Are you small/medium/large jointed?

BossArky

I'm reading through Tom Venuto's "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle" and came across the section on the 10 major genetic variables. Joint circumference is one of them.

Wrap your hand around the opposite wrist.

• If the thumb and middle finger can overlap you are small jointed.
• If the thumb and middle finger touch you are medium jointed.
• If the thumb and middle finger do not touch you are large jointed.

Fill in the poll. I'm curious.

Brian?

On my right wrist, my fingers can't touch but on the left they can.

Where does that put me?


Edit, forget that I can't on either wrist nowI try again.

Hanley

I've large wrists/small fingers!! Bout an inch gap between my thumb and middle finger.

brianthebard

large

If I squeeze to try and touch my thumb and finger I'm medium jointed, otherwise large. What exactly does this mean though boss?

BrianD3

medium

Mine overlap by about 1/2 inch. So I voted small jointed

But if a person had long or short fingers relative to the size of their wrist, would this not throw things off?

congress3

medium

What does it mean if your small jointed

Hanley

congress3 wrote: »

What does it mean if your small jointed

Means you're gonna look bigger with less muscle, tho that muscle will probably be harder to build than for someone with big joints.

Remmy

medium

small jointed.Combination of quite long fingers and smallish wrists.

RacoonQueen

large

brianthebard wrote: »

If I squeeze to try and touch my thumb and finger I'm medium jointed, otherwise large. What exactly does this mean though boss?

I've never heard it in the context of 'small jointed', 'medium jointed' and 'large jointed' it was down to somatotype when I read about it.

IIRC it was;
If the thumb and middle finger can overlap - ectomorph
If the thumb and middle finger touch - mesomorph
If the thumb and middle finger do not touch - endomorph

squod

large

This seems all fairly shonkey, if you asked me this in my early twenties I'm sure the results would have been different. At the minute I'm large jointed.
I've been lifting weights eleven or more years. Not that I'm mister universe, but I think age should be taken into consideration.

BossArky

There are no absolutes so no one should be getting worried.

As RacoonQueen mentioned the small/medium/large has a (weak?) correlation to somatype.

Apparently you are better off assessing your somatype from your appearance back in the day before you ever picked up a weight / ran / trained.

Before (2 years ago): I was ~70kg so that would suggest I was (and am?) an ectomorph.

Now: I'm 81kg and my fingers do not meet by about 1 to 1.5 inches. This would suggest I'm more towards one of the other somatypes (meso or endomorph).

I was interested to see if the likes of Hanley, kevpants, etc (i.e. powerlifters) are large jointed vs runners. It would be interesting to cross post this in the A/R/T forum and get feedback. Apparently* different somatypes may gravitate towards different sports.

* all pure speculation from what I've read

RacoonQueen

large

I'm more into the long distance running these days an I'm largely mesomorphic.

Anytime I'm not in full training or injured/coming back from injury I start hitting the gym again and fall in love with lifting again. If only I could do everything at once.

From people I know throught running I would say that a lot are ectomorphs but if you were to look at all 12,700 people who ran the DCM this year you'd probably get something completely different.

Woddle

medium

Also from the A/R/T forum and I'm an ectomorph

brianthebard

large

ectomorph
mesomorph
endomorph

Do you not think thats a load of bullcrap though?

RacoonQueen

large

brianthebard wrote: »

Do you not think thats a load of bullcrap though?

IMO it's about as accurate as BMI, relevant up to a certain point then it loses all meaning.

squod

large

RacoonQueen wrote: »

IMO it's about as accurate as BMI, relevant up to a certain point then it loses all meaning.

Sounds more like it.

OSiriS

medium

That test says I'm small jointed, but I suspect that it's more likely that I have big hands or long fingers.

metamorphosis

All my fingers and my thumb overlap ... well except for the pinky, that meets. EEK!!!!!

I have read so many pieces on body type and how you are supposed to eat and train to you bodytype i.e mesomorph, endo and ecto, i have come to this conclusion;

1. All the reads say the same thing.
2. imho - mostly BS.

Google

Google wrote:

Definitions of endomorph on the Web:
a heavy person with a soft and rounded body

Bastards.... Sounds like me alright

celestial

I'm large jointed.

This is pretty much a good guide to bodytypes - ecto, meso, endo - or small, medium, large. Putting it as simply as possible you've got 3 body types:

-skinny guy who has thin arms and never really gains any weight of any sort, kinda shrugs and says 'ah I'd love to build up a bit' while looking ruefully at his insubstantial arms now and again.

