Is the beach body worth it?
Bodybuilding your way to robust health and functional fitness
Is a beach body worth the work? It’s aesthetically appealing, but is there anything beyond that? Or is it all just ego and vanity?
I don’t spend much time around bodybuilders. My clients and I tend to inhabit fitness cultures that all too often look down on bodybuilding. Within those cultures, the answer is often a firm, no. Their objections typically include a mix of the following:
The six-pack is just ego
It isn’t healthy
Bodybuilding isn’t functional
It makes you stiff
It will slow you down
These cultures speak instead about health, functional fitness, mobility and performance. As a result, people are left with the impression that bodybuilding is just ego and vanity.
This simply isn’t true. In this article, I’ll answer all the usual objections to bodybuilding, and show why the beach body really is worth it.
Let’s dive into the evidence.
Getting shredded and it’s effect on athletic performance
Imagine you are at the beach. You see a man or women with an incredible physique. They’ve clearly spent years building a pile of muscle and mastering their diet. Your first thought is that they must be a bodybuilder.
Fair enough. They’ve clearly been doing the exact same things that bodybuilders do. They’ve been lifting weights to build muscle and managing their diet to stay lean.
Yet there is another possibility. They might be a professional athlete. Professional athletes are getting bigger and leaner. It’s been happening for decades. And this is true of just about every sport that doesn’t include a size restriction.
This should surprise no one. There’s a reason that the UFC has weight classes or LeBron James weighs 260 plus pounds. Professional athletes employ strength coaches to build muscle in the off-season, and they employ nutrition coaches to stay lean. In other words, they engage in bodybuilding.
The Six-pack
Ok, back on the beach. Why does our professional athlete have a six-pack?
You only need to think about this for one minute. Can you jump higher wearing a 5-pound weight vest or without a 5-pound weight vest? How about sprint, obstacle course race, hike or perform manual labor? Which physical activities can do better with a five-pound weight vest?
If you want to run faster, jump higher, climb better or endure longer, you don’t want any superfluous weight, and that means you want to be lean. Yet, the advantages don’t stop there.
Getting leaner also improves your hormone profile, increasing the production of sex and growth hormones.
Getting leaner creates a virtuous cycle of fuel partitioning. When a leaner individual eats, it’s more likely that excess calories will be used to build muscle rather than store fat.
Getting leaner reduces chronic inflammation, and thereby reduces a variety of disease risks.
Getting leaner improves insulin sensitivity.
How lean is too lean? There are three ways to approach this question.
First, there is a hard physiological limit. When bodybuilders are about to go on stage, they often develop hormone problems. The problems go away when they regain some fat.
This is an insanely low level of body fat. For men, abs start to show up at around 15% body fat. For women it’s around 25%. To go on stage, a male bodybuilder often gets down to 5-7% body fat. For women it’s around 15-17%.
It takes an ungodly amount of will power and serious diet skills to get down so low. For most mortals, developing visible abs is hard enough, and that’s just fine, because there’s no health or performance benefit to going leaner.
Second, getting lean entails sacrifice. It’s hard to get lean. For most people it’s really hard, and the leaner you get the harder it gets. For many people it may not be worth the work. We live in a world of super abundant industrial food. We rarely have to walk further than the car or lift anything heavier than the groceries. As a result, a six-pack comes with a heavy price. It’s the price we pay for living in abundance.
Third, the benefits of getting lean have strongly diminishing returns. If you’re overweight, it’s very beneficial to get to an average weight. Moving from an average weight to an athletic weight is comparably far less important. You’ll still gain some performance. There are lines of evidence that it is optimal for health. And it may be our historical “normal”. (For most of our evolutionary history, humans have had six-packs.) But you pay a huge price for comparably less benefit.
So where does that leave us?
The six-pack is performance enhancing and healthy, but it comes with a high price. It’s perfectly reasonable to say it isn’t worth it, but it’s crazy to dismiss it as mere vanity.
Moreover, dieting really does get easier with practice. It’s possible to maintain visible abs without going hungry, weighing your food, or even counting calories.
Muscle Mass
Ok, we’re on the beach again, and of course, Mr. Six-pack isn’t just lean. He’s a muscle bound freak. Certainly a few questions might pop up. Is all that muscle functional or is he only good at bicep curls? Just how stiff is he? Does it slow him down? Is it healthy? How much is too much?
1) Is all that muscle functional?
When it comes to strength, speed and power, there are two components.
First, there’s a neurological component. You can think of this as the mental or skill component of strength, speed and power. It is highly specific. Consequently, you’re only good at the things you practice. If you never sprint, you won’t be any good at sprinting. If you never jump, you won’t be any good at jumping. And this is true no matter how much muscle you have.
This is why I’m such a huge fan of MovNat. It’s a structured method for building a broad base of movement skills.
