Theres's 'visible' and VISIBLE.
There's huge genetic variation absolutely. I can take a decent dump and see a vague outline. To see all 6 with a tidy line in between, it's a year of running and eating lettuce.
Footballers without abs
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
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Theres's 'visible' and VISIBLE.
There's huge genetic variation absolutely. I can take a decent dump and see a vague outline. To see all 6 with a tidy line in between, it's a year of running and eating lettuce.
It takes targeted work to make your abs bigger but definition is created by losing weight and thus lowering your bodyfat percentage. You can't target weight loss in a particular area.
This is generally true, but that threshold is nowhere near 0% for anybody. The highest I've seen is about 15% and the lowest I've seen is about 8%.
Finally, a thread I get get stuck into.
Wonder how much of our 99 team were ripped ? dont expect being ripped as a football to make a massive difference if honest.
This is a rather naive thread. The ESPN body issues started a positive trend in moving perception of what a body should look like away from your Instagram models to how it develops as an athlete, unique to his or her sport and own genetic build.
This idea that a footballer should have a model like physique is way off mark. Most models would attest to being terrible at sports. It's also unfair to yourselves - abs visibility change thru the course of the day with what you drink, even your sleep schedule. Like...dramatically different.
This idea that a footballer should have a model like physique is way off mark. Most models would attest to being terrible at sports. It's also unfair to yourselves - abs visibility change thru the course of the day with what you drink, even your sleep schedule. Like...dramatically different.
Here's a pic from when he was still playing for Everton (he's the guy on the left).
Their left or our left?
By the way, I'm positive that Bale and Ronaldo are on PEDS. Muscle builders.
Their physiques are just so damn vascular!
Their physiques are just so damn vascular!
Never heard of that. Makes... interesting... viewing.
Some great examples of portrait photography tbf.
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/body/espn-magazine-body-issue
By the way, I'm positive that Bale and Ronaldo are on PEDS. Muscle builders.
Their physiques are just so damn vascular!
Be interesting to see a before/after shot of Bale comparing his physique in the UK to how he looks once he ended up in the hands of those "specialised" Spanish physicians.
Nani last year at the EURO was still pretty ripped as well.
TBH I wouldn't look into it that much. For some body structure doesn't highlight the abs that much yet they are pretty fit.
TBH I wouldn't look into it that much. For some body structure doesn't highlight the abs that much yet they are pretty fit.
How can a guy have a bald head yet be hairier than a chimp at the same time?
Ah so now he's fat and doesn't wax his body. The debate in here is great
. What next his toe nails are too long or his teeth not white enough.Rooney is just unfit and should probably lose 10 pounds.
The best player in the world
The best player in the world
Ah so now he's fat and doesn't wax his body. The debate in here is great
To be fair squeezing large talons into football boots can't be a picnic. Get those clippers out Wayne.
This is better contrast. 40 years old Seedorf.
Jesus, in his prime his abs must have had abs.
That's not necessarily true. The bolded statement in particular has nothing to do with this discussion. Whether models have the natural ability or not is irrelevant, they would likely be terrible at sports because they either don't have the ability or they don't work on cardiovascular fitness that much. There isn't anything stopping somebody from having a models physique and operating at peak cardiovascular health.
At the end of the day, those with a well built physique will have advantages over those without. Those who have developed their slow twitch muscle fibres for endurance and fast twitch fibres for powerful bursts when sprinting will have an advantage over those that don't, In the past, the level of athleticism hasn't been particularly great and that's why footballers would get pissed and eat pies/snort coke before playing a Premier League game. These days however it's cutthroat and athletes are doing whatever they can to get to the absolute top so that they can stand out from their peers and this does include being in the best condition possible and it's a simple fact that the less weight you carry, the less taxing on your system it's going to be when playing an explosive sport that requires endurance, power and peak fitness.
It's correct to say that somebody with Rooney's physique is not necessarily unfit, he could have Godly levels of cardiovascular fitness in spite of the weight he is carrying, but it's absolutely correct to say that if he did drop a considerable amount of body fat and built a physique that gave him more power, more explosive movement etc that he would be even fitter than he is now. That's not even up for debate. For an athlete it comes down to whether you're happy to stay at your current performance or whether you want to strive to be better. There is obviously a cut off such as bodybuilder levels of physiques where it becomes detrimental to the performance/attributes required by a sport like football, but simply being lean or having some form of physique doesn't come close to that. That's why clubs are investing millions in sports science centres and in training, and it's not to make sure their players look good as good as models on Instagram.
Definitely. Even Ronnie has improved his physique since making the switch.
