Male Waist-to-Hip Ratio - what is optimal?? How to measure?? Can we influence bones for the better??

[BigShoes]

@BigShoes how about this, you try narrowing your hips, I'll try building my core. Let's check back in a year or so and see whose progress is more impactful. Science at its best :)

To be clear, when I said "I highly doubt either of us will have much success with either endeavour." I meant in terms of fixing the above issue (if you even have it, I don't know), not in terms of training progress overall.

You can certainly build a very strong core in a year's worth of training - it's a very worth goal that I have no doubt you can achieve.

 

[liam183]

To be clear, when I said "I highly doubt either of us will have much success with either endeavour." I meant in terms of fixing the above issue (if you even have it, I don't know), not in terms of training progress overall.

You can certainly build a very strong core in a year's worth of training - it's a very worth goal that I have no doubt you can achieve.

Post Your Pictures and Introduce Yourself Check out this guy's transformation. Super estrogenic hourglass body to chad in only a few years of lifting. Obviously, he still has wide hips, but they are much better hidden thanks to his muscular development. Not all hope is lost

 

[liam183]

Here's another thing to consider. Bones grow when under stress, so perhaps sitting too often causes wider hips. I do think hormones play into it for sure, but I'm not sure how much of a change you can make past puberty or early 20s at the latest.

 

[liam183]

Is Your Waist Properly Proportioned - David P. Willoughby Not trying to beat a dead horse, but here's an interesting article I dug up as well. According to this, my waist should be just a hair over 30", very similar to the Steve Reeves recommendation of 30.9". Currently I'm sitting at 28" flexed

 

[BigShoes]

Post Your Pictures and Introduce Yourself Check out this guy's transformation. Super estrogenic hourglass body to chad in only a few years of lifting. Obviously, he still has wide hips, but they are much better hidden thanks to his muscular development. Not all hope is lost

Ok that actually is an awesome, AWESOME transformation in waist-to-hip ratio (and general physique) ..... I am pretty dumb-founded. This is very encouraging, and affirms that change is certainly possible - thank you very much for this.

It truly seems to me though that: whilst the gentleman has obviously added a considerable level of muscle, his rib cage (not just muscles) and *possibly* also pelvis has changed for the better. Certainly, his waist-to-hip ratio has SIGNIFICANTLY improved:

Just in drawing those lines - that is absolutely wild...

BEFORE:
- red line drawn down from the widest part of the oblique muscle shows significant additional hip bone and glute medius mass outside of the oblique
- yellow line drawn vertically down from the narrowest part of the waist shows a lot of oblique, a lot of hip bone, and a lot of side glute to the outside - I.e. the waist and rib cage is far slimmer than the pelvis

AFTER (I literally had to use narrower lines to stop them from overlapping - that is the extent of the change - amazing - note, the gentleman is slightly leaning his torso off kilter, so the lines aren't drawn directly vertical):
- red line down from the outer most portion of the obliques shows daylight on the left side of the picture - an indicator of a narrower pelvis (OR widened waist). The red line on the right has a bit of mass outside, but this is perfectly normal, and much reduced relative to the before.
- yellow line drawn down shows SIGNIFICANTLY less mass to the outside of it compared to the before - indicating that waist to hip ratio has improved significantly.

Amazing. This is exactly what I would like to achieve in myself (one of a million goals I have hahaha). This is wild...

This baffles me though. I am genuinely unsure if:
(1) his rib cage has actually genuinely expanded to meet the pelvis, or if his pelvis has been narrowed. (the former being more likely than the latter). OR IF
(2) actually, neither has changed. But instead, the additional muscle mass in the sternum (upper oblique mass and such) has actually widened his waist appearance to meet closer to the pelvis

I am not hating, or accusing, in any way. But it would be very interesting to know if the gentleman had outside help with some kind of exogenous testosterone in his training. NOT that I think this level of muscle is impossible naturally, but he does have a far more androgenic shape to him - it genuinely does appear to me that his rib cage has widened to meet his hips (or vice versa), not just an increase in muscle. As we know, additional testosterone will masculinize a man further (provided his system can support it, and provided aromatase is controlled for). So it could be that a very careful set of cycles has changed him for the better (not something I would ever be confident enough to mess with myself). This has given me an idea to check before and after shots of admitted / open steroid users, to see if there is a similar change.

Things that we know:
(1) the pelvis will certainly NOT narrow through weightlifting alone. However, the rib cage MAY be expandable... personally, I am not convinced that it is possible, because the bones are the bones - additional muscle around your ribs does not give you bigger ribs. Still, I will read into this further - who am I to argue with Arnie (or @Herbie !)
(2) Ribs and pelvis bones ARE influenced by hormones. Obviously, women grow their wider pelvis and narrower rib cage, and men grow their (hopefully) wider rib cage and narrower pelvis due to hormonal expression.

