Tall and skinny? Time to start growing!
They’re great when a car needs pushing out of the snow. They’re well placed to land a punch on someone else. And they can always grab the jar of corn from the highest shelf with no effort at all. If you’re tall and skinny, kids would happily climb up on your shoulders at a parade or a big sporting event, because from up there you can always see everything well and far into the distance.
Tall and skinny in the gym: life is easier until it’s time to lift weights
And it is precisely height, this physical quirk, that makes lifting weights considerably harder for tall trainees. Their squat weights are often pitifully small, and there’s no point even talking about their press results.
I think it was Archimedes who once said: “Give me a long enough lever (to create leverage) and I can move the Earth.” True, tall trainees have long “levers” (in the form of limbs), but there are joints between those bone levers. Unfortunately, when lifting weights, tall people don’t have the same advantage that trainees with short limbs and short lever arms do.
Of course, tall trainees can be quite good at, for example, the deadlift. The same goes for leg extensions, where the lever arm that comes with the nature of the exercise works in their favor.
But the problems aren’t tied only to specific exercises. For example, tall trainees generally find it very hard to build significant muscle mass. In part, that’s logical. If you have, say, a very long biceps, then even adding 4 – 5 cm to that long biceps doesn’t give even half the effect of adding 4 – 5 cm to a short upper arm or biceps. For a tall man’s biceps to start looking like that of a man with a short arm, significantly more centimeters have to be added to it.
Translator’s note: put simply, adding +3 cm to the biceps circumference of a tall man and +3 cm to that of a short man comes nowhere near giving the same visual effect.
The big problem stems from the lever arms mentioned above. Suppose you’re doing dumbbell biceps curls. At which point are most people weakest, as a rule? In the first half of the lift, right? That’s because in this phase of the lift the weight is at its farthest from the body. At this farthest point (relative to the body), the dumbbell is at its heaviest for us. Jerry Telle, who works in biomechanics, has said repeatedly that the specific position of the weight being lifted (the greatest distance) largely determines how much weight a muscle can lift.
Accordingly, in the biceps curl too, the size of the weight you can use is determined very largely by the distance from the body, which in turn depends on how long the trainee’s forearms are. The problem is that as soon as you get past this “dead point”, you’re significantly stronger. But the weight you can use for the first third often isn’t enough to create growth-stimulating tension for the rest of the range after the “dead point”. All trainees suffer under this physics-driven “influence”, of course, but when we talk about the weight used in exercises in absolute terms, it’s trainees with long limbs who suffer most, in terms of growth, because of this physics.
Incidentally, such physics-driven nuances apply to other lifts too. In the bench press, the weight you can use is likewise tied to how much you can press at the weakest point of the whole lift. I once read a study which found that the press result is directly inversely related to how long the arms are. Talking with Charles Staley (also long-limbed), we reached a similar conclusion, and we think the press result depends largely on the length of the humerus in particular. Trainees with long arms generally don’t stand out for very good press results.
Likewise, in all rowing movements the length of the upper arms affects how effective the work is; when training the triceps, the length of the forearms is decisive, as it dictates how much weight you can use in triceps exercises; and in pressing movements, too, the weight you can use is determined largely by the length of the upper arms.
Since I’m tall myself, I’ve had reason to think about these things. I’ve thought about what the solutions might be. I don’t have a specific program to offer; what I’m presenting are a few thoughts, techniques and tricks that, if kept in mind, could help tall trainees a little in their training sessions.
Let’s get started
Although the squat is a much-praised and very useful exercise, especially for building strength, power and mass and with functionality in mind, it isn’t exactly the most favorable exercise for tall trainees. I know, I know, I’m probably about to be sent to the stake, but I’ll tell you right away why I say this. I’m certainly not recommending that you shouldn’t squat or anything like that. But I do recommend doing more powerlifting-style squats rather than squatting the way bodybuilders do.
What’s the difference? Bodybuilders squat with the barbell high. That suits short trainees well, but tall ones not so much. When the barbell is high, it creates enormous tension in the lower back, especially in tall trainees. And the lower back, or the erector spinae, is the weakest link when squatting, especially in tall trainees (1).
