Episode 4 - Stop Fighting Your Genetics: The Science of Somatotypes

Are you training for the body you want, or the body you actually have? Most people fail because they’re following a blueprint that wasn’t drawn for their genetics.

In today’s new episode, I’m breaking down the three body somatotypes—and why it matters. 

We’re talking about nutrient partitioning, training density, and why your 'body type' is actually your greatest weapon once you understand the science. 

Transcript

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Have you ever followed the exact same workout and diet as a friend, only to see them get shredded while you just felt tired? It's one of the most frustrating experiences in fitness, and we're told that calories in versus calories out is the only law that matters. But your body type, your somatotype, is the hidden blueprint that determines how those calories are used. Today we're breaking down the ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph. We're even going to add two more. We're going beyond the labels to look at the actual science as to why some people need a plate full of carbs to grow, while others just look at a bagel and gain five pounds. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to categorize your frame, and more importantly, you'll know how to stop fighting your genetics and start fueling them up. So let's dive in. In a world of enhanced physiques and social media smoke and mirrors, where do you find the truth? Welcome to the OCB Natural Edge Podcast, the official voice of the world's largest drug-free bodybuilding federation. From the science of the shred to the grit of the stage, no secrets, no substances, just the edge. Event. The first step in any program is to determine what is going to be the best inputs of diet and exercise for you to use. One of those tools to use is your body stomatotype. Now, there's three basic body types, but most researchers consider that there are also two others that are more created by environment, and those are endomesos and endoectos. But we're going to talk first about the three prevalent body types, the endo, the ecto, and the meso. Now, no one is strictly one type. Most people are combinations of the three, and there's a lot of different models to follow to see how they stack up. But the one that I like the best is the simplest one I've ever seen. And that was from an article of Muscle Builder and Power back in 1979 that I read that was by Mike Metzer. Now, for those of you who don't know, Mike Metzer was a Mr. America in a Mr. Universe, and he was one of the founders of the high-intensity style of training that some bodybuilders use to this very day. Now, Metzer said that he looked at things as a scale using the number seven. And what you do is you would assign yourself the highest number for the body type that you felt you most likely resemble, and then another number for the next one down, and then the next one down. So out of the three body types, you would end up giving yourself a high number if you felt you were more endomorphic, and then if you put on muscle, you'd have a number for meso, and then finally one for ecto. Now I'm going to use myself as an example. Back in the day when I did it, I thought that I was a three in endo, a three in meso, and a one for ecto, meaning I had a tendency to be round and fat, but I could put on muscle easy, and I had very little ectomorphic qualities or the skinny. This meant that I needed to pay more information on stuff that pertained to endos and mesos, and I could skip most of the ecto rules of the day. And surprisingly enough, they haven't changed much over the last 40 years. Now, once again, nobody is strictly one type or the other. And there's a lot of modern evidence that strongly suggests that somatotypes are a descriptive tool and not a biological law, and that genetics and environmental factors have as much to do with impacting how we take on calories and how we train and where all this comes into play as your born body stomatotype. So while those three categories are still used for simplicity, science does emphasize there's a lot more involved, and I do concur. Now, given that this episode is strictly going to be talking about stomatotypes, I'm going to focus most of my energy and talk on those specifically. So in order to accurately determine your body type, you need to determine a lot of different factors, such as how much skeletal muscle you carry, what's your bone structure like, other things come into play as different muscle fiber types, your tendon lengths, hormones become a big factor. Are you insulin sensitive? Are you not insulin sensitive? Do you tend to produce more estrogen than testosterone? As you can see, a lot of factors. But keeping it simple, we're going to talk about the endo, ecto, and meso in the simplest forms, how the body looks to the eye. Endo is round. Endomorphs generally tend to have wider shoulders and wider hips and also carry a large amount of body fat. Your mesomorphs ideally have the wider shoulders and narrower hips and generally carry a lot more muscle mass. And your ectomorphs have skinny shoulders, skinny hips, small wrists, small ankles, long muscle insertions, and generally tend to be very, very skinny. So how do you determine your body type? By strictly just not looking at yourself in