Ideal physique

[BJE]

This Marcuse model looks to bulky to me. While he has a great physique, he is so big that his head looks too small for his body. He lacks ideal proportions in my view.

IMG_6571.JPG

[PugLover41]

I started working out in my early twenties and still going strong. I do credit high school PE classes with delaying my interest in exercise. Why is high school PE so awful? Even jocks hate it.

[Thom]

To me it was a decision I made at about fourteen. By that age I noticed how physically disgusting some men I knew were and vowed I would never look like that. We had health and PE in the sixties and seventies, in high school it was only mandatory in ninth and tenth grades but I took it all four years, in fact as a senior it was a two hour class. Pretty heavy.
I credit my swim team tryouts at age eleven and the eventual love of the sport that gave me a great teen swimmer bod which really lasted though my forties!

I was just wondering in what section of the country you lived in high school. In Massachusetts, where I went to high school and college in the sixties and seventies, neither school had a pool. (Very few high schools in Mass. had swimming pools at that time.) I learned to swim in a lake. They'd built a pier in the shape of a pool at the lake, but it was all rather crude. My college, a few years after I graduated, finally built a new athletic complex with a well-designed collegiate length pool. It has indoor tennis, squash/racquetball courts, and fitness equipment. When they rebuilt my high school, they still didn't install a pool. In high school, PE was required through our senior year. It was generally a waste of time.

Anyway, I think it was in my twenties that I saw a picture of someone my age who was a collegiate swimmer with a lean, defined body. I've kept that image in my mind all my life. It's been a reference point to keep myself thin and at about the same weight I was in college, 145.

[Thom]

I started working out in my early twenties and still going strong. I do credit high school PE classes with delaying my interest in exercise. Why is high school PE so awful? Even jocks hate it.

That was my experience. I don't have kids, but If I did, I'd find some way to send them to a private school with a decent athletic program, unless public school has improved since I was a kid.

When I was in junior high, because the school had a good athletic director. they started a program along the lines of La Sierra High in California. But it fizzled. High school PE was a disaster.

Here's a short clip from the sixties about La Sierra High. There's a longer clip posted by someone above. It's like something out of an alternate universe. No board shorts back then either, except the ones worn by surfers.

The La Sierra program, and Kennedy's call to fitness, faded away. It didn't last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yQth3QEXtA

[PugLover41]

Getting back to the topic at hand (as my other one is busy), I'd say Robert Conrad when he was in his prime. Maybe not as impressive today, but he had a natural, clean look. Plus he is rather short as I am!

[BJE]

His pants have swallowed his physique.

[BJE]

Comparing the above two photos the model in the first photo had his waistband about a foot lower than in the second picture.

We've dropped our pants in public a long way since the fifties.

[BJE]

One of the reasons I remove my pubic hair is so that I can wear my speedo with the waistband just above the base of my penis without having pubic hair showing.

[Thom]

Getting back to the topic at hand (as my other one is busy), I'd say Robert Conrad when he was in his prime. Maybe not as impressive today, but he had a natural, clean look. Plus he is rather short as I am!

Conrad had what was an ideal physique for leading actors in his era. Today, I think leading role actors are under a lot more pressure to develop their bodies physically. It makes me think of Jake Gyllenhaal and the time he must have spent in training for Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia

Jake Persia.jpg (76.54 KiB) Viewed 7296 times

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[speedobillyuk]

This would be my idea of ideal

richjenkinsblack3cm2.jpg

A classic body and a classic brief.

[Norfcountryboy]

This would be my idea of idealrichjenkinsblack3cm2.jpgA classic body and a classic brief.

Yeah he is a really good example of a nicely balanced muscular/ lean physique. As it happens Rich Jenkins is one of my ideal male pinups but who is/ was he?

[speedobillyuk]

He was a model back in the noughties. He moved on, but I heard somewhere that he was hounded in his new job by guys "stalking" him as a result of his modelling career.

[ChicagoDan]

This is my ideal physique [][a5ttachment=0]tumblr_owuqdcPv911uizhoio1_500.jpg[/attachment][/img]

[Speedoaddict]

I would love a body like that. Instead I look like the blob. Lol.

[Thom]

Hmmm, if I could choose a body type, I'd want to look like this.
Previously posted by Scottie in the Skimpy Suit Lovers thread.

Body type

swimmer.jpg (56.4 KiB) Viewed 7059 times

[swimmy]

That's it, Thom. Pictured above is a young man that's been on the swim team for ten years or so. Through puberty and into the development years that body was formed in the pool. The best swimmers tend to be on the tall side, up to 6'4 even, with a long trunk. This guy certainly has the typical pecs of a swimmer! If you saw him dressed you'd say he's pretty skinny, in a tee shirt you'd notice he's got superb upper body strength, he probably weighs in a barely 150 pounds but would actually shame a typical 200 pounder in an arm wrestling match, believe it or not.

[Thom]

That's it, Thom. Pictured above is a young man that's been on the swim team for ten years or so. Through puberty and into the development years that body was formed in the pool. The best swimmers tend to be on the tall side, up to 6'4 even, with a long trunk. This guy certainly has the typical pecs of a swimmer! .....

Well said, Swimmy.. He's a dedicated swimmer. And, interestingly, Phelps height is 6' 4." The NY Times had a wonderful article on why his body was born to swim. I'll see if I can find it. I recall his arms were exceptionally long relative to his height. He also had very flexible ankles.

As you observe, the swimmer in the picture has lean, very efficient muscles.

[Thom]

The best swimmers tend to be on the tall side, up to 6'4 even, with a long trunk.

Hey Swimmy. Here's the NYT article on Phelps. It includes a discussion of his physiology. It seems to link without my subscriber log-in. It's from August 8, 2004 (yikes, time flies), and titled "Built to Swim" by Michael Sokolove.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/magaz ... -swim.html

Thom

[rozelle]

that IS the ideal physique Thom! I would really love to have a body like that too. that body is so banging that wearing anything other than a speedo would be considered a crime.

[Thom]

that IS the ideal physique Thom! I would really love to have a body like that too. that body is so banging that wearing anything other than a speedo would be considered a crime.

Rozelle! You have an awesome body.!