To be honest, most elite athletes are involved in doping. It's nearly impossible to detect and nobody wants to blow the lid on such lucrative industries. They should just sanction them as being legal for everyone to use, so that it levels the playing field for the honest individuals who aren't involved.
Barcelona, Real and quite a few Serie A teams were definitely taking part in it during the 90's and early 00's.
Not that it makes you a better "footballer" per se, you still need the intelligence and technical ability to go with it. Ronaldo and Messi do. But it can certainly improve recovery time, help limit injuries and aid reaction time. So it would be hugely beneficial to a footballer who has play 55 odd games a season.
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Google Vince Wilfork's body issue photos, they're awesome.
Thank you for linking to that!
What I'm getting at is I think the core question in this thread stems from misunderstanding. Certainly with my circle and community I see a distinct shift in being aesthetically fit versus athletic. I don't want to comment on that bc I have strong divergent opinions, but it lends to thinking that being the latter requires the former. Or that if you are not the former, perfect form then you're doing something wrong.
Yeah just a simple conflation of Health and Fitness and Vanity culture with sports athleticism. Spending time on your physique is very often time spent not honing skills that will improve you as a sportsman. It's surely better to do a hundred close control drills than a hundred crunches if you want to be a footballer. I played Judo to a half decent level and the muscled guys and sculpted gym bods that would show up were almost always terrible; poor balance and very little power. The little dumpy guys who had spent years mastering technique would chew them up.
I remember how fat David Walliams was when he swam the channel. Few people are ever that fit.
I remember how fat David Walliams was when he swam the channel. Few people are ever that fit.
Again, I think you're here with the best intentions but there's a lot to this that isn't true. For starters, most people only need to spend 45-90 minutes per day working on their physique. There is plenty of time available to spend honing your skills, it is not a case of one or the other which people keep coming into this thread inferring. If those muscled guys and sculpted gym bods spent years mastering their technique then they wouldn't get chewed up, and if the little dumpy guy spent years on his physique as well as his technique, then he wouldn't be little and dumpy and he'd perform better. Professional athletes by default spend years practising their technique, nobody is suggesting that they abandon this and drop all their current training and only spend an hour a day in the gym working on their body - that would be ridiculous but it's a simple fact that if you take two Ronaldo's, but give one of them Rooney's weight then he's going to perform much worse than he currently does. He will be slower for starters, his balance would suffer and his explosive movement would tire him out a lot faster. You shouldn't be picking 'physique' or 'technique' but working on both if you want to be the best that you can be. I can't believe that anybody here would argue that if you took someone with peak cardiovascular health and cloned them but made one in better shape than the other one that they wouldn't perform better. You or I may not have the time in the day to do that, but for athletes it's entirely possible. Why is it a case of either or? Like I said above, for athletes it's a choice. Do you want to be the best you possibly can be, with every advantage that you can get such as Ronaldo or are you happy with your current level of performance and see no reason to get better, such as Rooney. Clearly Rooney is happy with where he's at. There's nothing wrong with that, but to suggest that improving his physique while keeping his cardiovascular training wouldn't benefit him would be a strange argument to try to make.
By the way, I'm positive that Bale and Ronaldo are on PEDS. Muscle builders.
Their physiques are just so damn vascular!
Are they real? They look a bit shopped to me.
Is that cord coming out of schweinsteigers shorts or stomach. Looks like some sort of rip cord. Maybe when he pulls it his abs inflate.
Abs dont make a footballer but good cardiovascular fitness, strength and balance are key to being in the right physical shape for a footballer.
People with good cardiovascular fitness tend to have low levels of body fat.
People who are strong tend to have larger muscles.
People good balance tend to have good core strength.
In the modern era athletes are expected to look really ripped so we can see abs, big arms and legs, and still be fast and nimble.
Rooney might not be unfit, but he doesn't look after his body in the same way other pros at the top level do. It reflects in his performance.
People with good cardiovascular fitness tend to have low levels of body fat.
People who are strong tend to have larger muscles.
People good balance tend to have good core strength.
In the modern era athletes are expected to look really ripped so we can see abs, big arms and legs, and still be fast and nimble.
Rooney might not be unfit, but he doesn't look after his body in the same way other pros at the top level do. It reflects in his performance.
Guy is a legendThey're real. You can see them in videos.
This, coupled with that Rooney's the one on the left comment
you're on a roll today Pogue. Love it.
Those are some nice abs
An important point in the visual comparison stuff - there's a couple of milk bottle bodies posted on the first page that would look much more defined with more tan and shading. Perhaps the better technical thread title would have been 'footballers with body fat above 10% (or whatever)'.