the mirror. You can also take your family history into it. What was your body like when you were a child? What body types do your parents have? Are they all tall and skinny? Are they all squattier and fatter? Most people are combinations of the various body types, like I said, without one being more dominant. However, you're going to see genetically you fall into one of those categories historically, based on how you looked as a child, how your parents looked as adults. Now, different body types respond best to different diets and training programs. Now it's also possible for a person to change body types over time. As I said, when I first started on my journey, I considered myself a three in the endo and a three in the mesoscale. By the time I was in my competitive heyday, I felt I was more a four or a five in the mesocategory and more of a one in the endo and the ecto. Now, even ectomorphs can gain a lot of fat and make them look skinny fat, but we're going to talk about that more towards the end. So let's start with the main three types, the endo, the ecto, and the meso, and then we're going to dive into some of the specifics on the endomeso and the ectomeso. Now, endomorphs, they put on muscle easy and they can retain it for a long period of time. But they also store large amounts of body fat and gain fat very easy. In a restricted caloric condition, they can retain muscle a lot better, but the problem is that they have a lot of trouble taking off that last bit of fat. Endomorphs almost always have some type of sensitivity to carbohydrates or A1C sensitivities. Although this does diminish with the addition of more muscle and proper dieting, it will remain a factor throughout life. Now, the endomorph diet, that's the most important thing to consider if you're an endomorph. It usually means you're sensitive to carbohydrates and you'll hold a lot of water, but you'll also hold on to a lot of muscle glycogen, meaning that your muscles will stay fuller longer with a minimal amount of carbohydrates. A few days of zero carbs are not going to hurt an endomorph. As a matter of fact, they might even be able to go five, seven days on little to no carbohydrates and then replenish your muscle glycogen stores with one meal or one day of carbohydrate eating. Now, I don't ever recommend zero carbs. It's miserable and you can get there without going zero carbs. I'm just trying to make a point that an endomorph can tolerate much lower carb intake than the other body's phattotypes. Now, an endomorph is pretty good with a cycle type of a diet. That's where you take in a lower carbohydrate, higher protein, moderate fat diet for several days up to a week. And then you follow that by a moderate carbohydrate, lower fat day, still keeping your protein in the moderate range. Now, endomorphs are better at not attempting to carb load for a long period of time, particularly before competition, because of their sensitivity to carbs. Your endomorphs are not the type of people that are good around a three or four-day carb load cycle for any type of athletic event or for just general conditioning. Better off with that lower carbohydrate with a couple of days of higher carbs. I never recommend long-term low carbohydrate dieting. Now, also, let me put it in perspective, in my opinion, low carbohydrates is 100 grams of carbohydrates per day or less, never zero. I don't think I've ever in my life gone below 50 grams of complex carbohydrates per day. I never counted vegetables as a carbohydrate source other than potatoes and other starchy vegetables, but green vegetables were always a free food. So I'm talking about a high-quality, well-dense carbohydrate. Also, endomorphs avoid sugary foods. You are not the type of physique that is going to be good with a Pop Tart for a carboading experience. On your carboating days, you're better off with good quality starchy carbohydrates, potatoes, rices, etc. Now, your training, you endomorphs are good for high-intensity types of training. Also, same is true with cardio. You can withstand good high-intensity cardio three, four times per week. You can also respond well to multiple shorter sessions of cardio throughout the day if that floats your boat. But endomorphs, you guys generally do respond pretty well to high-intensity cardio. For weight training, good weight training protocols would be shorter rest periods with moderate loads with a few more sets here and there thrown in. Endomorphs are really, really hard to overtrain. It's because you have all that stored muscle gun glycogen. It doesn't mean it's impossible to overtrain you, so I don't recommend two-hour marathon workouts six days per week, but a good five-day per week workout split is just fine for an endomorph. Also, cutting those rest intervals down to even 20 and 30 seconds isn't going to overtax you. Most of the endomorphs that I worked with could gain a ton of muscle even with the shorter rest periods. It was more about fat management and losing that excess of body fat. So it is difficult for an endomorph to overtrain. So don't worry about the short rest periods. Just don't get too carried away with zero rest and 100 set workouts. Now I want to talk about mesomorphs. Mesomorphs, you maintain that muscular build with little body fat generally all the time. Gains in muscle come easy. You retain the muscle well. They have very fast metabolisms. Mesomorphs can eat almost anything and still lose fat and gain muscle. Not uncommon to see a mesomorph diet for only four to six weeks in preparation for a competition. Now, it's said that pure mesomorphs make up only about 2-4% of the population. