exercises and stick to them, you mean per body part, right? How long should I stick to them? Until I don't progress anymore? I know the standard recommendation is 4-6 weeks. But should I stay with it longer than that?

[BuffBubbles]

I'm definitely an apple, so I'm trying to train shoulders/legs/but to reproportion...

Should anything else be adjusted based on the shape of your body or how you carry your weight?

All of this talk about how to eat for ecto/endo/etc is confusing me: how does that make any difference?

[Mindi912]

Training for your body type -

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=111056501&highlight=Training+body+type

[KyleAaron]

I've usually only upped the weights or reps after a few weeks, but after each time is going to shake things up A LOT! That's awesome. It will be a fun challenge.
Yes, it's very challenging. It certainly lets you know if your diet is poor, or you're not getting enough good sleep, and if you "forget" to stretch after your workout.

Like I said, your body changes - gets stronger, fitter, or changes composition - because you stress it. Doing more weight, more reps or more sets in every single session is certainly stressful :)


Also, when you say pick 3-6 exercises and stick to them, you mean per body part, right?
No, 3-6 exercises total.

The human body, medical types tell us, has 7 basic movements:

bend, twist, gait, squat, lunge, pull, push

so for good health, we want to get strong in these 7 movements. So we load weights on ourselves while doing them. 25% of people over 70 in the West can't lift more than 10lbs off the floor (pull). Well, if you pull 100lbs in the gym, 10lbs of groceries won't be a problem.

Anyway, so let's look at our movements. Well, bending and twisting under a load is a bad idea, so we won't do that. Gait - walking and running - is trained on the track, not so much in the gym. That leaves us with,

squat, lunge, pull, push

Squats and lunges use basically the same muscles, so we can merge those two. That leaves us with,

squat/lunge, pull, push

and these are the 3 things we need to do in the gym, do them under a big load, then the lighter loads of everyday life will be easy. And it turns out that if we use good posture - straight back - and brace abs and lower back while doing it, these exercises actually strengthen our "core" muscles - so bending and twisting become stronger, too. And squat/lunges strengthen legs, so gait improves.

So in every workout, we want a squat or lunge, a pulling motion and a pushing motion. Squat/lunge will work calves, quads, hams and glutes. Pulls will work upper back, biceps and forearms. Pushes will work chest, shoulders and triceps. Good posture and bracing in all of them will work abs and lower back. Voila, three exercises work the whole body.

Put another way, in every workout we should do a deep knee-bend, pick something heavy up off the ground and put something heavy overhead. The "something heavy" can be our own bodyweight, machines, dumbells or barbells or kettlebells or jugs of water or whatever.

I won't give examples of machines because there are too many different ones, but the rest,

bodyweight squats, inverted rows with knees bent, knee pushups
bodyweight lunges, inverted rows with legs extended, full pushups
split squats with rear foot elevated, chinups, pushups with feet elevated
pistol squats, rock climber chinups, handstand pushups

squats with dumbells, bent-over one-armed dumbell rows, dumbell bench press
lunges with dumbells, dumbell clean, dumbell overhead press

barbell squat, barbell bent-over rows, barbell bench press
barbell front squat, barbell deadlift, barbell overhead press

and so on and so forth. The possibilities are endless. But you only need 1 exercise for each of squat/lunge, pull and push. Do that, you've worked your whole body. You might want 2 exercises for variety, alternate two workouts, for example,

(A) barbell squat, barbell bent-over rows, barbell bench press
(B) dumbell lunge, barbell deadlift, barbell overhead press

so on Monday you do A, on Wednesday B, on Friday A, next Monday B, and so on. Best to begin with the same workout every time, though.

How long should I stick to them? Until I don't progress anymore? I know the standard recommendation is 4-6 weeks. But should I stay with it longer than that?
Yes, if something's giving you results why would you stop it?

At some point in every routine you stall. There are two kinds of stall. The first is where you don't make your target reps. You were supposed to do (say) 100lbs 3x6, and all you could do was 100lbs 6,5,4. No worries, you couldn't do more weight or more reps, just do more sets - you do a fourth set, even if you only get 1 rep. That's more, and you progress.

The second kind of stall is harder. That's where you just can't add weight or reps or sets. Most likely it's your diet or sleep. As I said earlier, if you're just toodling along slowly you can get away with a crap diet and poor sleep. But if you want to progress every session, you've simply got to have good nutritious food and lots of sleep.

So when you have that hard stall, first you have to look at your diet and sleep and see if you can improve them. If they're perfect - which is unlikely - then it's time to change workouts.

Fire me an email and I'll send you a suggested workout for beginners.

[JJ_Fit]

You are definitely not Endo...see my signature lol! :D I am a triathlete endomorph *scratches head* does that even make sense?

[chinwe]

Great gems Kyle.


Good attitude. What matters is that you progress, what you did in the past - good or bad - doesn't matter. I used to have a 40" chest and 39" waist and got puffed running to the train, another time in my life I leg pressed 770lbs plus two guys on the thing. So what? All past.

In your lifting, all you have to do is lift more today than you did yesterday. More weight, or more reps, or more sets. If you squatted 90lbs 3x4 yesterday, today it should be 95lbs 3x4, 90lbs 3x5, 90lbs 4x4 - whichever you like, or a combination. It just has to be more than you before.

Your body changes because you stress it. You stress it because you ask it to do more than it was doing before. More weight, more reps or more sets. That's simplest to do if you pick 3-6 exercises and just do them. If you squat 90lbs 3x4 today and leg press 150lbs 4x10 tomorrow, was that more? Who knows. But if you squat 90lbs today and 95lbs tomorrow, that's definitely more, well done, keep going.

You don't have to do heaps more, just 1lb, 1 rep or 1 set is enough. It all adds up. 3 workouts a week over the year, 1lb a workout would be another 156lbs. Or another 156 reps. Ideally some combination of the two. Most likely you'd stall somewhere along the way and have to change your approach, but you'd still add pounds to your lifts, get stronger and fitter. And your physique would have changed.

Keep the good attitude up and you'll achieve your goals.