Eli5: Why body builders can’t carry their bodies like gymnastics or calisthenics do ?
In: 0
Male bodybuilding/gymnastics answer only – Gymnastics requires moving the body well, often through a long lever. As in the body (usually legs) is extended far away from the muscle doing the moving (usually arms/shoulders/core). To do this well, the lighter the legs are and the stronger the movement muscles are, the better. Gymnasts’ leg muscles are super strong too, but they only need it to be as strong as required to complete the movement and stick the landing – they benefit from having the legs be as light as possible.
Bodybuilders are firstly more concerned about shape and size than with pure strength. Secondly, few problems if bodybuilders tried gymnastics:
1. They emphasize large legs, which means heavier legs, which amplifies the difficulty in longer lever movements.
2. They emphasize tight/small midsection, which means (relatively) weaker core, which is required for any of these movements
3. Muscle size necessarily interferes with flexibility. You will see large flexible body builders, but only very rarely. The size physically gets in the way of certain movements.
4. The control in certain movements comes from the smaller muscles. These muscles are harder to train from weights and don’t scale up as much as the bigger muscles.
Finally – there’s nothing magically different about the two disciplines. At the end of the day bodies are made out of bones/muscles/connectives/nerves. If you take a young bodybuilder who isn’t at an extreme end of the spectrum, you can train him to be fairly competent at gymnastics and he wouldn’t need to lose much of his looks to do so. There’s just a shift in muscle distribution, and increased focus on flexibility/agility.
Latest Answers