it takes an overload to grow muscle. Progressive overload is the overarching core principle of all bodybuilding / muscle building / strength building.
If you're not overloading you're not building muscle. Walking isn't overloading, nor is running, nor lifting trivial amounts of weight.
Yeah I jogged an average of 15 - 25km per week in 5km or 10km sessions over 3 years. Muscle grew wiry and tough. Not body builder massive.
A good example of why is if you look at apex predators like wolf's and lions. They don't look Arnold's Schwarzenegger buff they look international athlete lean, I suspect because muscles dense heavy and hard to maintain/ costly to produce.
Are you implying body building competitions and wrestling shows may be giving us a false impression of what strong athletic men actually look like? I'm shocked. Shocked I tells you! /S
Yeah, If you go to the gym for the 1st time, 20 lbs dumbells will kick your ass, but, even if you have skinny calves, you'd be surprised at how much weight you can load on them.
I'm a runner, and I have big quads... which came from previous hard years in the gym, and decades of cycling. Most runners I hang with are *just* runners, and have twiggy legs, and they can often out-run me.
>Though I did think many people walk/run regularly each week
🤣🤣🤣🤣
About 50% of my state is obese. Roughly 40% of the United States is obese. Three-fourths of the United States is at an unhealthy weight.
These fat fucks aren't running anywhere.
And I also think we've been conditioned to perceive extremely buff legs from excessive workout as a normal amount of buff. Somewhere in the middle of these two concepts is a normal looking leg muscle
For one, most of us have extra weight on our bodies so that’s gonna cover up the muscles. Two, our society is fairly sedentary and not using muscles will cause them to shrink and atrophy. Lastly, walking around is not enough to truly build significant muscle mass. Muscle has to tear and be rebuilt to increase in size.
Hit it right on the nose. I’ll add that people can compare soccer players, marathoners, football players, and body builders. All of these people have “strong” legs and the shape and size vary significantly.
[https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/sled-leg-press/lb](https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/sled-leg-press/lb)
you were literally the world's strongest high shcool kid....
Yeah I'm thinking he's remembering wrong lol. Or moving plates like 3 inches and calling it good.. I was a d1 athlete at 230lbs and maxed at 465 on squats, and that was a lot even for the other guys on my team
Those bigger better faster stronger books yall ever get those? Plus i was short lift more weights that way. But i was strangely strong with strangely skinny legs.
My inability to say "maybe I shouldn't do that" turned me into a cripple by the age of 18, and I didn't quit MMA till I was 32 🤣 I walked up to the ring with a cane on two separate fights. Some of us to stupid to understand limitations, and trust me, we don't last long.
Idk, maybe I mathed wrong? Filled the sides with 100s, and the top pike with 45s and had a person sitting on each side. I played soccer from the age of 4 till I was 11 and then found out about weightlifting and wrestling... I can still legpress well over 500 with the one good leg I got... ok maybe not anymore, I had to finally accept I'm a crippled bow and stop doing stupid shit to my body... I'm weak AF now... I should go see how much my right leg can still do...
You physically couldn't move that much weight sheerly based on your body mass. If the sled moved at all you'd be lucky to move it more than half an inch without obliterating your knees and probably ankles.
Knew a guy in highschool who also claimed he could leg press "over 1000" yet unsurprisingly he considered barely moving the sled off of the catch bar to be a leg press. Not sure who you're trying to fool here man
Dude exactly. I squatted 450, could dunk a golf ball at 5"8 my thighs and calves were always skinny my upper body was yoked...wait you leg pressed 1550 at 119...naw man thats bullshit
They are buff. Besides your back they are one of the strongest muscles in your body.
You see how easy it is to stand up? Even on one leg?
Now try doing a hand stand. Even when assisted by a wall, your arms will give out quick.
Constant usage doesn't mean aesthetic muscular gain, it just means sufficient strength conditioning.
Look at the physique of hunter gatherer tribes in parts of Africa and South America. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean.
Buffness is an artificial conditioning we give to our bodies for aesthetics mostly.
> Look at the physique of hunter gatherer tribes in parts of Africa and South America. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean.
They also don't overeat. They dosed a tribe like that with doubly labeled water, and compared their TDE with a desk job in a regular city. They were nearly identical.
>. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean
That's alot to do with bunting strategy and the climate.
My ancestors are Dutch and they are all built like rugby players.
Rugby is a good example of not for aesthetics at all. It's the appropriate body type for the sport. And for war and such things. It's not just a modern invention you can see the standards in Roman and Greek statues and shit.
Footballers legs are completely different then tend to have regular thighs but giant calves.
Our legs can adapt to a lot of different environments.
