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Originally Posted by LightCrow
I believe Casey's formula from Lyle's article is based on past natural pros like Reeves, Grimek and Park. Reeve's only ever competed at a height of 6'1" and around 8% body fat at a weight of 214 lbs. He would have been around 205 at the necessary lean-ness to compete today. Here is the article from Casey's site on muscular potential. http://www.weightrainer.net/potential.html |
It was mostly based on past pros, but up to 2007 (and then updated slightly in 2008) rather than just the pre-steroid era. The biggest haven't gotten appreciably bigger in terms of lean body mass, but may look that way because of conditioning. I should also point out that the equations in the online article are somewhat simplified and apply best to people of average heights and bone structures. The more "stringent" equations were held for the e-book.
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I had this conversation with Casey earlier this year. His equations (god willing that you have the patience to work the math... I do not) are within a pretty small margin of error. I believe he said that a majority of the data collected was from some study the US Army did?
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The Army and general population stats were used to establish joint circumferences-to-height relations and lean body mass-to-structure correlations, and also how much the typical human body increases in weight for a given increment in height. They were also used to establish the general form of some of the equations in the e-book. But the lean body mass numbers were from bodybuilders, powerlifters, strength athletes, etc.
Bone structure is a strong influence on ultimate muscle size. For instance,
all of the especially "large" pre-drug era champs had correspondingly large bone structures for their heights. For instance, Jack Delinger, who hit 197 at only 5'6", had 7.75" wrists...
John Grimek, 5'8-1/2", had 8" wrists when he weighed 210 pounds (Grimek's weight fluctuated from about 185 to 220 throughout his career)...
Marvin Eder was similar with a slightly smaller build at 195 pounds...
George Eiferman was also similar - 5'7-1/2" at 195 pounds as well...
Comparing these to today's elite middleweights, you find they're about the same height but weighed about 10-15 pounds more than current middleweights typically do in the off-season (depending on exact body fat levels). So the absolute limit of lean body mass hasn't significantly changed.
Dave Goodin...
Jim Cordova, as big as he looks, still competes at under 170 pounds. His incredibly gifted upper arms and delts give him the illusion of great overall size...
Looking at taller bodybuilders... Steve Reeves competed around the 213-215 mark at a height of 6'1"...
Reg Park was the same height as Steve Reeves, but typically outweighed him by about 10 pounds at similar levels of body fat. Park's wrists were 1/2" bigger than Reeves, and his ankles about 1/4" bigger...
It's very rare to find a high-level natural bodybuilder of this height these days. For a bodybuilder this tall to fill out enough to look sufficiently "big" he'd need at least 7-1/2+" wrists and 9.25+" ankles (usually more than 7-3/4" and 9-1/2" respectively). The relative rarity of such thickly built tall men in natural bodybuilding is, no doubt, why there aren't many of them on the elite stages.
Too bad I'm not interested in bodybuilding 
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