Shouldnt large people be jacked just from simply moving around with the extra weight? Im talking about muscle mass here and not fat content. Thanks
In: Biology
They could be somewhat more muscular, assuming that they’re moving that weight around a lot. Which they typically aren’t. Sometimes you can tell when they do start going to the gym, and they have a head start over skinny guys. That’s also a bit misleading, because skinny guys need to eat a lot to gain muscle, which they usually don’t, and fat guys don’t have that problem.
But there’s a limit to how much extra muscle you get. They’re moving the same amount of weight all the time. If you go to the gym and pick up some dumbbells, your body will adapt to that stress over the next couple of days. If you go back and do the same amount of the same exercise with the same dumbbells, eventually your body won’t adapt to it anymore because it’s not a new amount of stress. Kind of like how the same half-hour of sun a day eventually stops making you darker.
If you want to get stronger at standing up from a chair, you might have to squat in 3 sets of 5 repetitions, adding 5 lbs three times a week. Getting your muscles visually bigger usually takes heavy sets of 10-12 reps. That’s not a natural amount of standing up for a sedentary person, even ignoring the fact that they’re always using the same weight.
Extreme high volume at the same low intensity isn’t always the answer either. That’s what marathon runners do, and their muscles don’t get big at all.
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Fat guy here, and in addition to what other people have said, I just want to point out that when we talk about how muscular someone is, we are often thinking about body parts that have relatively little to do with moving around. It’s not like my upper body has much to do with moving around, and how much muscle there is up there primarily depends on my exercise routine and not my daily life. On the other hand, my legs have a lot more muscle, especially my thighs, because that is what I’m moving around with, and if you put me on a leg press machine, I can do a lot more weight than the average person. But thighs tend to be the least visible part of a person’s body, and someone who is overweight may also have an extra layer of fat on them, so you may not even realize that they are particularly muscular there. Also, even then, if someone doesn’t spend much time standing or walking, there’s nothing to say they will have much extra muscle even from that. If your life is bed, office chair, couch, bed, you’re not moving around much.
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Often they do to some degree but as in the gym you have to up the weight to progress at some point. There are also other factors to consider. Being overweight for example negatively effects testosteron. And being overweight and not moving a lot are kinda linked obviously so an overweight person will on average move less.
3 things to point out
– Generally larger people do not move often, thus their muscle mass is weaker compared to their weight,.
– The heart can only move so much blood around to all the body, including muscle
– Lungs are not able to supply all body with enough air due to the size.
A physician explained it to me once: obese people tend to have very restricted, toy soldier like movements. This makes their muscles atrophy outside of the very narrow range of movement they use to get around.
I’m a 5’8″ woman, medium build. In 2017, I topped the scales at 275lbs…and I was hella strong. Despite my size, I did a lot of Crossfit, and rocked the strength wods. At my best, I had a 250lb back squat and an 800lb (yes, 800) leg press. My legs were tree trunks because every time I stood up, I was basically doing a weighted squat. I had the benefit of a massive body weight to use to my advantage…its amazing how much iron you can move with a little understanding of physics.
A year later, I’d lost 100lbs. My max weights were a fraction of what they had been, but my cardio was way better. At my 100lb anniversary, I back squatted 100lbs. It was a huge struggle but when I put the bar back on the rack, I kept thinking about how I walked around with all that weight on me for years.
Logically, only if obese people move and are as active as slim people. Generally, that is not the case. Whether chicken or the egg, overweight people tend not to move very much, or fast, or in ways that induce strain or would increase muscle mass. It doesn’t take as much muscle to move a large body a few incremental distances in a day as it does to keep a smaller body moving and active more often during the day.
Fat guy calves are the truth! Best way to build stellar calves is to be fat and lose weight. Source: Use to weigh 300 lbs
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