Muscle Number - Ideal Body Composition Calculator
How much muscle and fat should you have?
What is your ideal body weight?
I’ve always wanted a great body. I read muscle magazines as a kid and started to mess with weights at around 12. My dad was coaching ARL (the old NRL) from the time I was born so I’ve spent my whole life around strength-trained men.
But what is a GREAT BODY?
This article answers that question and gives you the exact numbers you need to go get the body of your dreams. It'll also give you an idea of what has been achieved naturally (without steroids or similar) and what timelines it will likely to take to get there.
I don't know how to get the calculations for the muscle number into a blog post yet so at the moment the only way you can get it is through the app.
It seems that the century has produced adults with body image issues or at least a high awareness of the physical self.
To put it bluntly: you’re either lacking self-awareness or you’re living “untouched” in the Amazon. I’ve been to over 40 countries and lived among many tribes. Everywhere I’ve been, body image matters.
If you’re on RealMOVEMENTProject.om you probably love movement, strength, athleticism or something similar. You might be a pro-athlete, a free-spirited “movement lover” or a barbell lover. I’ve been all the above and still love all the above.
I currently work with the Sydney Roosters and have been in strength and conditioning most of my non-backpacking adult life.
I almost always felt tiny when working in NRL. The average weight for an NRL athlete is 100kg. Elite players are generally slightly heavier than non-elite. Generally, the State Of Origin, Australia, NZ and England teams are heavier than NRL teams. Brad Fittler, Andrew Johns, Sonny Bill Williams, Sam Burgess, Greg Inglis, Paul Gallen... what they have in common other being top line internationals? They were heavy for their positions, especially for their height.
Ever wonder about the trend towards players with Pacific Island genetics in the NRL and NFL? There is more to it than this, but part of the picture is that they are simply bigger people.
So what’s this got to do with you?
Well, we can help you get your ideal body composition...
But first, tell me your goals…
WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO DO TO DETERMINE YOUR IDEAL BODY COMPOSITION.
If you’re here you probably love it all like me.
Mobility, skill, force, and endurance.
It’s great to be able to lift but I also want to have great hand-eye coordination. It’s great to balance handstands but I still want to be able to run. A developed human should be able to back bridge but they should also be snatching over bodyweight and deadlifting close to 3 times bodyweight.
At least this is my dream. My vision for the physical body I’ve been blessed with and the thousands of people I have the chance to support on their journey.
Specialisation for the sake of competition is great but generalisation for the sake of CREATING THE IMPOSSIBLE is incomparably more worthy of a lifetimes work.
We’ve come to a time where holistic, integrated knowledge is king. We can no longer look at the world through the eye of a straw (as my teachers Charles Poliquin and Ido Portal often say) and expect to see all the beauty we are capable of.
Elon Musk's partner speaks about being GREAT at TWO things. Joe Rogan has become great at least 3. Comedy, UFC announcing and podcasting. As a result, he’s an underground influencer and one of my great inspirations. He shows us all how to be the change without relying on politics or traditional media.
Again, what’s this got to do with you?
If you’ve read all of the above you’re starting to get a good general picture.
What is the body that will best serve you and humanity in 2018 and beyond?
Now, most people will jump straight to a weight on a scale...
Big mistake. 80kg is not 80kg. 100kg is not 100kg.
What you’re really thinking about is how much muscle you want?
You may have a general idea but I bet you don't the metrics at hand to really be able to get your body composition goals into achievable metrics.
In fact, most people don't. It's hard.
So that’s why we build a calculator capable of doing it for you.
We built it right into the RealYou App. Yes, that's right, we have a body composition calculator.
WTF???
I know. You thought RealMOVEMENT and Keegan Smith were all about pretty stuff like handstands and pirouettes. “Functional movement” doesn’t talk about body composition BUT!!!
You’ve been lied to. You’re not going to do the stuff that Klokov, Ido, Charles Poliquin and Rich (Froning) are doing without looking SOMETHING LIKE them!
A PROBLEM DEFINED IS A PROBLEM HALF SOLVED!
The ingredients we need to determine your ideal stats are:
1. Mass (kg)
2. Height (m, not cm)
This gives us BMI or a density and is also used for your Muscle Number. Everyone has a certain density and all sports have an ideal or average density.