-slim but muscular guy who is the sporty athletic type, never really gets fat unless he lets himself go and who can build lots of muscle while still looking lean (these are rarer than you think)

-thick jointed, well-built guy who can well easily prove to be hiding a fat guy inside if he lets loose on all the pies for any length of time. Upside is he can build muscle like nobodies business.

King of Kings

i'm large -

RJC

celestial wrote: »

-skinny guy who has thin arms and never really gains any weight of any sort, kinda shrugs and says 'ah I'd love to build up a bit' while looking ruefully at his insubstantial arms now and again. Like Ryan Tubirdy or Jarvis Cocker

-slim but muscular guy who is the sporty athletic type, never really gets fat unless he lets himself go and who can build lots of muscle while still looking lean (these are rarer than you think) Standard male model type.

-thick jointed, well-built guy who can well easily prove to be hiding a fat guy inside if he lets loose on all the pies for any length of time. Upside is he can build muscle like nobodies business. More of us than we think

I'm from the running forum and fall into the meso group from the test although I am not by any beer goggle or soft lighting perspective a male model type.

RacoonQueen

large

RJC wrote: »

I'm from the running forum and fall into the meso group from the test although I am not by any beer goggle or soft lighting perspective a male model type.

It's not particularly what you look like though, it's more based around your natural body type. As a mesomorph you should be able to build muscle easily(compared to the other two), broad shoulders, narrow hips. If you don't look toned and chiseled you can still be a meso.

A good way to look at different body types is to look at your siblings, my sister and one of my brothers would be more ecto while me and my other brother would be more meso, I'd never be as 'skinny' as my sister can be unless I completely starved myself and suffered severe hypotrophy while for her to get as muscular as me she'd have to do a hell of a lot more work than I do.

kevpants

medium

BossArky wrote: »

I was interested to see if the likes of Hanley, kevpants, etc (i.e. powerlifters) are large jointed vs runners. It would be interesting to cross post this in the A/R/T forum and get feedback. Apparently* different somatypes may gravitate towards different sports.

* all pure speculation from what I've read

I'm well and truly small jointed. Thumb and middle finger overlap. And I don't have particularly long fingers!

Sure check out my little knees and calves in my deadlift miss vid. Poor me I'm so disadvantaged.

TBH anyone regardless of joints can squat double bodyweight, bench 1.5 body weight and deadlift 2.5 times it at the very least. You'd be stronger than 99% of people at that point.

Genetic limitations only kick in at the top end. Before that they're excuses.

amacachi

Small jointed according to that, doubt too many people who know me would guess that. :pac:

Jimmy Bottlehead

medium

Small jointed - damn my girly wrists!! Odd thing is my stupidly thick neck - 17.5" is far too big for my body size.

BrianD3

medium

Slightly off topic but here is Tom Black's webpage, he is not very big, has small hands and looks like he may have relatively small wrists. Yet he's a beast when it comes to grip and wrist strength.
http://www.bigsteel.iwarp.com/photo.html

(I love the photo of him with Slim Farman and also the photo where's he's wearing a shirt and tie while bending a steel bar in his mouth!)

RJC

RacoonQueen wrote: »

It's not particularly what you look like though, it's more based around your natural body type. As a mesomorph you should be able to build muscle easily(compared to the other two), broad shoulders, narrow hips. If you don't look toned and chiseled you can still be a meso.

A good way to look at different body types is to look at your siblings, my sister and one of my brothers would be more ecto while me and my other brother would be more meso, I'd never be as 'skinny' as my sister can be unless I completely starved myself and suffered severe hypotrophy while for her to get as muscular as me she'd have to do a hell of a lot more work than I do.

I'm tall and thin but I have wide hips so my shoulder hip ratio doesn't give inverted triangle of the meso shape. The running makes the upper body a bit skinny but muscles - where they are - are defined. Most extra body fat - if it were there would be on the torso.

Roper

I just tried it and I can get my thumb and little finger around my neck. Does that make me an eco-man or whatever?

It would be an interesting experiment if it actually meant anything.

cowzerp

it does not make sense as by that case i'd be large boned, im athletic built but the point is, i've small hands so my fingers dont get around my wrists, even though i've small wrists in comparison to the rest of my body!

so in my case it shows nothing.