As you may have gathered from previous posts, fitness is pretty important to me, and my current challenge is being able to do pull ups. I suck at them! In fact, sucking is a bit of an understatement since I can’t even do a single one of those exercises. This means that if I were to be hanging on the edge of a cliff, I couldn’t even save my own life. How pathetic is that????
I’m not a giant, but I’m on the tall and slim side with my 1.75cm in height and 55 kg weight. I have extremely skinny bones, and a strong person could probably snap my wrists in half with one hand.
This is me standing next to world champion Mackenzie Dern
I used to always complain about my upper body strength, cursing at my long, skinny spaghetti arms for not doing their job properly. No matter how much I workout, I do not look muscular and my biceps do not get any bigger. Upper body strength is paramount in BJJ if you want to become good at it, but it’s also very useful in general (think cliff situations!).
A few weeks ago, I’ve decided to remedy this shortcoming by buying a pull up bar for my house, the kind that you can mount on a door frame. I thought to myself: I will try this every day, until I can do at least one pull up. Turns out this shit is much harder than I thought!
As I grew increasingly frustrated with myself for failing, and witnessed my shorter training partners being able to pull themselves up several times in a row, I started analyzing the situation, and wondered whether their size (all other things being equal) had something to do with their success. So, I did some research about the role of height on strength.
Turns out size does matter (sorry guys!), and it’s simply a matter of physics.
Believe it or not, body types make a huge difference when it comes to working out, and tall people tend to have more difficulties doing body-weight exercises in general. These include push-ups and pull up exercises. There are several reasons for this.
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We have more mass to lift
Tall people have more mass to lift (think longer body, hence much more surface), and therefore the exercise becomes more difficult since we need to do extra work compared to a shorter person.
Going back to the pushup example, the longer you are, the more distance there is between your hands who are holding your weight, and your toes. Your entire body is up in the air and needs to be sustained by your core in order to avoid your hips sagging, and by your hands who will do the pushing up. Again, it’s all about physics, and the more distance there is between your toes and your hands, the harder it will be to keep the hips off the ground.
We have longer limbs which means, longer levers
When tall people perform a pushup for instance, they have to cover a longer distance from the floor up than a shorter person. Hence, the more distance we have to cover compared to someone with short arms, the harder the challenge to perform the exercise.
It’s the same with pull-ups. Our arms have to make a much longer movement (more distance between the bar and our elbow) to pull up our body. This makes the whole (damn) exercise much more difficult for us. This is because our levers are longer. If tall and skinny people want to be able to do pull ups, we have to work much harder than a shorter bulkier person in order to get there.
It’s not fair, is it?
OK, I won’t complain. I’m always the person being asked to get something from the top shelf, and if I wanted to, I could probably be good at basketball. When I take one step, others take 2 and I usually need to wait for my friends when we walk together.
On the other hand, my legs always get squished on the bus or on the airplane, and living in Latin America where most men are a head smaller than me, I have to look down on people a lot when I speak to them, which makes me uncomfortable (unless I want to intimidate).
How does this apply to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?
In BJJ there are similar disadvantages to being tall. Shorter people tend to have a speed advantage, are more flexible, fit in smaller spaces, and are better at performing explosive movements. Shorter people also leave less space in control positions meaning less chances to give up a good position, and may have better balance in general. Shorter people may also find it easier to escape positions.
Tall people have longer limbs, and therefore more to submit! We have a harder time hiding our arms to avoid arm locks, and unfortunately we also leave more space in positions like side-control or rear naked chokes. This is inevitable, but thankfully there are several techniques that work well for us lanky people.
BJJ Techniques for tall people
Some techniques work especially well for us, such Darce, Anaconda, or triangle chokes. While our smaller counterparts have a hard time wrapping their legs around us, we have no problem closing the guard around a bigger person, or getting a triangle position without much effort.
Spider guard and de la Riva guard are also easier for us, since we can wrap our legs around our opponent’s much easier. I personally HATE De la Riva. It’s probably because I don’t master it well, but also because I don’t see myself using something like that in a self defense context...So I focus on chokes and arm locks instead.
Having long arms also means that we have better reach (think grip fighting), and our long legs help us keep the distance with our opponent in open guard situations.
In conclusion, there are pros and cons for all body types, and the important takeaway is that you have to use the techniques that work the best for your stature.
Here are some tips I got on YouTube that I found helpful!
That being said, I won’t give up on those pull-ups and will eat lots of spinach to transform from Olive into Popeye.
Have you noticed any advantages or weaknesses due to your body type?