Aye, this is why it's hard to sympathise with Rooney. He has had all the resource, time and financial motivation to lose a few pounds and it's obviously not helped the evident ageing of his physical attributes.
He's clearly just happy with his performance and sees no reason to improve where as you see someone like Ronaldo who feels the need to be in peak performance all the time. I don't feel sorry for him because he's clearly happy as he is, it's not like he's moping about it but it's the notion from posters in here that if he was arsed and if he did improve his physique it wouldn't give him any advantage which is just bizarre. That's not saying he's unfit, it's just making the very valid point that if he wanted to, he could be fitter and he could perform better.
That photo does have a bit of a 'child catcher' vibe about it.
He is an absolute freak of nature. His calfs too, they are like 2 trees
Brute.
I loved him on the BBC's coverage of the South Africa World Cup. When people were bitching about the state of the tournament ball and he curled it into the top corner in his loafers.
Check out picks of "Big Sam" while he was at Bolton. 20 minute detour to get round him!
And despite bale being a thorough breed he stays injured for half a season
Yeah, agree with this. Good post. You hear/read comments like that a lot whenever physique discussed. As though you can somehow train to gain muscles without getting any stronger. Which is, of course, simply not true (on a side note, I've never been convinced that muscle put on through hypertrophy training is functionally different to what you gain from training power, but that's a different discussion!).
Fitness models may be completely uncoordinated, have terrible balance and little or no CV conditioning but, at the very least, they will be considerably stronger than your average man on the street. I also think that there's a good chance that all of the above abilities will actually be decent in anyone with a visibly athletic physique. The pursuit of fitness tends to appeal to people who are naturally athletic because their bodies will respond better to training (which gives them positive feedback and encourages them to keep at it) and a natural athlete will tend to be good at most sports they turn their hand to.
As far as footballers are concerned, they have enough time to work on their ball skills and work on strength and conditioning. I mean, football clubs have entire departments dedicated to precisely that. Which is why 19 out of every 20 footballers (99 out of 100?) who takes his shirt off at the end of a match reveals a sculpted physique. It's the 1 in 20 I find interesting, though. Have they been dealt an absolutely terrible hand with their genetics? Do they somehow find a way to push themselves less hard than everyone around them during the S&C training? Or do they have a disgraceful diet? Presumably a combination of all of the above?
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That's the thing, fitness models are not completely uncoordinated, have terrible balance or no conditioning because they spent time working on their physique, they only have those attributes because they don't spend time working on their cardiovascular health. They could very easily do both, they just don't have a reason to be able to run like a footballer when their career is posing for photos. People trying to use that argument are presenting a faulty argument. You can just as easily do both if you have the time. If the argument were actually one or the other then for sure you'd pick the technique, but it isn't.
Rooney could have a mix of all of it, but there's no disgraceful gene that keeps you at ridiculous levels of bodyfat, so people blaming genetics often have no idea what genetics actually looks like when quantified and use it as an excuse for being lazy. Genetics don't cause you to not obey the laws of thermodynamics, after all. You might have to compensate your calorie intake based on genetics but we're not talking something significant. I'd wager that it's a mix of not really caring about his calorie intake because he's happy with the performance that he puts in on the pitch and doesn't see any need to push himself further than the level he trains at right now. Even though he could be better, he chooses not to be because he's happy with where he is. Most likely because his best days are behind him, he was guaranteed a starting spot under all the previous managers so he didn't need to compete with anybody else, noone was pushing him to be better, now he sits on the bench and earns a ridiculous amount of money a week for doing so. He's content. You see it when he gets criticised in interviews after playing like shite he defends himself saying he thought he did well. He just seems to be happy at the level he's at, which is a different debate altogether whether we agree with him on that but it seems clear that he's content where he is. Maybe the club are happy with that level too and as such don't push him to improve, maybe we as fans just expect a higher level of him than he or the club does which is a believable option.
You've got to wonder about those players who aren't ripped. I mean their whole job and lifestyle is geared towards getting them into shape. They get paid to do it. Literally all they have to do is fit in with those around them and they'll end up in great shape. It would make them better players, earn them more money from sponsors, make them look better on the beach and in somebody like Rooney's case put an end to all the fat boy jibes. Yet for some reason they still don't do it. I mean Rooney is vain enough to get hair transplants but can't stay in decent shape despite everything in his professional life pushing him towards fitness. I don't get it
Good point! That's a strange one alright.
Very true, I have abs but my cardio and overall fitness is not good besides my jumping