Second, there’s the muscles themselves. The great thing about muscles is that they are completely general. They provide the potential for strength, speed and power. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about basketball or surfing, more muscle is generally better. The caveat is that you need to train the muscle. You need to teach it how to move. But once the training is there, extra muscles will help you jump higher, sprint faster, lift heavier and climb better.
To borrow an analogy from Menno Henselmans, you can think of muscle mass as the car and neurological strength as the driver. A great car is always better than a clunker; just make sure the driver knows what he’s doing.
This is why you see so much muscle in professional sports. It’s almost always an advantage. There are some exceptions. And if you’re wondering how much is too much, the answer is coming. But for now, just keep in mind that more is generally better in professional sports. If you want to build a body that will perform well across a wide range of activities, then I’d highly recommend building muscle. Your potential for strength, speed and power will only increase.
2) Just how stiff are bodybuilders?
On one level, it’s true that hypertrophy training (bodybuilding) turns you into a tank. Your bones get denser and stronger. Your connective tissues get thicker and stronger. Consequently, your risks of injury decrease. But on any sensible hypertrophy program, your mobility and flexibility is also going to improve.
Again, you only need to think about this for one minute. If building lots of muscle doomed you to perpetual stiffness, then gymnasts and UFC fighters would have a very different look.
When you train with full ranges of motion, your muscles get longer. Hypertrophy training doesn’t just make your muscle thicker, it can make them longer. This allows you to produce more strength across a greater range of motion.
Of course, there are limits. Bodybuilding won’t get you a middle split, so depending on your goals, you may need supplemental mobility work. Here too, I rely on MovNat to maintain a little extra mobility.
3) Does it slow them down?
If endurance racing is your thing, and you want to maximize performance, then you need to limit your size. The finishing line at a marathon looks the way it does for a reason.
On the other hand, if you want to build general fitness, then you can absolutely have both. I strength train religiously. Last year I ran a marathon, and next year I’ll attempt my first Ironman 70.3 and Spartan Beast. I’m slow compared to endurance athletes, but I can finish with a smile, which is impressive when compared to the general population.
Of course, I’m by no means a bodybuilder, and no one has ever accused me of being too big. So maybe you’re wondering about a committed bodybuilder.
Fair enough.
Obviously running an ultra-marathon as a 200-pound bodybuilder is not going to be easy, but it is achievable. Just ask these guys.
David Gluhareff is 232 pound bodybuilder and an ultra-endurance athlete.
Rudy Sleiman is a bodybuilder and weighed in at 200 lbs. when he started training for his first marathon. Yes, he finished.
Kris Gethin is an Ironman finisher, endurance runner and body builder.
If you’re ok being ‘merely’ a good endurance runner, size won’t be a factor.
4) Is it healthy?
Creating a lean, muscular body certainly isn’t just about the look or performance. Building muscle is also a great strategy for living a longer, healthier life. Again, this should surprise no one.
What does it take to get lean and build muscle? You need to manage your stress, get plenty of sleep, eat well and exercise. And you need to do all of these healthy things consistently. Building muscle is definitely healthy.
Building muscle will help you live longer.
It helps reduce chronic inflammation.
It improves insulin sensitivity.
It helps lower all-cause mortality.
It’s wins all the way around.
5) How big is too big?
Let’s go back to the beach. Our Olympic hopeful isn’t going to win any long distance endurance events. She seems comfortable with that. Is there any other reason to think she’s too big?
First, there isn’t much evidence of a hard physiological limit. You can achieve your natural, genetic potential in total health.
Second, building muscle entails sacrifice. It’s is hard work, and it gets harder the further you go. When you start off, adding muscle is relatively easy, but once you’ve been at it for a couple of years it starts to get really hard and take a ton of time. The men and women on the cover of fitness magazines have put years of intense effort into their physique. It’s a lifestyle commitment.
Third, there are strongly diminishing returns. Moving from untrained to upper intermediate has tremendous benefits, without significant costs. Moving from there to advanced or even elite levels comes with comparably higher costs and far less benefit.
So where does that leave us?
You probably don’t need to worry about getting too big. Big physiques represent many years of determined training. It won’t happen quickly or accidently.
This is also true for women. Unless you put in crazy amounts of work for a very long time, it’s really hard to get big. Moreover, it’s easy to just back off when you reach a point you like.
So is the beach body worth it?
Of course there’s no right answer. It’s up to you. On the one hand, the human body is the greatest toy anybody can ever own. On the other hand, strength training and dieting is hard. Just remember, that the hardest part is getting started. Once you’ve been at it for a while it really does get easier.
And this brings up one last amazing feature of bodybuilding. Once you achieve the size you want, you get to relax. Muscles are easy to maintain. It’s entirely possible that the muscle bound freak walking down the beach only trains a couple of days a week. Of course, he worked like mad to get there, but now, he gets to relax. He has time to go to the beach, dabble in sports and go for long hikes with his family. For him, the work is all past tense. It’s hard to say that isn’t worth it.
Thanks for reading! Would you like help building a body that looks as good as it performs? Check out my online coaching.