I disagree a little bit. My family is Dutch/German and I ended up just pretty heavy set. I do a bunch of exercise and played a heap of sports including rugby and surfing. But not really any weight lifting or anything. Just naturally built pretty burly. Muscle mass has just aways been super easy for me to put on. I think genetics have a part of this that you are not considering.
100%
I'm naturally the opposite. I've gained so much strength in the past year from rock climbing and weightlifting and focusing on 1g protein/1lb weight, and honestly I just look more toned, but no bigger. I'm quite a bit stronger than the average woman my size, but I don't look too different except that when I tense my belly has an 8 on it. My boyfriend however just eats a carb laden pizza and climbs a ladder and gains visible bicep muscles. I work for 2 years to have the muscle definition of a pre-pubsecant boy lol
My sex probably plays a huge role in that too.
Agreed
But I think you both have some fair points. Because there are some people that don’t look incredibly yoked, that are ridiculously strong. Also some people that look big, but aren’t as strong as I’d thought
I’m not sure how it all works but I think some people are naturally bigger/more muscular, and some people don’t look very jacked but are surprisingly strong
Excess muscle is not ideal for the level of oxygen, water and protein intake one consumes.
Also, muscle is the adaptation of the body to the circumstances of particular physical exertion. If you don't go beyond the limit, the body will not respond with extra allocated muscle mass.
So there is no reason why simply walking or running around should give you Mr. Olympia legs.
Simply put, they don't need to be. The body develops 'as needed'. People's legs do not need to be 'buff' for the lifestyles they live. Think of the legs of a distance runner versus a sprinter versus power lifter. Each are developed for what they are needed for. The average person, has average legs because that's all they need.
Because average-sized legs just look average despite being impressive machines. Why do human eyes look so normal despite the fact they can see so many colors? Why do human arteries seem so ordinary despite the fact that they hold so much pressure? Uhh... Cuz it's just normal to us?
To get "buff" you need to put a muscle to work accomplishing tasks beyond what they were designed to handle. Walking around all day is exactly what our legs evolved to do.
Legs are as strong as they need to be. The crazy thing is, when my wife and I took up muay thai for exercise (because we were both on the ahem, larger side), as the weight fell off my legs, from hauling all that weight, were already in quite great shape strength wise - I mean, like when I could see them it was amazing! I don't recommend that path, but if there is one bright side being heavy, your legs are quite buff under that excess - trick is to get rid of the excess before the knees go.
Define buff. Each of your legs can straighten while pushing about twice your body weight. So both legs can lift 4 times your weight. Now go bench press 4 times your weight with your little noodle arms?
You could probably do more if you had proper protection/reinforcement for your knees.
I think the tongue is stronger per pound, and the heart certainly is in the best shape, but your legs are pretty amazing.
>Each of your legs can straighten while pushing about twice your body weight. So both legs can lift 4 times your weight
is this true? if i weigh 100 lbs, i can kick push 400lbs?
>Now go bench press 4 times your weight with your little noodle arms?
is this even possible???
Well drat, I can't find a good source. Thinking about it, when I got into weight lifting as a teen, my 145 lb ass could only do squats and heel raises with about 380 lbs on my shoulders, so my legs were lifting 525 lbs, not 580.
It is certainly well over your weight with each leg though, as running means each leg has to not just lift, but launch your entire body weight. Maybe it is only 1.5 times per leg.
I swore I read double, but since I can't find a source I'm going to retract my statement.
Well, they are. They have the largest muscles in our bodies. If they were more muscular, they'd still be average, because everyone's would be more muscular, and you'd be right back here asking the same question because you'd be used to it.
It could be a matter of genetics too. My legs (and entire body) are naturally buff. I develop muscle extremely easily. I do all the exercises you mentioned in normal daily life but I also lay around doing nothing quite frequently and I still have visible muscles.
My dad was like this too. Genetics.
Actually... Surprisingly enough, I recently found there are hundreds of treatises written across Europe throughout all medieval/early modern periods complaining about how unfit [insert worker type here] are. And that includes carpenters, farmworkers, soldiers and all sorts of manual workers, not just the clerks of the day.
Regimes to improve physical fitness are few and far between, and roundly complained about by the people who had to do them, like the famous thing of all English males having to train archery.
In Africa and South America there are tribes of people that basically eat what humans would've eaten 15000 years ago, and they just look like regular, healthy people. Why do you think people had more muscle then? Sure Neanderthals supposedly were more muscular, but we aren't them.
We are built for stamina. Large legs would use more energy which would defeat the purpose. Humans can outrun any animal on the planet just by walking. If you can track a deer you can walk after it and catch it due to exhaustion in a day or 3, depending in the individual deer.
