Short vs Long Muscle Bellies

On the drawing above you see a short muscle belly from the biceps and triceps compared with long ones.

A short muscle belly means that the muscle attaches high on the tendon, meaning the tendons are somewhat long and the muscle is somewhat short. Take an easy example : your bicep. Say your muscle bellies are attached high on the tendon, which means far from the elbow. That tends to create a gap between your bicep muscle and your forearm as you can see in the graphic.

Some bodybuilders have a large gap between their forearm and where their bicep starts to protrude This is a good example of a short muscle belly. It is normally considered a disadvantage in bodybuilding because it’s very hard to build a lot of muscle around it and make it look ”full”. On the other hand shorter biceps (or other muscles for that matter) peak and protrude more easily. As a rule of thumb, if you can stick two or three fingers between your bicep and your forearm, chances are you are of this type and are at a disadvantage from a bodybuilding standpoint. Albert Beckles and Markus Ruhl are also good examples of this.

ARTHUR JONES (Nautilus) said over twenty-five years ago that most bodybuilders strongmen are not realistic in their goals. They want something that is beyond their genetic potential-namely great muscular size. In other words, their goal is simply not possible!

He went several steps further by saying that the major genetic factor behind great muscular size, especially in the arms, is extremely long muscle bellies in your biceps and triceps. And the length of your muscle bellies is 100 percent genetically determined. What you were born with is what you must live and die with.

Many of the bodybuilders especially Boyer Coe, Casey Viator, Sergio Oliva, Ed Robinson and Arnold have very long muscle bellies in their arms. It is no wonder that they have some of the biggest and best-shaped biceps and triceps in the world.

It is a known physiological fact that the longer a person's muscle, the greater the cross-sectional area and the overall volume of that muscle can become. Simple physiology reveals that for a muscle to be wide it has to be long. A short muscle could not be wide because its angle of pull would he so poor it would not be able to function efficiently. Thus, the body would not permit a short, wide muscle to exist.

How do you determine if you have long, average, or short muscle bellies in your upper arms?

The key factor is where your biceps and triceps muscles attach to the tendons that cross your elbow joints.

Evaluating Your Biceps Potential

let's begin with the biceps. Take off your shirt and bit a double-biceps pose in front of a mirror. look closely at the inside elbow area of both arms. Now, pronate (turn your hands away from your head) and supinate (turn your hands toward your head) your hands. Notice that when you supinate your hands, your biceps get more peaked. That's because the primary function of your biceps is supination of the hand.

Go back to the double-biceps pose with your hands fully supinated. The bend in your arms, or the angle between the bones in your upper arms and forearms should be 90 degrees. look at the gap between your contracted biceps and elbow. How wide is the gap?

Before you measure it, relax your arms for a few minutes and while you're relaxing, do the following. Take your right hand and place your fingers and thumb across the crook of your left elbow. You should be able to feel the large tendon of the biceps as it crosses the front of the elbow joint and inserts into the radius bone of the forearm. In fact, as you gently contract your left biceps, dig your

tips into the elbow gap and get a good feel of the cable-like tendon. Follow the tendon up the arm until you feel where it connects to your biceps. It's the distance between where your biceps meets the tendon and where the tendon crosses the elbow joint that you need to determine.

Hit the double-biceps pose once again. Make sure your hands are fully supinated and that the bend in your arms is 90 degrees. Have a friend measure with a ruler the distance between the inside of your elbow (look for the crease in the skin on the front side of your elbow) and the inside edge of your contracted biceps. By the way this distance will be the same distance before you ever started training and if you train for many years no matter how much muscle you pack on that distance will never move its genetical determined. What do the resulting figures mean? Although this is certainly not an exact science by any means, my experience leads me to make the following generalizations:

Biceps Potential for Building Mass

Distance Between Elbow and Edge of Contracted Biceps.

Biceps length Potential

½ “ or less long Great

½”-1” Above average Good

1”-1 ½” average

1-1/2” to 2” below average poor

2” or more short very minimal

The bodybuilders with the really massive arms all have 1/2inch or less distance be- tween their elbows and contracted biceps. In other words, in their biceps they have long muscle bellies, short tendons, and great potential.

Sergio Oliva, the man with one of the most massive muscular arms in the world, has biceps muscles that are so long there are no gaps between his elbows and contracted biceps. That's right- no gaps, Sergio's arms would actually measure larger if he could fully contract his biceps by bending his elbows more. Sergio is one of the very few people in the world who has muscles that actually limit his range of movement. But even so, there are thousands of men today who would gladly trade their biceps for Sergio's.

While no one questions the importance of well-developed biceps, the muscle that contributes the most to the mass of the upper arm is the triceps.

For competing bodybuilders it is very important that the judges see their full potential it’s all about stage presentation. That’s why bodybuilders vary their hand position. Here a comparison picture of Frank Zane that really mastered it. A bit higher a picture of Sergio Oliva and Albert Beckels.

Evaluating Your Triceps Potential

The length of the triceps, compared to the biceps, is harder to determine. The difficulty lies in the fact that the junction between the three beads of the triceps and their common tendon is more difficult to measure and evaluate.

The triceps-as the name implies-is composed of three beads: lateral, long, and medial. All three beads attach to a large flat tendon that runs across the back of the elbow and connects to the forearm bone.

Take off your shirt again and look in the mirror. Turn to your side. With your elbow straight and your arm by your side, contract your triceps. You should observe, if you are reasonably lean, a distinct horseshoe shape to your triceps. The lateral head of your triceps forms one side of the horseshoe, the medial head forms the other side, the long head is at the top, and the tendon occupies the flat space in the middle.

What I've observed over many years is that the men with the really massive triceps of a horseshoe shape to the back of their arms. The flat space in the middle of the horseshoe is partially covered by the unusual length of the long head at the top. And the lateral and medial beads on the sides resemble upside-down soft drink bottles. What's left of the tendon is about the size of a rounded-off-at-one-end credit card. Sergio Oliva, for example, has no horse-shoe shape at all to the back of his arms. Bill Pearl's triceps are much the same as Sergio's, as are the triceps of Ray and Mike Mentzer.

To determine your triceps potential, here's what to do. With your elbow straight and your arm by your side, contract your triceps. Have a friend measure the distance from the tip of your elbow to the top of the inside of the horseshoe. In other words, you are measuring the longest portion of the flat tendon.

Remember, the longer the tendon, the shorter the muscle. Or the shorter the

tendon, the longer the muscle. Here are my generalizations for estimating your triceps potential:

Triceps Potential for Building Mass

Distance Between Elbow Tip and Top of Inside of Horseshoe Triceps Length Potential

3" or less long great

3"-4" above average good

4"-6" average average

6"-7" below average poor

7"or more short very minimal

You can still have a massive triceps- even if you have a short, long head-if your lateral and medial beads are long and thick. The triceps chart, therefore, is not as accurate as the biceps table.

My advice is to use both the biceps and the triceps charts in a very general, non- definitive manner.

By now we know what our genetics are. But what can we do to improve our look. In this blogpost I talked about Biceps & Triceps, but you can have shorter or longer muscle bellies in other parts of your body. Notorious for bodybuilders are the calves, but also hamstrings lats and quads have different insertion points, also genetically determent , more on that in Part II.