A body built for sin

So this past weekend one of the people that I was climbing with came out with a startling revelation: I’m an ectoplasm. Or an ectomorph. It’s ecto-something but to be honest I wasn’t listening too closely. The general thrust of her statement had something to do with the three general body types – pear shaped, muscular and ectoplasm. Apparently I’m the last, which further discussion defined as someone who has the ability to work out and become toned, rather then “built”.

I have long suspected something of this nature to be true as my athletic endeavors seem to have no correlation whatsoever with weight gain or muscle mass. In fact in the past 7 years the only time that I gained any significant weight (okay it was only 10lbs, but for me that’s significant as it landed me at my highest weight ever) was the winter of 2003 when my friends and I decided drinking was the perfect cross-training activity to get us in shape for the spring season. Didn’t work too well for riding, and to add insult to injury I was back to my old fighting weight within weeks of getting back on the bike. Cynics would say that it was my choice of activities that was the limiting factor here – after all biking is not really a sport renowned for turning out body builders. The thing is, my brief flirtation with indoor climbing during the winter of 2002 and the few short affairs that I had with gyms/weight lifting have yielded similar results. I get toned – fairly quickly actually – but that’s it.

It’s nice to finally have a definitive, science-based answer to this issue. Yes it means that I might finally be forced to give up my dream of playing quarterback on the high-school football team, but even so it’s as if a giant weight has been lifted of my shoulders (I mean in addition to the weight that would come with being forced to learn the rules of football or actually start caring about the game). I’m not skinny, I’m ectoplastic!