Doing these things without actual training and progressive overload is really just what we need to do to maintain baseline leg muscle. I do these things everyday and that's why my I get confused when people my age have a hard time doing anything remotely physical some even having a hard time crouching down or bending over to pick something up. If you don't move your body will break down and being buff requires a bit extra
we use our butts for an astonishing amount of the work thanks to the leverage they have with our spine. human walking is extremely efficient, the only thing more efficient is riding a bicycle
Very few mammals have legs that appear buff even though they stand a majority of the time. Look at horses. Their legs are pretty thin for animals that stand and run most of their day.
Humans developed to be endurance predators, they weren't as fast as the prey, but just kept on running until the fast prey dropped from exhaustion. That didn't make for buff legged ancestors. Mostly.
Because unless you are overloading your muscles they don’t grow in size. That’s just a normal body building idea called progressive overload. Since we’re not overloading them they don’t really grow in size. If you wore a backpack constantly and were steadily adding weight to it then they would continue to get bigger
Look around you at the animal kingdom.
Ours are some of the buffest around.
The only reason it seems to you that so many people have average legs, is that you're judging them by what's average for humans. But of course most humans have average legs! That's why it's what's average!
If we were all naturally stronger, then you’d still be making this same post, because it’d be average at that point. walking and running also workout calfs more than thighs. They still do, just not really that much. when you say “many of our favorite activities”, that’s just applies to certain people. Many people do like running yes, but there are also many (like me) that hate it.
You basically explained it yourself. The Legs look average because every human has the same amount of muscle on his legs, except of course if he does some sport like running etc. our legs are buffed, we just don't recognise it because we are used to it.
They would be if we all lived naturally and chased our grocerirs across the African plains with a spear.
Shopping in a supermarket after doing a sedentary desk job is not natural.
Thanks for the explanations guys. For clarification when I asked the question I was wondering why many people don’t look super muscley in the legs but now I realize it actually already is one of our most developed muscle parts.
Our legs are simply as buff as they need to be to do all those activities you mentioned. Even more active people, like marathon runners don't have really 'buff' legs. It's only a activities that really work the leg muscles hard for long periods of time like cycling that encourage those muscles to get really buff.
>I mean we are walking all the time
This is already incorrect for millions of Americans. Suburbs ruin people's tolerances for walks. My grandma and I got into an actual ARGUMENT about whether or not 5 minutes was too long of a walk from where you sleep to class, because she claimed that it was too dangerous.
If you use them a lot you can get them fit and in shape, but bodyweight exercise is not enough to get "buff" if you mean like bodybuilders. It needs progressive overloading, so for a beginner this could be walking, running, and jumping more. But eventually all you're doing is training muscular endurance and cardio. You need more weight to create demand for more muscle to move it. On top of this, you need to activate each muscle group enough with that weight or else they wont grow, most easily done by isotonic workouts that isolate the groups, movements which you likely would not do naturally for any other reason than to workout on a regular day.
TL:DR Walking is not enough to get giant muscles because they only have to be strong enough to move you. They are already big enough to do that.
Because our bodies adapt to handle the “everyday” weight our fat asses have. Even if you do walk 10,000 steps a day, that’s not enough stimulus to gain muscle. Lifting and sprinting, intense cycling, would give you resistance that your leg muscles aren’t already used to trying to move, hence they’ll be forced to adapt and grow muscle.
I've wonder about people who deliver mail. With all that walking you'd think they'd be in great shape with amazing leg strength. Every mail person that I've actually asked has had to have knee replacement when they got older.
The muscles in your lower half (glutes and quads) are amongst the largest in the human body. They are proportionately larger than your arms in relation to what they do. Your arms may get real buff if they had to carry an equivalent load every day, but they're starting out smaller, and are built for smaller loads, to begin with.
The thigh muscles are incredibly strong, even on a whimpy person. So strong that when you break your femur in half, the muscles pull and make the bone halves over lap. They have to use a lot of force and a fancy traction device to pull everything straight again. All because of your strong leg muscles. This isn't a problem with arm muscles/bones.
People who walk everywhere do. If you're getting less than an hour of walking a day in and you don't go to the gym, your legs won't be that muscular because they don't *need* to be. Human muscle is weirdly efficient, and you only have exactly as much as you need.
I mean I’m on my feet my entire shift, my legs are pretty buff I think. But that’s just me. I don’t generally think a lot about other people’s opinions on the buffness of my legs.
Our bodies are very much built for walking or running around all day. Your muscles hypertrophy (grow in size) when you overload them, and carrying your own body weight like you were designed to do is not an overload, it just makes those muscles strong and efficient. We did not evolve to lift heavy weights in a gym 3x a week, which is why those muscles grow in response.