Speculation / Open Questions:
(1) Can you increase muscle size in your "upper side abs" to the extent that they can meaningfully expand the waist? Personally, I would be surprised if this was possible, but the above photographs suggests that it may be (I say *may*, because again: I am not sure if his skeleton has changed AS WELL AS his hypertrophy).
(2) Still with the question: Can we meaningfully change the waist and hips themselves through achieving a significant and on-going change to our hormonal profile? I am certainly leaning towards THEORETICALLY yes. Although it's hard to bank on this happening to ourselves in reality just by "eat clean, train hard".

Perhaps a dual-pronged approach:
(1) appropriate training
(2) tank estrogen

However, with training - I still think we need to be careful if we train the outer oblique: not to end up with a massive lower oblique, and little upper oblique, we could just make the problem worse. E.g. if I partook in core training and caused the muscle sections below in red get bigger, but the muscle section in green did not grow, I would probably make my hips look even more feminine. But the red and green muscles are technically the same muscle (external obliques) so I'm confused...

Going further into the waist expansion theory: In the above photo in the middle, I have expanded the narrowest point of my waist ever-so-slightly outwards to meet my obliques (at least, closer to) relative to the original photo on the right. Apologies, I had to do this in MS Paint through stretching - I don't have photoshop, so it looks a bit garbage. Still, the difference is subtle, but meaningful. Whilst there is still a lot of mass below my obliques that the guy in the OP and the guy you just shared don't seem to have (in his after photo at least), it still looks drastically better with a BROADER waist. This is contrary to the thing that bodybuilders say about the benefits of a narrow waist. The waist being broader to meet the lower oblique actually give the torso effect that @WombOfFuturity 's statue posts were showing (despite the V lines and pelvis being unchanged). Definitely a desirable effect.

Wild.....

Some other pics of that guy's progress:

Post Your Pictures and Introduce Yourself

The most popular bodybuilding message boards!

forum.bodybuilding.com

Even on his first bulk and cut, you can see a distinct change in waist-to-hip ratio, mainly through an expansion in the waist ...

Interesting.

P.S. @liam183 - please do 'beat that dead horse'. Any evidence you find or theories you have are gold. Cheers.

 

[Diokine]

tight psoas

find a copy of Ida Rolf's book on structural integration

 

[BigShoes]

tight psoas

find a copy of Ida Rolf's book on structural integration

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll see if I can find a copy.

I'm definitely interested to learn how a tight psoas could cause the phenomena observed above. I don't see how it would change the pelvis bone at the outermost parts, and certainly not the rib cage. But I will check out your recommendation.

As an aside, I have done a lot of work on posture over the past 2 years and have come to the understand that "tight psoas" is a symptom of a wider postural problem - not a cause i.e. the psoas is being relied upon to do the work that other muscles should be doing but aren't.

Both the 'Postural Restoration Institute' and GOATA (whilst having profoundly different ideas about the shape of the spine i.e. S vs J) talk about the importance of proper breathing, hamstring engagement and back chain dominance as the true "cure" for a tight psoas, and that stretches (e.g. lunge stretches) are certainly not the solution.

 

[Diokine]

Try taking your photo with your feet pointed outward, externally rotating your hip.

 

[BigShoes]

@Diokine - I'm not ready to take a photo but I think I see what you mean: as you externally rotate the femur, it does tend to bring "in" the extra mass (glute medius I suppose) from sticking out to the side. But it certainly does not make my trunk look like this:

The pelvis underlying his obliques is certainly narrower than mine (relative to the waist). Look at the angle from the narrowest part of my waist out to my hip vs. his. His is much more vertical, mine is much more diagonal. He wins hands down.

I believe his are a product of less estrogen compared to mine, or rather, mine are a product of more estrogen relative to the optimal / healthy male profile.

 

[liam183]

@BigShoes check out golden era bookworm on YouTube. He has a great series on ribcage expansion. Tight tan slacks of dezso ban (the blogger website I sent with the waist proportion ratios) has countless articles on it as well. Definitely possible. As it seems, the bones themselves won't change after about 23 in most people. BUT, your cartilage in your ribcage can expand regardless of age.

 

[BigShoes]

@liam183 - I really like that guy a lot, but he is FULL of 'bro' theories that don't match the reality.

I have always disagreed with him (and most others) about the advent of steroids in bodybuilding. I believe that the silver era 40s/50s guys (Steve Reeves etc.) *were* on anabolic steroids - obviously way less advanced than the late 50s/60s, but still early forms of testosterone. Props to him for addressing the release of John Grimek's letters in the early 1950s that seem to confirm steroid use. That must have destroyed his world view ... I know it did mine when I first deduced that Reeves was not fully natural.

