9.The human frame and how it relates to bodybuilding 4 - Bodybuilding

To a certain extent therefore, the type of body you have will have some influence on your body building success. However, even if you are not the perfect mesomorph of the Sheldon classification, it does not follow that bodybuilding is not for you.

Whether you could achieve professional status is another question, but I am assuming that you don’t want to anyway. At a recreational or personal enjoyment level, bodybuilding is something that almost anyone can do.

There is also another consideration to take into account, which is that other people’s perception of us as individuals often affects our attitude to our own body.

For example, if coming to the end of your teens, getting ready to leave home for the first-time, you are the kind of person who has always carried a little weight because Mom’s home cooking was just so good, you will probably consider yourself to be just an average guy or girl.

If however everyone starts telling you that you are endomorphic, it is likely that you are eventually going to start pay more attention to other people’s opinion of your body type than you do to your own opinions. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you enjoy your food and you know that you are a naturally fat person (because you’ve been told this so often), why would you make an effort to change things?

While there is probably nothing intrinsically physiological that prevents you from becoming a successful bodybuilder, psychologically you have already accepted that bodybuilding (and probably every other kind of sport as well) is not for you.
So, while your natural body shape or physique will have some bearing on how successful you are likely to be as a bodybuilder, it is not the be-all-and-end-all.

As indicated previously, many highly successful professional bodybuilders were not ‘the right shape’ by nature, but by dint of hard work and dedication, they became amongst the best in the business.

Perhaps it is fairer to suggest that while their body shape might not have been ideal for becoming bodybuilders, they had metamorphic characteristics somewhere in their makeup that enabled them to become successful in their chosen field. Whether these characteristics were strictly physical or partially physical and partially psychological, it is impossible to say, but if they had these characteristics, there is no reason whatsoever why you may not have them as well.