Hard to reach

My energy levels was low today. Me and James planned a trip to Grand Canyon, but that wasn’t happening since we both felt really low. I think all of us has noticed that sometimes, a stressed central nervous system due to training or other more environmental factors. Those days compared to an ordinary day in my life is like day & night. So we did some shopping and just hanged out with the guys. We saw Bruno at the hotel, we love sick humor. And that movie sure is different….

______________________________________________________

A pretty ordinary statement we all hear is that muscle weighs more than fat, while this statement is true the difference isn’t really that huge. Let’s see the stats:

Tissue                            Density

Fat                                    940kg/m3

Muscle                             1050kg/m3

Bone                                 1800kg/m3

So basically muscle mass weighs about 12% more than fat.

Often we also hear the statement that someones being “big boned” and this is the reason they carry more bodyweight. While this is theoretically true, humans carrys 14-17% (where almost half of is water) of their bodyweight in bonemass. So this doesn’t make that much difference in terms of total bw. I’ve heard multiple of times where people under 100kgs thinks that 10kgs of their overweight is depending on their being “big boned”.

Now we are all genetically different in terms of bonemass, and even how the bonemass is distributed. One study (Holden 2004) did a measurement of the tibia bone density, two groups; kenyans and danish males. They found that the kenyan male tibia bone was about 400grams lighter than the danish males tibia bone. This makes difference in sports (even though this is a topic for further discussion) as there will be less force production to move that lighter tibia bone. This could be a part of the explanation why african distance runners are more successful than Europeans. Of course there are a high variable in terms of culture, training and possible max vo2.

Differences in bonelenghts can have advantages in sports, for example longer arms will create a greater force production while swimming, in a rowing movement longer arms will also give the rowing higher power production. Still strength have to be greater for those with longer extremities to take fully advantage of it.

Now I will watch the UFC!

//SR