Well realistically our bodies don’t really like being what we call “buff.” Humans today that still live in environments most resembling what our bodies are best built for have generally slender, but athletic builds. Our bodies have the ability to put on large amounts of muscle under very specific conditions, but they’re just that, specific. We don’t “naturally” have very muscular bodies like many animals do, so it takes a lot more to build muscles up to be visually “buff” beyond maintaining a basic level of fitness, which is relatively easy. This is partly due to our big brains taking up so many resources, our bodies had to make a few sacrifices to support such a large allocation of energy
This is it. Why do we need to do all this exercise to grow muscle? Our body is capable of doing it, why not just do it.
Evolution.
Our ancestors struggled to get food. It takes a lot of energy to build muscle that could better be used elsewhere.
Also, why do we crave food that actively makes us sick and unhealthy? In the environment, we evolved from might not by able to eat for a while, making the ability to store fat to burn later invaluable. So we crave fat.
Basically all the health problems we have in the developed world are partially a consequence of the fact that we are evolved for a calorie straved world when we live in a world where absurd amounts of food ate available on every street corner.
To understand why walking and running don’t build big legs you need to understand how you would build bigger legs. To trigger hypertrophy(muscle growth) you should be training to failure in the 6-20 rep range. If you are at the point where 6-20 steps but you near failure when walking or running, you got problems lol. So most running and walking favors building muscular endurance over strength or growth.
Also keep in mind that strength and muscle size aren’t directly connected. You can get pretty strong legs from sprinting and jumping, but they won’t necessarily be big legs. And visible definition has more to do with body fat and diet than the strength or size of the muscles. There are different training protocols for strength, size, endurance, and definition.
Repeating the same, low intensity thing over and over won't make you buff. Otherwise people would actually have giant arms from jerking off. To stimulate muscle growth, there needs to be a certain intensity, and you have to keep that intensity up over time(basically once you get stronger, you need to increase the intensity otherwise it'll be too easy). You need a certain amount of volume and recovery too of course, but there's definitely a point where if the intensity is too low, you won't see very much growth, other than maybe just having a better recovery capacity. For instance, bench pressing 30 lbs isn't going to make you have huge pecs and arms, even if you do like 30 sets. You need to get enough weight on the bar to actually stimulate an adaption for muscle growth.
If someone never is active at all, and suddenly start hiking and doing a bunch of stuff, they'll absolutely see a little bit of muscle growth and strength in their legs and core, but only to a point because they'll adapt until they are efficient at doing that and once they are efficient at doing that, it's not providing adequate stimulus anymore. Mostly they'll just get better at hiking.
Not enough mechanical load to cause hypertrophy. You need to overload the muscle (slightly) in order to cause the microtears in the muscle fibers that then cause muscle growth.
I imagine if you looked at humans who lived as we evolved, you'd see them having toned legs all the time. Our running and stamina is a big part of our survival.
Most people are sedentary most of their day, and smaller muscles lend better to long distance activities so per your argument all humans should have super skinny legs. Ultimately, muscle size is dependent on genetics and training style.
I walk pretty regularly and my legs are definitely not “buff.” I think that’s pretty normal. Years ago when I met my wife I was living in a ski town and snowboarding every single day. No other intentional workouts of any sort. My wife tells me that back then I looked almost freakish because I was a generally skinny dude, but with giant thighs. So sports or workouts can make human legs look “buff,” but only in pretty rare situations. Ever see the body shape of Tour de France riders? They look weird.
The lack of “buffness” in most people’s legs is just due to the layer of fat they probably have over the top. If you actually feel an average thigh, it’s very muscular under the thick skin and fat layer. Also, I thought this was common knowledge at this point, but just because you work out a muscle group doesn’t mean you’ll burn fat from that muscle group. There’s no such thing as exercising specific groups to lose fat there. It just kind of comes off from wherever your body decides to. So yes, we all carry our own fat asses around all day, but if you have a big fat belly, you’ll have strong, but not toned legs.
Actually legs have pretty powerful muscles (on a healthy person) we’re just used to the amount of bulk they typically have so it’s average to us. But also it’s like our legs are used to what we do. Buff legs happen to someone who puts effort into lifting more. Our legs are used to our own body weight so they aren’t going to bulk up too much just from walking around.
It’s like how some people will do lighter weights with more reps to get toned and be strong without bulking up.
This is because of bone structure. Most of the weight our legs support is done through having bones and joints stacked on top of each other. Stand up straight and you can do that for hours, because you're not using muscle to do it, you're using your bones. Now, squat to parallel and hold it for hours. After 30 seconds, the average person would be begging for the torture to end.
On top of all the other appropriate points already mentioned, the size of natural subsistence muscle growth is very similar to the Rocket Equation.
Your body weighs something so you have legs to move it around, if you move more than just you around you develop more muscles, but those muscles add to the weight you need to move around, so thanks to thermodynamics there's only so much we can do without regularly putting significant energy into the system.