That said, I really appreciate the heads up around the rib cage expansion. I will look into it in earnest. I suppose, again, the things to focus on are:
(1) upper oblique work (however you even isolate that)
(2) rib cage expansion (if it's possible)
(3) reliably and sustainably reduce estrogen and keep it low (something we should all be aiming to do anyway). How to actually do that, I don't know... I've been trying various things for a decade. But I do know now that I have likely been hypothyroid for a very long time (probably since forever, or certainly since my teen years). And hypothyroid people tend to have less-than-optimal liver function, so the liver is less able to excrete estrogen on a daily basis. If this back-log of undealt-with estrogen continues day-in and day-out for years, you end up with looking like me - baby face, mild gyno, narrow rib cage, wide hips. This is likely nothing new veteran forum members or members that have studied the literature, but hey gimme a break I'm still learning hahaha.

I'm sure that training can certainly help a little... but again:

Hormones

 

[Diokine]

You honestly just need to eat more and build your back. Your lats should be touching where you are worried about.

 

[liam183]

@Diokine

You honestly just need to eat more and build your back. Your lats should be touching where you are worried about.

This helps but doesn't solve the underlying issue. My lats connect at my hips, which helps to hide my bad hip/waist ratio, but my hips still appear far too wide in relation to my hips

 

[BigShoes]

@Diokine are you for real?? I know I've posted a lot of torsos and it may be confusing who's who, but you're saying that the black and white torso in post #69 (giggity), me, just needs to do a whole bunch more back training? I appreciate your kind words of encouragement, but (as we say here in England): come off it mate

I'm 175lbs lean in that photo. That's like the weight of a light-heavyweight boxer or a middleweight UFC fighter.

I was literally doing 8-rep muscle-up sets around the time that photo was taken, and could weighted chin-up 30kg (c. 65lbs) for 5 reps (I can't do that anymore because I've put on some body fat and do my workouts at home now so have lost some strength). I don't want to doxx myself, so I won't share the video evidence with my face. But this is a 'still' from the video where I did exactly that:

I don't say this to pat myself on the back (ha!), after all I can't even do that anymore. I'm just trying to further demonstrate that the problem is categorically NOTHING to do with a lack of muscle mass. It is bones and hormones.

No one could seriously look at the two torsos in post #71 and say that the reason for the discrepancies in the waist-to-hip ratio are because the man on the left hasn't trained his lats, or his obliques, or his serratus, or whatever. I keep using the man on the right in post #71 because he is a great example of excellent androgenic (as opposed to estrogenic) bone structure, DESPITE his very slim frame. Here's another example:

Hugo Parisi, a Brazilian Olympic diver - You're welcome ladies.

He's in great shape - more toned than the man on the right in #71, but still slim. As in my premise in the OP (I don't even have to draw the lines anymore):
(1) narrowest part of the waist is in-line with the pelvis below the obliques - it might even be wider, like the high-muscularity swimmer man in the OP.
(2) strong definition of the adonis belt - as a result of the narrow pelvis and lower (but still not crazy-low) body fat.
(3) reasonable upper body mass (pecs, shoulders, lats), but *NOT* excessive. He is clearly a very strong man, but no one would mistake him for a bodybuilder. He did not get these proportions by "adding mass to his back" or "building his lats" or "adding 20lbs to his frame".
(4) side note - also notice that he has literally zero signs of gyno - not even a raisin size.

Hormones are the reason. Highly androgenic, very low estrogen and prolactin levels. Almost certainly has very good thyroid function -> optimal metabolism -> excellent liver function for excreting estrogen -> good gut health (low endotoxin, low serotonin and low estrogen). This man is healthy internally and hormonally, hence the outward expression of being highly attractive to women.

No amount of (a) side crunches for obliques, (b) rib expansion exercises or (c) pull up / row marathons is going to make my torso look as good as that. Not even close. Again, I don't say this to put myself down, I'm just hammering home:

Elevated Estrogen in men and boys leads to a more androgyn-ized / more feminine / less masculine bone structure. Writing it out like that - it shouldn't even be controversial. I'm actually quite surprised how much this has been disputed in this thread (despite people's well-meaning intentions for saving my feelings, which I appreciate the kindness of). This is exactly what I meant when I said, quote:

"ego-saving platitudes that gloss over the fact that we are being bombarded with estrogenic influences left, right and centre. If it wasn't for this ego-saving strategy en masse, I feel the general public would have been in uproar about things a long time ago. Plastics, xenoestrogens, birth control in the water supply, estrogenic compounds in foods - all of this would have stopped if man could put aside his ego and recognize that he is not as he should be."

 

[Diokine]

I just like to stir the pot

 

[YourUniverse]

tight psoas

find a copy of Ida Rolf's book on structural integration

Thank you for this lead

 

[Herbie]

@BigShoes the ribs dont grow, it's the cartilage (yellow) which expands.