Some lifters’ lower backs can handle it, but for the typical tall lifter the lower back takes an enormous negative load. The lower back tires before the barbell on the upper back starts doing anything for leg development.
An especially tall lifter should keep the barbell as low on the back as possible when squatting. That puts less load on the long torso and lower back, and it means the legs actually get loaded in the squat.
Let’s not underestimate the leg press
For tall lifters, the leg press can be even more effective than the squat for thigh – quadriceps – hypertrophy (1). Quite a few coaches would probably like to put me “on the rack” for that claim.
For a tall lifter, many exercises, the squat included, involve a very large range of motion, which means the exercise becomes an aerobic effort in its own right. Because long limbs mean a large range of motion, it often demands good aerobic capacity. But when it comes to the squat, the problem for many tall lifters is precisely that their aerobic capacity gives out before they get as far as working their anaerobic capacity. In practice, a tall guy is out of breath before he starts to feel that his thigh muscles have really been worked. When a tall man does 10 squats, that is a great deal of work, because overall a tall lifter has to move the weight on their back a considerably longer distance than a shorter lifter does with the same weight. The barbell often has to go back on the rack before it has had any developmental effect on the leg muscles at all. The same applies to the leg press, but here the tall lifter doesn’t need to worry as much about reaching failure quickly, because you can put your hands on your knees, which helps and adds safety. Once you hit failure, pushing on your knees with your hands lets you squeeze out a few extra repetitions.
In the squat, too, the weight you can lift is largely determined by what you can drive up from the bottom position (from the hole to mid-range) through the sticking point. But for tall lifters, because of their long femurs, that weight is quite limited. Unfortunately, such a limited weight in the squat is nowhere near enough to broadly stimulate the development of the thighs – the quadriceps.
The help of the hands in the leg press makes it possible, to some extent, to defy the development-limiting traits that come with long femurs.
The message: don’t underestimate the leg press!
Permitted cheating
Although people have always stressed how important correct technique and controlled execution are, there are situations where such planned, deliberate cheating is outright justified. For a tall lifter, using this kind of technique is justified – especially in biceps curls and extensions (for the triceps).
Remember what I said about lifters with long forearms being weakest in the first half of the biceps curl, and about the weight dictated by the start of the lift not being enough to stimulate muscle growth? The closer the weight gets to our body (with the arm), the heavier the weight we can handle in the exercise. By cheating this way, we use body momentum to swing the weight past that sticking point, so the weight used throughout the whole set can be heavier than with strict form. That lets us use the weights needed to drive growth in the biceps.
Using the same cheating technique lets you handle more weight in various extensions (overhead), seated and lying.
1 + 0.5
We’ve said many times that the weight used in a set is largely determined by our ability to lift it past the sticking point. The effect of an insufficient load can therefore be easily fixed with 1 + 0.5 repetitions. In other words, if you’re pressing, lower the barbell to your chest and press it back up as usual, but do the next repetition only halfway. One such 1 + 0.5 makes up just one full repetition.
This way, the stronger phase of a tall lifter’s press – the chest muscles – also gets the extra training volume needed for growth.
This method can be used in bench presses, rows, squats and, in fact, almost all exercises.
Bouncing
Charles Staley once told me about this method. My limited imagination says it can only be used in presses.
During the bench press, many lifters bounce the barbell off the chest.
Translator’s note: this technique is generally not justified.
Long-armed lifters bounce too, and for this group of lifters such a technique is occasionally justified. This kind of plyometrics again helps get past the sticking point, so that you can use the weights needed to stimulate growth in the stronger phase of the press.
There is certainly more to add on how to modify strength training for tall men to suit their body’s particularities – don’t hold yourself back.
I certainly don’t mean to say that if you’re tall, a partial range of motion is always justified, and the same goes for cheat repetitions and other incorrect “techniques”. It’s simply that if you’re tall, you should use these techniques from time to time.
References
TC’s Friggin’ Big Book of Knowledge, 8th edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Author: Janar Rückenberg (translation)
Source: Turg.Fitness.ee
Come and train! ArtGym