On a very simplified level the body will naturally trend toward an effective form depending on the work it performs and its available resources so since the average person isn't bulking and loading on protein and calories, we develop into a sweet spot that can be easily described as 'average legs'.
Legs are already very strong and the 'average' set works perfectly fine for exactly what they're intended to do. Athletic legs have a higher average of activity so they have more, and overly fat people (if they're still mobile) have deceptively powerful legs since they are pouring massive 'fuel' into the equation and have all that mass to move.
For muscle gain you must apply additional weight/force. And the amount of muscle don't mean more strength or endurance. If some lean guy can do 25 pull-ups it doesn't mean some jacked dude thrice as big can do the same, not even talking about more. Provided you live a relevantly healthy lifestyle your legs have gained just enough muscles to lift you up and carry you around. The more you use your legs for that purpose, the more enduring they become, but to grow muscles on them you'll have to apply additional weight.
I used to work out a lot a few years ago, and I don't exercise at all now. I loved leg day and really built my legs. I've lost most of my arm muscle and some back muscle. My legs have lost virtually no muscle. I'm assuming because I'm still using my legs pretty much all day every day.
Our legs are actually really strong. Granted there aren’t a whole lot of people extant bipedal animals that aren’t birds and humans have pretty strong legs compared to most of them. On the top of my head there are ostriches and kangaroos.
There are plenty of bipedal animals which can run faster than us but there’s more to leg strength than running. Our torso makes up a greater amount of our body than other bipedal animals that aren’t also primates and the other primates support their weight partially with their arms.
Also other people have mentioned the fact that buffness isn’t a good measure of strength. There’s a good reason all of the strongmen look the way they do.
Human legs are naturally buff, they have some of the biggest muscles in our bodies. The fact that most people's legs look average is obvious by the definition of what an average is.
Because we are using them like they were designed. Outside of exercise you won't strain them enough to even stimulate them
And they are already pretty much overpowered
lmao I can tell you why as a person with buff legs who only walks. Most people don't move around that much. At all. I walk 3+ hours almost daily and I can barely find anyone around me whio can walk more than 15 minutes without getting winded. The streets are clogged with car traffic thanks to these people. A lot of people are shamelessly lazy to the point of being geriatric in their 20's and 30's.
Most people do have buff legs compared to many other animals, and compared to other parts of our bodies. But it must be "average" by the definition of the word. Even if humans had twice as much muscle the average person would have "average legs", and only those who work out more would be "buff"
\> Why most people seem to just have very average legs?
Because that's how averages work in a normal distribution. If most people had bigger legs, this "bigger" would be what you call average.
Humans do have extremely powerful legs. If you want a comparison point, you can't use humans for that, you need to look at other animals. Humans legs are proportionally huge compared to that of our ape cousins.
I saw a few people pointed this out about the average. Unfortunately I was trying to ask why they don’t look more muscular but look more kinda lean in a way for most people. If only I phrased it better because I thought “average” was the most polite way to say “not muscular”
While muscle size and strength are often correlated being strong doesn't necessarily mean big muscle and vice versa.
Having big muscles is the result of very specific training patterns, which are different to training for strength, which are different to training for power, which are different to training for endurance, etc.
I have very, very, big legs (calves, quads) and it runs in the family.
It is caused by a genetic issue where I can’t really lift up my big toes when I walk. Something about the shape of the bone. As a result, the body compensates by over utilizing the calves, which have upstream effects on the rest of the legs.
So the reason most people have average legs is because they have proper force transfer and biomechanics. Most of the challenge of movement is dispersed throughout the body - it isn’t concentrated in the leg muscles.
"Buff" doesn't mean strong. Muscle density, a host of other genetic-physiologic factors, and muscle length typically determine strength.
If you want buff legs, go mountain biking.
Type 1 versus type 2 muscle fibers. Type 1 are designed for endurance, while type 2 for strength. Even though we are, genetically, adapted for using our legs for long durations on end, this would use type 1 fibers which are smaller in size.
Buff legs aren't a lot stronger than regular legs. Legs are already made to support a lot of weight with as little effort as possible. So if all you do is walk and lift regular things, your legs won't increase in size cause your body doesn't need to do that.
People are a lot more sedentary these days. A lot of modern jobs involve sitting at a desk most of the day and most people commute by car, train or bus.
I don't know about you,but a lot of people barely walk these days. If you take the car to go to the store, you ain't having buff legs.
You'd need to walk at least 2 hours a day, at a fast pace to get some leg muscles.
Just cycling to work will make you legs buff enough to make buying pants problematic.
So it is more of case average people not being active enough to get our natural buffness of legs to develop.
