What's Your Growth Potential?

There are two primary factors that determine your muscular potential - in other words, how big you can grow your muscles and how they look when fully developed. The first is your DNA, the genes you inherit from your parents; the other is how you challenge and train your muscles through exercise.

We cover exercise throughout this site, but it also can be helpful to know what sorts of genetic limits nature places on muscle growth and development.

There are two pieces that make up your genetic muscle puzzle:

The composition of your muscles

When you are born, the number of total muscle fibers in your body is fixed. You can grow your muscle fibers through exercise, but there is no way to add new muscle fibers. Likewise, you cannot change the percentage of slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers in your body. That's why some people have a predisposition toward endurance activities and others, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, are made for power sports.

The shape of your muscles

An often overlooked aspect of bodybuilding is muscle shape - whether your muscles a naturally inclined to appear long and lean or bulky and round. That's why there are guys who can do dumbbell curls and straight bar curls and every other type of curls until the cows come home and still never get that beautifully rounded look to their biceps.

Every body can be improved through exercise, but it's also important to remember that every body is different. Even if you work out like a pro athlete, there is no guarantee that you will look like one. What really matters is that you will look like the best possible version of yourself.