Is Being Too Muscular Bad For Health? 

Thanks guys for the info! I know the GCS was a joke. I bought some of your older programs a few years ago, but for some reason there's no record of me buying them.

Jeez the dedication of this man. Great content

@@mlpreissif you email us at support@barbellmedicine.com, I’m betting we can look it up!

Sounds like a useful concept honestly

As someone who is currently trying to max out my 1RMs and is pushing 28 on his BMI, can you talk a bit more to these benefits? Thank you.

@@LawrenceSteps For me, the biggest hurdle was recovery through sleeping (not diet). I believe had I focused more on this, it would've been less of a concern, as well as attempted to slow my progressive weight gain, as I was too hastey in acquiring that size and strength

@@LawrenceSteps additionally, I believe the folks at BarMed and the lifter Matt Vena have good programs for maximizing 1RM movements without bloating your body in an attempt achieve this.

BMI does a VERY GOOD job estimated body fat percentage. Compared to things like DXA, air plethysmography (BOD POD), and others, BMI kicks a**. The correlation between BMI and DXA is 0.92, where 1.00 is a perfect score. And yes, many athletes will carry too much fat mass. Check out our podcast on metabolic syndrome in athletes.

@@BarbellMedicine What about skinny-fats. According to BMI they are in healthy range but their fat % is over 25-30. I am obese according to BMI but I am very muscular and have wide hip and shoulder bone structure. But my fat% is under 20. BMI sucks for lifters.

umm no, clearly there are many many bodybuilders who put horrendous loads on their body by having so much muscle tissue, you arent supposed to be 260lb at 5'10....

@@2011hwalker You wont get that muscular without anabolics, insulin, hgh etc. now im talking about someone drug free.

@@2011hwalker He implied "without steroids". If you look at natural bodybuilding contests, you see that there is not a snowball's chance in hell to reach 260lb lean at 5'10 without taking ped's

@@NicolaiTschenow7530 We don't know if the amount of muscle gainned by a decade of hipertrophy training + hipertrophy focused diet could be excessive. It needs to be stablished, since the "naturals cant gain much muscle" is also a myth.

In your videos ypu are far from 10-12%

Addendum: I think people who spend 4 hours at the gym like the whole powerlifter meme who bring their chairs and PS5s and bakery to workout and camp between sets might definitely be super jacked and strong while lacking health promoting cardio adaptations. This just occurred to me

The docs be jacked

Derek is really big

Austin took a training hiatus I think while Jordan did some bodybuilding emphasis for awhile. Not sure if that made a difference.

@@caleb3909 over a whole decade of training, probably not 🙂

He probably doesn't train them directly

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Yes, do some cardio. That's what he meant when he said cardio is a dose response relationship, more is usually better. With strength being way above average is not really going to improve your health outcomes over being slightly above average.

I don't know if you need to back off the lifting, but I would definitely recommend doing enough conditioning work to meet/exceed the current physical activity guidelines. We have a multi-part podcast series on conditioning starting at episode 236.

Maybe direct the conversation to strength and its benefits and find her videos of not-too-much-jacked strong people who lift massive weights.

Bear in mind that by "too jacket" she means gaining muscle in places we are suposed to have small (arms, shoulders waist). Men should realize that women want to have that 1990s playmate body (very skinny and small all over, volume just on breasts and some hips). Thus, that 1inch gain of size for us IS huge, because we want zero, we wanna get smaller, not bigger. There are easier and more delicious ways to get bigger hehehe, exercising for it seems stupid considering our goals.

​@@stefanisilva2493 muscle is denser than fat. Women can gain weight and yet be smaller and more "toned", and glute/leg training has really come into vogue. Upper body work also shapes a more graceful silhouette

@@InvisibleHotdog Muscle is denser, but actually not by much - those famous fat vs muscle size pictures are misleading. Many diferent physical activities promote this tonned look, and the most important part of it is a very low body fat content. Lifting will increase volume, and the only place women like an increase is on glutes. Upper female body is all about being thin, with svelte arms - again, more result of low fat then muscle hipertrophy. Glute training is the only exception.