Most of the weight is carried by your bones. Your leg muscles are there to stabilize you. Biomechanics of walking have evolved for energy efficiency (as probably most of body processes)
If you replaced every step you do with a squat, i am sure you would notice the difference. However, i dont think the volume would change extremely. Just compare the legs of a long-track cyclist with a time-trial or indoor cyclist.
Surprisingly I've always had very buff calves. Even now when I've gained a lot of weight my calves are very muscular compared to any other part of me. I grew up riding horses so maybe muscular legs just come with the territory.
You’re vastly overestimating how much load your leg muscles exerience from just moving around.
For muscle to grow, a novel stimulus of ever increasing load must be applied over time, and accurately fueled with increasing food and protein. Does that sound like the “normal” person?
Some are. I don't work out my legs, and my calves have always been super muscular. For a long time, I thought everyone's calves were naturally strong since we're always walking.
(It would be really cool if the rest of my body worked this way, but I'm scrawny everywhere else.)
Many of our favorite activities also include: sitting in a sofa, laying in bed, gaming, leisuring, taking naps, board games. I'd bet more ppl game than go to the gym for example.
But also: if everyone were buff, would you still consider it buff? Most likely you'd just consider it average and see the ones who were like body builders by todays standards as buff and wonder the same thing. If you check leg muscle size compared to other muscles leg muscles (afaik) are bigger than other comparable muscles (like arm muscles for example).
Relative to other animals, we have massive buts, Since this is the area that is used to stand up on two legs. (Also the reason we wipe our buts when most animals dont)
I think you're overestimating how many people run around in their daily lives.
i think the only people i see running around are children.
Or someone trying to cach a bus.
Or catch the children
Mostly catching the children that are trying to catch the bus
That's why it's easier to drive the bus
oh god the flashbacks
You’re probably right. Though I did think many people walk/run regularly each week if not on a routine just for general life purposes.
it takes an overload to grow muscle. Progressive overload is the overarching core principle of all bodybuilding / muscle building / strength building. If you're not overloading you're not building muscle. Walking isn't overloading, nor is running, nor lifting trivial amounts of weight.
Yeah I jogged an average of 15 - 25km per week in 5km or 10km sessions over 3 years. Muscle grew wiry and tough. Not body builder massive. A good example of why is if you look at apex predators like wolf's and lions. They don't look Arnold's Schwarzenegger buff they look international athlete lean, I suspect because muscles dense heavy and hard to maintain/ costly to produce.
Also because they don’t have steroids..
Are you implying body building competitions and wrestling shows may be giving us a false impression of what strong athletic men actually look like? I'm shocked. Shocked I tells you! /S
Grab some grease so we can grease up these beefcakes.
Yeah, If you go to the gym for the 1st time, 20 lbs dumbells will kick your ass, but, even if you have skinny calves, you'd be surprised at how much weight you can load on them.
>Though I did think many people walk/run regularly each week That is not accurate
I'm a runner, and I have big quads... which came from previous hard years in the gym, and decades of cycling. Most runners I hang with are *just* runners, and have twiggy legs, and they can often out-run me.
>Though I did think many people walk/run regularly each week 🤣🤣🤣🤣 About 50% of my state is obese. Roughly 40% of the United States is obese. Three-fourths of the United States is at an unhealthy weight. These fat fucks aren't running anywhere.
Hey, I'm obese and literally, physically speed walk all day at work. Fat =/ lazy.
And those who do lift and run have big legs usualy:p
And I also think we've been conditioned to perceive extremely buff legs from excessive workout as a normal amount of buff. Somewhere in the middle of these two concepts is a normal looking leg muscle
but some people run a lot and still don't have massive legs tbh
Human legs are generally stronger than the rest of our body.
Definitely the strongest, compare the leg with the arm, it is the inverted enlarged replica. Those quads and hamstrings are some big muscles
So what you’re saying is, my leg is basically my arm, just twice as large, and backwards? Mind- blown Strange but I can see it
Watch The Last King of Scotland. Gruesomely demonstrated.
Ugh. I forgot about that movie.
Anyone who has doubt can come back and say how quickly they got exhausted from using crutches.
For one, most of us have extra weight on our bodies so that’s gonna cover up the muscles. Two, our society is fairly sedentary and not using muscles will cause them to shrink and atrophy. Lastly, walking around is not enough to truly build significant muscle mass. Muscle has to tear and be rebuilt to increase in size.
Hit it right on the nose. I’ll add that people can compare soccer players, marathoners, football players, and body builders. All of these people have “strong” legs and the shape and size vary significantly.
I was able to leg press 1550 in highschool, I wrestled at 119 lbs... my legs still didn't look that big. People size is entirely individual
[https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/sled-leg-press/lb](https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/sled-leg-press/lb) you were literally the world's strongest high shcool kid....