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on mesomorphs, but I don't want to diminish how hard a mesomorph works. You don't become a championship bodybuilder without dedicating yourself to the gym, having smart workouts and smart dietary protocols. I'm taking nothing away from a mesomorph. So if you are a mesomorph, hey, congratulations. I wish I could say the same, but I know that your work ethic is just as hard as the other body somatotypes. But considering you're only about 5% of the population, very few of you are watching this, so I want to emphasize more of the other body somatotypes. Now, ectomorphs. Ectomorphs, you have that smaller muscularity, but very little body fat. You have a hard time filling out your frame, but a real easy time looking ripped all the time. Fortunately, there are a lot of very good ectomorphic champions that are out there. Matt Shepley, the president and founder of the OCB, was a competitive bodybuilder and was an ectomorph. He won championships. He was known for being shredded, and it took him a long time to put the muscle on, but once he got the muscle on, he was a great competitor. Now, ectomorphs may build some muscle density, but they're always going to appear a little bit longer and lanky. So coming in straight is going to be your friend. Insulin sensitivity, generally not an issue with your ectomorphs. However, e tomorphs need to be very careful about not eating a lot of sugary carbs because that increases insulin. It wreaks havoc with the metabolism and it speeds everything up. You want to slow it down. So good complex carbohydrates. Large amounts of dietary fat are also good. So ectomorphs, you need a lot of carbohydrates, float up on that glycogen. Starchy carbs are the best. Lots of greens should also eat your vegetables. And you should eat more frequently and also with a moderate amount of fats. Eight meals a day, not a stretch for an ectomorph. I've known some ectomorphs that would eat 10 times per day because they burn through everything at such a rate, the more frequent feeding is better for them. So be better off having more frequent meals as opposed to one, two, or three really large ones because you cycle through your nutrients so fast. An ectomorph might not need to deplete carbs for very long. If you're peeking for a show, an ectomorph can probably do a carb cycle with one or two days of depletion and four to six days of building your carbs back up. So whatever your sport is, one or two days of depletion, four or five days of carb building. We're generally fill out an ectomorph. And you also have a tendency not to hold water. So you can eat a lot more carbs and calories. Now, ectomorphs, you respond really, really well to heavy, low rep sets with a minimum number of total sets, keeping the volume down. Training three, maybe four days per week, 30, 40 minutes. Now, here's another trick for ectomorphs. I found that when I was training a lot of ectomorphic clients, if they weren't responding to five to seven rep sets or even three to five rep sets, if I moved them up to 20 rep sets, still using a heavy load and taxing the muscle, but decreasing even further the total number of sets we did for body part, they responded well. I think this has something to do with the muscle fiber types that a lot of ectomorphs carry. In a future episode, I'm going to dive into muscle fiber types and what the two A's and two Bs and what they all do and what they all mean. But ectomorphs generally have the muscle fiber types that generally don't plump as much with the hard training stimulus. Therefore, they have a lot more of those muscle fiber types packed into that muscle. And so they don't grow as much, but that muscle fiber type does stimulate more to higher rep training. So if you're that ectomorph struggling for gain, give it a try. I'm not guaranteeing that it would work. I'm just saying that it worked for a lot of the ectomorphs that I was working with. Also, cardio for the ectomorph would be more of a very, very low intensity light walk for 20 to 30 minutes rather than doing a higher intensity type of a cardio. So slower, longer, best. The goal would be to burn fat stores and not rev up the metabolism because the metabolism for an ectomorph is already on hyperdrive. Now, like I said, most of us aren't textbook examples of an endo, a meso, or an ecto. Some of us fall into that endo-mesocategory. We are notorious water holders and we need to monitor the carbohydrates closely, but we also put on muscle fairly easy. How do I know so much about this? As I said, I am a mesoendo. I can pack on muscle just by looking at a barbell, but my metabolism is so inefficient that I held on to every ounce of body fat and I had to diet longer and smarter. If I ate like a pure mesomorph, I'd get big and strong, but I'd also get fat and soft. If I dieted like an endomorph, I would get ripped, but I would lose my muscle size. So it became kind of a balancing act. Now, the nutrition strategy I used was actually given to me at Vince's gym back in the early 80s when I was stationed