3. Fat Mass ( I recommend SKULPT or Biosignature because of their ability to be retested regularly but any method will do as long as you stick to it and try to measure under the same circumstances - a time of day, hydration, training etc. In the morning before training is generally the best way to do (where the day before was a training day with no sauna), that is assuming you train at least 4 days a week.
4. Your Ideal Build.
Not understanding body composition cost me on the platform.
Dmitri Klokov
Dmitri Klokov was preparing for a bodybuilding competition when I went to his 3-day workshop with Charles Poliquin in 2014. (I promised myself I would snatch 100kg before the event or I wouldn’t go, I did but haven’t again since YET!).
In getting himself ready for the competition he learned a lot about food and body composition. Things that could have made a big difference in his career as a weightlifter. Hear what he had to say about his learnings here
Now!
What do you want??
This is the biggest question that runs across all areas of life and very few people fully grasp.
Better Still.
What can you make the decision to have?
99% of you probably don’t have the necessary information to make a good call on this.
How can I be so sure? Because even after University, dozens of workshops with world leading coaches and working in pro sports for a decade I didn’t have BODY COMPOSITION NUMBERS dialed in to this level of detail.
WHEN BIGGER AND LEANER IS BETTER.
For barbell sports (absolute strength) and most relative strength sports, Bigger and Leaner Is Better. Charles Poliquin brought bodybuilding and eastern block methods (communism was a whole different thing that you might want to research if you haven’t gone deep on it) to elite sport in the 80’s and 90’s and his athletes dominated.
WHEN MORE MASS LOSES.
Sprinting over 30m, marathon running, hanging for time, handstand holds for time, soccer, field hockey etc.
Have I lost the plot having relative strength in the "mass wins" and hockey and soccer in the second list?
No. Because most of these guys ARE under-muscled and are often FAT SKINNY on too much sugar and booze. Adding 5-10kg to the frames of most of these guys will allow them to get to the ball first, hold the ball and power the ball better than before. RealMOVEMENT Coach and dual Olympian Glenn Turner sites speed and power from doing more strength work as one of the reasons he made it to the top in hockey. He was heavier than most guys.
The weights of NFL players is a testament to that. Even in positions where winning the collision is not the determining factor for inclusion, the guys are BIGGER than soccer and hockey players.
So The Million Dollar Question Becomes…
CAN THEY REPEAT EFFORTS AT THAT WEIGHT?
AFL, Ice Hockey, Rugby League and even CrossFit (more recently) have seen massive increases in average weights over the last 15-20 years.
Why? Because bigger athletes can make bigger plays.
But can they repeat?
The trend to bigger shows us that QUALITY PLAYS are what players are selected for.
As long as they can meet the standards for repeat efforts.
BACK TO THE CALCULATOR.
You want to be BIGGER.
You want to be LEANER.
You still want to be able to RUN.
So What’s Ideal?
Recently I ran a 4-day camp in Canberra, as I often say post-event “the best one yet.” Mitch Pike was the host of the event and one of the early students of RealMOVEMENT mentorship program.
Mitch decided in his teens he was going to look like Sonny Bill Williams. He did the work until he became 112kg at 8% body fat.
A man mountain who’s deadlifted over 300kg.
In Canberra, we ran. On day 1 and day 3.
Day 3 we had 2-time Olympian and world champion hockey player, Glenn Turner host us at his gym inside the home of hockey in Canberra. We ran a beep test and then around 50 90m lengths of the hockey field. (My best beep when I was around 78kg was 15.10 on the beep. In Canberra I was around 80kg and ran a 12 :( ) Mitch looks like Sonny and at the hockey field, Mitch RAN LIKE SONNY!
Mitch’s BMI is 29+ which is slightly exaggerated because of his height. On the heart foundation website this makes him heavily overweight. Thing is we was 9% on the skulpt. Just a couple of days ago he ran a 12 second 100m at 113kg.
What might be a better number is Mitch’s Muscle Number. 110.6 is way above what many have said is possible without steroids!
My favourite physique, old-time physical culturist Eugen Sandow’s statistics put him at a Muscle Number of 104.7 based on my estimations of his lean mass and his reported bodyweight of 83.5-88kg (although I did see him quoted at 92kg from one source!)