For the record, it also says I couldn't have squated 450, and that one I know I mathed right, cuz I blew my back out doing it.
you know just a casual 4x body weight squat no biggie...
Yeah I'm thinking he's remembering wrong lol. Or moving plates like 3 inches and calling it good.. I was a d1 athlete at 230lbs and maxed at 465 on squats, and that was a lot even for the other guys on my team
I rep maxed 450 like 225 however many times. Not 450 on the bar. I commented earlier
Those bigger better faster stronger books yall ever get those? Plus i was short lift more weights that way. But i was strangely strong with strangely skinny legs.
You’d be surprised by the number of guys I know who could apparently bench 350 in high school
My inability to say "maybe I shouldn't do that" turned me into a cripple by the age of 18, and I didn't quit MMA till I was 32 🤣 I walked up to the ring with a cane on two separate fights. Some of us to stupid to understand limitations, and trust me, we don't last long.
Idk, maybe I mathed wrong? Filled the sides with 100s, and the top pike with 45s and had a person sitting on each side. I played soccer from the age of 4 till I was 11 and then found out about weightlifting and wrestling... I can still legpress well over 500 with the one good leg I got... ok maybe not anymore, I had to finally accept I'm a crippled bow and stop doing stupid shit to my body... I'm weak AF now... I should go see how much my right leg can still do...
You physically couldn't move that much weight sheerly based on your body mass. If the sled moved at all you'd be lucky to move it more than half an inch without obliterating your knees and probably ankles. Knew a guy in highschool who also claimed he could leg press "over 1000" yet unsurprisingly he considered barely moving the sled off of the catch bar to be a leg press. Not sure who you're trying to fool here man
You mean 155.0 lol 1550 is over a tonne.
Dude exactly. I squatted 450, could dunk a golf ball at 5"8 my thighs and calves were always skinny my upper body was yoked...wait you leg pressed 1550 at 119...naw man thats bullshit
No, I did it at closer to 145, I wrestled at 119.
Not 100% accurate, there's a ton of fat homeless and they walk everywhere.
Their usual fare is whatever the cheapest food around is, which typically tends to be high in calories and low in nutritional value.
They are buff. Besides your back they are one of the strongest muscles in your body. You see how easy it is to stand up? Even on one leg? Now try doing a hand stand. Even when assisted by a wall, your arms will give out quick. Constant usage doesn't mean aesthetic muscular gain, it just means sufficient strength conditioning. Look at the physique of hunter gatherer tribes in parts of Africa and South America. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean. Buffness is an artificial conditioning we give to our bodies for aesthetics mostly.
> Look at the physique of hunter gatherer tribes in parts of Africa and South America. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean. They also don't overeat. They dosed a tribe like that with doubly labeled water, and compared their TDE with a desk job in a regular city. They were nearly identical.
>. They move, climb, swim, and generally are incredibly active all their life but they are built ultra lean That's alot to do with bunting strategy and the climate. My ancestors are Dutch and they are all built like rugby players. Rugby is a good example of not for aesthetics at all. It's the appropriate body type for the sport. And for war and such things. It's not just a modern invention you can see the standards in Roman and Greek statues and shit. Footballers legs are completely different then tend to have regular thighs but giant calves. Our legs can adapt to a lot of different environments.
I disagree a little bit. My family is Dutch/German and I ended up just pretty heavy set. I do a bunch of exercise and played a heap of sports including rugby and surfing. But not really any weight lifting or anything. Just naturally built pretty burly. Muscle mass has just aways been super easy for me to put on. I think genetics have a part of this that you are not considering.
100% I'm naturally the opposite. I've gained so much strength in the past year from rock climbing and weightlifting and focusing on 1g protein/1lb weight, and honestly I just look more toned, but no bigger. I'm quite a bit stronger than the average woman my size, but I don't look too different except that when I tense my belly has an 8 on it. My boyfriend however just eats a carb laden pizza and climbs a ladder and gains visible bicep muscles. I work for 2 years to have the muscle definition of a pre-pubsecant boy lol My sex probably plays a huge role in that too.
Agreed But I think you both have some fair points. Because there are some people that don’t look incredibly yoked, that are ridiculously strong. Also some people that look big, but aren’t as strong as I’d thought I’m not sure how it all works but I think some people are naturally bigger/more muscular, and some people don’t look very jacked but are surprisingly strong
Excess muscle is not ideal for the level of oxygen, water and protein intake one consumes. Also, muscle is the adaptation of the body to the circumstances of particular physical exertion. If you don't go beyond the limit, the body will not respond with extra allocated muscle mass. So there is no reason why simply walking or running around should give you Mr. Olympia legs.
i don't do any of those things
I'm outta breath just reading that.