in the Marines out in California. For those who don't know, Vince Geronda was the guru of modern bodybuilding. He was a champion bodybuilder back in the 50s and all through his life, all the way up until he died in the 90s, he was at the cutting edge of a lot of what we call scientific fact today. He did this just through pure observation and by experimenting on different clients. He was a firm believer in the different body types, but he was also the first to identify that most fat people that had muscle were endomesos and were created more through their environment or their parents' bad eating habits than truly being born with a preponderance of fat cells. So Vince's dieting strategy was to utilize a high protein diet and carbohydrates daily, but the carbs were targeted, meaning that you had some carbohydrates at breakfast, and then you had all the rest of your carbohydrates right after a heavy weight training session. If you didn't train with weights that day, you only had a light amount of carbohydrates for breakfast. Now, this carb targeting approach is a thing now, but I'm talking about 1983, 1984, when I was talking with Vince and he provided this for me. This didn't become a dieting strategy until the 90s. I only say that to say this. If you're ever out researching information, look up some of Vince's tactics and protocols, and you'll see that some of the stuff he was doing in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s is now taken for granted as science today. But back to how he had his diet and what I feel works best for your endomesos, which is actually the majority of people that are training in bodybuilding. And that is to take in about a gram per pound of body weight as a baseline for protein. Carbohydrates, I always took in about a half to a gram per pound of body weight per day targeted. The half grams were on the days I didn't weight train, and the full gram was on the days I did. So let's say I weighed 180 pounds, I would take in 180 grams of carbohydrates on training days, 90 grams of carbohydrates on nine training, non-training days, and on the training days, they were targeted to breakfast and post-training. Fats were always on the higher side. Now, Vince was a strong believer in having people take in olive oil and nuts and fatty fishes. And now we know that essential fatty acids are a real thing. Fish oils and six to eight grams per day would be great for your endomesomorphs as part of their diet. So keeping the fats moderately high. My training, well, my training was a type of heavy load with a lot of other movements. Vince always gave us four sides to a muscle. You can look up that training protocol. But one that I always gravitated to was doing a really, really heavy exercise with a short period of rest, followed within 15, 20 seconds later by a moderate exercise, followed 15 or 20 seconds later by an isolation exercise. I gravitated toward this training, and it wasn't until years later I ran across Charles Poloquin. Now, Charles Poloquin was a great coach, produced a lot of bodybuilding books, and he had a type of training that he called GH training, where it's when you did a heavy compound six repetition exercise, followed by another compound-ish type exercise in the 12-rep range, followed by an isolation exercise for up to 20 reps. I've gravitated towards that training and started doing it during the towards the last five, six years of my competition career, and I had the best results in maintaining or gaining muscle size and coming in very, very lean. So shorter rest periods, doing that tricep method with a 45 to 90 second rest between those tricepts worked out great for me. Did I train that way all the time? No. I highly recommend that you consistently change your training protocols around. And I'm talking revamped from nuts to bolts. But I frequently went back to that, four sides of a muscle or one of the other Vitch Gironda type training workouts or style training where you did heavy and low rep training in the same workout, each workout, I found that that produced the best results for me. As for cardio, I found that doing a very, very high-intensity bout of cardio to start my cardio and then going into steady state worked really well for me. I was in the military. I always had to run. So when we did our free runs where we didn't have to do a formation run or do a designated three-mile run, and we were just allowed to go do it. I would run for as long as people could see me as fast as I could go, meaning I would run for five to ten minutes somewhere in the vicinity of a mile. And then I would walk the rest of the route and come back. I found that I shredded up really great with that. A combination of high intensity cardio and low intensity steady state, but I did them in the same session, doing five to 10 minutes of all-out cardio, followed by 15, 20, or 30 minutes of walking back and burning it off. Years later, I came across something known as alpha cardio by a research extraordinaire, Lyle McDonald. And this was Lyle's training protocol, and he called it alpha moderated cardio. But in his, it was five minutes all out, balls to the walls, you need to feel like you're going to die, followed by 40 minutes of just steady state taking a walk on a treadmill. Very similar to the same thing that I was using with great success, only mine