So What's A Good Muscle Number For You?
Soccer Player Build Is Around The 80-85.
NRL Players Average Around 97.
Natural Bodybuilders Really Want To Be Like Mitch 105-110. Most will never get there.
CrossFit Athletes should be thinking 100-105 based on the trends of the last few years.
The average College American Football Div 1 Player has a Muscle Number of 94.8 based on a recent study. 25% of players scored over 100 MN while one of the linemen scored a massive 128 MN! (mostly guys 23-21 years old). Initial research is showing similar numbers in the NRL (although players are older and have had more time to add mass post-puberty).
The question then is, How Do You Wear Your Muscle Number?
How much lean mass you have is one thing... How much of that is visible to the world is another thing completely.
If you want to maximise your muscle number you will need to add fat with it. Linemen, worlds strongest man competitors, open category powerlifting and weightlifting competitors are the strongest people in the world and they are fat.
Most people would rather be lean than maximise their muscle number at the cost of a huge body fat %.
Maximally lean at the cost of muscle isn't always the answer (think Brad Pit in fight club or taking that a step further, Into The Wild Skinny)
The less muscle you have the more you need to be SUPER lean to show definition.
To have 5% body fat at 60kg allows you to carry 3kg of fat mass.
At 80kg to be 5% you can carry 4kg of fat.
At 112kg like Mitch you can be carrying 6kg of fat and you’re still at 5%.
So what I’m saying is that as your Muscle Number goes up, you can carry more fat and still look good.
WHAT BODY FAT % SHOULD YOU BE AIMING FOR?
I’ll cover this in more detail in a separate piece but around 10% is a great place for males.
Over 12% is excessive for males who don’t need to be heavier on the scales to compete.
For collision sports like Rugby and NFL MASS MATTERS. You don’t want to be going into those battles with the Fight Club physique no matter how good you think it looks. You’re going to get crushed.
Your true Maximal Muscle Number will only be reached when your body is defending itself against excess calories. Under this challenge, the body will add muscle TOGETHER with fat.
Have you noticed the calves obese people build?!
An NFL lineman has a muscle growth stimulus just getting out of the car or walking up a hill because EVERYTHING they do in life is heavy. The ultimate in high-frequency training is weighing 180kg.
Bottom line. These guys need to be looking at scale weight AND lean mass. Scale weight is very important for collision sports. Still, getting to the very top will be easier with less fat and more muscle for a given weight.
For those not in collision sports, 10-12% is a good place to set your upper limit.
Check out this image from BuiltLean.Com to get an idea of what % body fats look like.
What is the lowest body fat level can be consistently maintained? Not held for 3 days to get a photo or jump under the lights on stage. We’ll talk about that in another blog.
Once we have your Muscle Number and your Body Fat % we can then get to the details.
HOW MUCH FAT DO YOU NEED TO ADD OR LOSE?
HOW MUCH MUSCLE DO YOU NEED TO GAIN?
The majority of people looking at themselves in the mirror to start 2018 are thinking, “this is not what I want to be looking at when I start 2019." This is the reality.
To change, we must change. To design a process we need a finishing point.
Mitch Pike decided he wanted to look like Sonny Bill. He knew his numbers. He made it happen.
This article and the RealYou App help you to get down to the exact detail of what needs to happen.
Then it’s a simple yes / no scenario.
Was today a win, was this week a net win, was this year a win?
When you know your numbers we start to run protocols in training, food, and lifestyle to make shift happen. We can also accurately, objectively assess progress.
We get to answer the quesetions like:
Do the numbers get better when I eat more or fewer carbs?
Get more sleep?
Increase strength?
Do more cardio?
When we know the numbers we have the power to say YES the process is working or NO... Let’s run a new experiment.
As an example, here are my numbers:
3 weeks ago I was:
80.5kg
8% (skulpt)
90 Muscle Number
6.4kg fat mass
74kg lean mass
Today I’m:
83kg
9%
Muscle Number - 92
7.5kg fat mass
75.5kg lean mass
My Goal For 2018:
86.5kg
9.3%
Muscle Number - 96
8kg fat mass
78.5kg lean mass
Lifetime Goal