a word from the infamous Lyle :
Here ya go:
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Somatyping was originally an attempt to model temperament based on physical traits. /It was never based on physiology./ It was long ago discredited in the field of psychology, but the vestiges of somatyping linger on in areas related to fitness. It has been the mere propogation of stereotype.
If anybody wants to get an "academic" view into the silliness of somatyping, go to your local university library and see if they have any book explaining how the measurements are done. Then try it out on your friends and family. "Golly, you're a 1-1-7 and I'm a 3-4-4!" By the time you finish, you'll be laughing. Read the book some more, and you'll see that /there is not even an attempt at a connection between the characteristics being measured and cellular response./
If you are feeling less academic, another way you can see the irrelevancy of the stereotypes is to actually train people with closely matching physical characteristics. You can also see the irrelevancy of somatyping when you consider a person's personal history. Have they passed the age at which "filling out" might be expected? Did they have decent eating habits when they were young? Did they prevent themselves from growing through too much physical activity, or through bad habits? With an older person (as in somebody past the teenage and college years), have they always had that build?
Physiologically:
There are no ectomorphs.
There are no mesomorphs.
There are no endomorphs.
There is no transitioning between them.
When you say that somebody is a "classic ectomorph/mesomorph/endomorph" all you are really saying is "that person appears to conform to the stereotype from a now-discredited psychological model." You are saying very little if anything about that person's history or their response to training or their potential to transform their body. So why propogate the stereotype?
If you are dissatisfied with your own body (aren't we all) don't attribute it to a somatype. Don't even use the somatype as a shorthand to describe your /current/ physical characteristics. Let the stereotypes die.
No doubt you will find that your response to training will have its limits. Adaptations are predomininatly biochemical in nature. A person's biochemistry is very hard to see from the outside. "If you order these special glasses for only $99.95..." you'll be out $99.95! You can't gauge biochemical response from outward appearance. There is no somatyping of biochemistry.
Don't imagine or predict limitations. The real ones will be work enough to overcome.
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It's clear that you don't understand how the determination is even made. Somatotyping (the actual measurements taht are made in terms of bodyfat, muscularity, limb length) were never correlated with inherent biology in the first place. All of that pseudo-interpretation to biology was made up later but never shown.
Put differently, let's say you meaure someone and you determine that they are an ectomorph. Low muscularity, long bones. Now you put 40 lbs of muscle on them. By the somatotype scale, they are now a mesomorph. Or you fatten them up and now they are an endomorph.
Has the fact that their position on the somatotype scale changed their genetics?
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Somatotyping was invented for psychological reasons: as an attempt to correlate body type with behavior patterns (ectors were typically high strung, endos laid back, mesos in the middle I guess). And it was no more scientific than phrenology in this regards. It's like thinking you can look at someone, or measure them, and know that they are a criminal.
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Ok, yes, the classic
ectomorph: is lean and skinny
mesomorph: is muscular and lean
endomorph: is fat
But that's not how the system (such as it was) was originally designed. And nobody is one but not the others. Everybody ranks from 1-9 on all three scales (to undersand this, you have to learn about how the rankings are actually made).
So you have an ectomorphy rating, an endomorphy rating, a mesomorphy rating. A complete ectomorph might be 1-1-9 (let's use endo,meso,ecto for the order). A complete mesomorph is 1-9-1, a complete endomorph is 9-1-1. Most peple will be somewhere in the middle but they might be slightly more dominant in one.
Which, as I said means that a fat powerlifter might rate high on the meso and endomorphy scales (muscular and fat) but probably low on ectomorphy. A lean powerlifter high on meso but low on the other two. Etc.
You can also have someone who is dysplasic, who has a high rating on one scale for part of their body but a high rating in a different scale for a nother. Think about your average fit female, who may be lean in her upper body (high ectomorphy rating) but fat in her lower (high endomorphy rating).
Does this mean that her upper body has the biology of an ectomorph but her lower the biology of an endomorph? what doess it tell you about her overall biology (except that she has typical female genetics)? Waht about her behavior patterns (again, what somatotyping was originally used to try and describe)? I mean other than absolutely ****ing nothing.
If you haven't gotten the point just how useless these ratings are yet (i.e. that they are only descriptive, telling you absoltley nothing about underlying biological processes), you're not paying attention.
Lyle
Sorry for my laziness , but it seemed easier to just quote him ( which I agree with) than to actually be original - but if I had - it would have displayed as least twice the genius in half the rambling ....just kidding Lyle