were a little bit longer and more moderate. Whatever protocol you decide to use, a combination of high intensity cardio with low intensity, steady state in some type of mix, you'll respond very well for your endomesos. Now let's talk about the ectoendo. This is the skinny fat. Now, that look is that narrow shoulder, small joint, but a lot of body fat carried in the midsection in the hips. This is again an environmentally induced body somatotype taken and created by very, very poor diet. So the fix is to not bulk or cut. You need to body recomposition. So a high protein, modern carb diet with a good focus on hypertrophy type training, utilizing that five to seven reps or two or three exercises, training four days per week on some type of a split system, will be very beneficial for you. This will allow you to burn more calories in the gym, doing the heavier movements, and creating a diet that is going to help you utilize the stored body fat for energy by going more moderate carb, not low carb. What's moderate carb? To me, moderate carb is a gram and a half per pound of body weight. So you'd still take in a significant amount of carbohydrates, but you'd balance out the rest of your energy needs with good quality fats. So whether you're a classic ectomorph struggling to find your frame, a mesoendo like me, consistently trying to balance your power and your precision, remember your body type is the map, it's not the manifesto. It tells you where you're starting, but it doesn't define where you're gonna finish. So utilize what we talked about today, try it out, groom it along the way, and just know whether you were born a pure ecto or a pure endo, you're not doomed to stay that way through life. Through smart, intelligent training and diet, you can change your physique, and you too can become a champion. Now, in closing, I want to talk about something that I've talked about many, many times on my old podcast, The Zen of Bodybuilding, and I bring it up a lot, and that is bodybuilders are role models. You, as a natural bodybuilder, whether you like it or not, are a role model. Now, a little story. 1978, I was a 13-year-old kid heading down a wrong path. I had a 30-second encounter with the Arnold Schwarzenegger. It changed my life forever and created the new human being that I was to become. Simply put, Arnold just gave me two tickets to a Mr. Olympia contest. Now, he just thought he was just filling two seats for the Mr. Olympia. Bodybuilding wasn't popular in 1978. And he had the Columbus Auditorium and he had to fill that up. But to me, he was giving me a blueprint to a new kind of life. It changed my perspective on everything. It allowed me to start thinking in terms of discipline. It allowed me to start thinking in terms of making myself better, not just physically, but in all aspects of my life. So it was a simple act of him being a champion and doing something nice, both for him and for some little kid that was there. And it changed everything. So, like it or not, if you carry the muscle of a natural bodybuilder, you are a role model. And as a bodybuilder, you can't hide. Your discipline is written all over your body. This makes you a target for observation. People are going to watch how you eat, how you speak, how you handle stress. When a kid sees a natural athlete choose a water over a soda, or patience over gym rage, it redefines what strength looks like to them, and they're going to more closely emulate that behavior. Now it's not always easy, and I'm going to use a personal example. I remember a show back in the 90s, and I had an adverse reaction to how I was placed. I was noticeably sour on stage, and I kind of made some comments backstage that were inappropriate about how I was ripped off and how much better I was than everybody, the typical bravado that should never creep into the moment on stage, and something I lecture our competitors about all the time. But I want you to know that even I tripped up. And it wasn't until a good friend of mine told me later that, well, it was a mutual friend of ours that had won that day. Somebody I had competed with numerous times who had never placed above third, and he had finally won a show, had finally beat myself and a couple of the other guys in competition, and it was a key moment in his life. But he heard about my comments and he just told our friend that it made it a hollow victory. I stole the moment from him, and he can never get it back. So I learned quickly that everyone who watched that moment was the 13-year-old I once was. And what message did I send them? I minded my actions and my temper on stage from that point on. It's the Arnold effect. One 30-second interaction can change a life's trajectory. So I want you to ask yourself: who's the 13-year-old in the gym watching you? Are you giving them a ticket to a better life or a reason to just walk away from the sport? Now, if you experienced a similar situation, perhaps you were the role model. What impacts did it have on you and how did it impact others? I'd like to know, so put it down in the comments below because I want to hear what you have to say. And if you enjoyed this episode, please like, share, and subscribe so we can make our community bigger and share even more ideas and concepts together. Until next time, stay humble, stay hungry, stay natural, sell you out.