You're assuming your LBM would stay the same were you to lose your excess body fat, which it wouldn't. Besides, BMI is best used as a statistical tool for groups, not so much for individuals. It really doesn't matter if losing 90 lb of excess fat is going to statistically put you in the healthy range according to BMI / some other indicator or not. Getting healthy is a continuous process, not a discrete one. Now cutting out excess calories, eating a balanced diet comprised mostly of unprocessed food, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, being consistent... Those are actionable cues which are going to - day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year -, make you healthyER. Whether your BMI ends up being 24 or 28 down the line is kind of irrelevant. Now, to actually answer your question, some altered versions of the BMI have been proposed to account for either extreme of the height spectrum (e.g. using 2.5 instead of 2 as the exponent for height in the formula), but none will magically make 250 lb be your healthiest bodyweight. And again, that's besides the point. The process is the solution.

Better concentrate on the process, watch the pounds disappear, applaud yourself along the way (you deserve it!) and eventually you will see when you get too skinny. You can also measure skin folds if you want to be precise. If you are an exceptionally muscular outlier, there's no other way anyway. BMI is pretty crappy anyway, even for us normal people. You don't need tables.

There has been a push for new BMI formulas targeting obese individuals, we have some in Nutrition specific for obese patients. The newest one came out of Oxford University in 2022.

It is highly probable (99% certainty for most individuals) that a BMI of 35+ is carrying too much body fat, which increases risk of adiposity based chronic disease. If they have that BMI and are not carrying too much body fat, poly pharmacy is a concern. If neither of those things are present, while exceedingly rare, it’s possible that the individual is at no increased risk. In any situation, the “strain” on the heart is not the mechanism.

Because of high protein/calorie intake?

Sinclair is a quack.

@@BarbellMedicine what dont you like? He’s right about low protein should be life extending since it activates insulin and downstream igf-1 which increases cellular mutation and cellular death and cancer risk.

@@Gurusson-qr5np no, he's not, as when that hypothesis has been tested in humans it shows absolutely nothing. He's also still on sirtuins, which have been rebutted. This is in additional to continued promotion of misinformation in the longevity space. Nearly every academic in that and related fields also consider his information garbage. Outcomes > mechanisms. Sinclair sucks.

@@BarbellMedicine Ad hominem, you can do better.

We would not agree with these claims based on existing evidence, particularly with the caveats listed in this video. The dietary claim you reflected is also more complicated, as when correcting for known confounders - particularly processed meat and total dietary fiber, total animal protein does not reliably correlate to health trajectory any longer. Finally, the claim regarding that > 90 minutes of RT/wk reduces life- and/or health-span has not been shown in any prospective or retrospective trial. Subsequent analysis has shown that, as described here, there's a threshold response to RT-driven improvements in MSK health, where more strength or LBM do not necessarily provide additional benefit, though they also do not appear to be uniquely harmful either and much of the data in the original M/A has significant confounders making the analysis of limited utility. For example, a more recent study published in JAMA found that those achieving much higher exercise volumes than recommended in the guidelines had the lowest mortality risk, reductions in risk from various types of cancers, and so on. Additionally, recent prospective trial data shows that those improving in strength the most- which we know is tied to total training volume- had the greatest improvements in health metrics such as resting blood pressure and blood sugar control. We would not recommend limiting RT to only 90 minutes per week, as this is unlikely to meet that threshold for generating the maximum amount of RT-induced MSK adaptations for health. We would also not recommend telling people to limit their RT based on the M/A you're referring to. Favoring a diet rich in plant-based foods is something we can definitely get behind, but animal protein can also be part of a health-promoting dietary pattern.

@@BarbellMedicine Shailendra P, Baldock KL, Li LSK, Bennie JA, Boyle T. Resistance Training and Mortality Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Momma H, Kawakami R, Honda T, Sawada SS. Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. If I post the IDs the comment gets removed by RU-vid. Check out those meta-analyses. I've been looking for a second opinion on them.

@@BarbellMedicine Are you able to point to the jama meta-analysis you're referring to? Can't find it based on the info you gave me.

This could possibly be it. Although it was published in the BMJ, not JAMA pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31406017/@@limitisillusion7

@@limitisillusion7yes, we are aware of those papers and the limitations, actual meanings,etc., which are reflected in the previous comment. I am very comfortable with my comment as it is. The JAMA paper’s PMID is 37548973