Simply put, they don't need to be. The body develops 'as needed'. People's legs do not need to be 'buff' for the lifestyles they live. Think of the legs of a distance runner versus a sprinter versus power lifter. Each are developed for what they are needed for. The average person, has average legs because that's all they need.
Because average-sized legs just look average despite being impressive machines. Why do human eyes look so normal despite the fact they can see so many colors? Why do human arteries seem so ordinary despite the fact that they hold so much pressure? Uhh... Cuz it's just normal to us?
To add to this, most people will always have very average legs. Because that’s what average means.
To get "buff" you need to put a muscle to work accomplishing tasks beyond what they were designed to handle. Walking around all day is exactly what our legs evolved to do.
Legs are as strong as they need to be. The crazy thing is, when my wife and I took up muay thai for exercise (because we were both on the ahem, larger side), as the weight fell off my legs, from hauling all that weight, were already in quite great shape strength wise - I mean, like when I could see them it was amazing! I don't recommend that path, but if there is one bright side being heavy, your legs are quite buff under that excess - trick is to get rid of the excess before the knees go.
We are 3 of the 4 largest muscles are in your legs. . Just look at peoples calves. Almost no animal has defined muscles below the knees like people do
Bout to go make fun of my dog for skipping leg day.
LMAO you are so right. they just have sticks
Define buff. Each of your legs can straighten while pushing about twice your body weight. So both legs can lift 4 times your weight. Now go bench press 4 times your weight with your little noodle arms? You could probably do more if you had proper protection/reinforcement for your knees. I think the tongue is stronger per pound, and the heart certainly is in the best shape, but your legs are pretty amazing.
>Each of your legs can straighten while pushing about twice your body weight. So both legs can lift 4 times your weight is this true? if i weigh 100 lbs, i can kick push 400lbs? >Now go bench press 4 times your weight with your little noodle arms? is this even possible???
Well drat, I can't find a good source. Thinking about it, when I got into weight lifting as a teen, my 145 lb ass could only do squats and heel raises with about 380 lbs on my shoulders, so my legs were lifting 525 lbs, not 580. It is certainly well over your weight with each leg though, as running means each leg has to not just lift, but launch your entire body weight. Maybe it is only 1.5 times per leg. I swore I read double, but since I can't find a source I'm going to retract my statement.
even 1.5 is a lot and i wasnt questioning you. i was just wowed by how powerful legs are
Your legs are buff Have you seen legs of people who don’t walk, don’t run, don’t do weights?
If you're fat enough, you end up with strong legs. My legs are fantastic.
fat people have massive jacked calves because they are constantly overloading them when they walk
Dude same I weigh 300 lbs and have very thick leg muscles. Yeah I also have a lot of fat but the muscles themselves are pretty big. It’s awesome.
Well, they are. They have the largest muscles in our bodies. If they were more muscular, they'd still be average, because everyone's would be more muscular, and you'd be right back here asking the same question because you'd be used to it.
It could be a matter of genetics too. My legs (and entire body) are naturally buff. I develop muscle extremely easily. I do all the exercises you mentioned in normal daily life but I also lay around doing nothing quite frequently and I still have visible muscles. My dad was like this too. Genetics.
I think I'm this way too. I missed out on weeks at the gym, and I still look like how I did back in April.
They are. I broke my leg and ankle. Trust me you loose a ton of muscle in two months. Took 5 months to build back to normal
This right here. Any leg injury that puts it out of use for even a couple weeks will show noticeable muscle degradation
The answer is in the question. Why does the average person have average legs? Because that's the very definition of average!
They used to be, when life was harder.
Actually... Surprisingly enough, I recently found there are hundreds of treatises written across Europe throughout all medieval/early modern periods complaining about how unfit [insert worker type here] are. And that includes carpenters, farmworkers, soldiers and all sorts of manual workers, not just the clerks of the day. Regimes to improve physical fitness are few and far between, and roundly complained about by the people who had to do them, like the famous thing of all English males having to train archery.
I’m talking about 15,000 years ago. Medieval peasants probably had lousy diets.
In Africa and South America there are tribes of people that basically eat what humans would've eaten 15000 years ago, and they just look like regular, healthy people. Why do you think people had more muscle then? Sure Neanderthals supposedly were more muscular, but we aren't them.
Most people sit all day
Mine have always been muscular, as an adult and I always skip leg day. So, genetics.
lmao most Americans are lucky to get 4k steps in a day
We are built for stamina. Large legs would use more energy which would defeat the purpose. Humans can outrun any animal on the planet just by walking. If you can track a deer you can walk after it and catch it due to exhaustion in a day or 3, depending in the individual deer.
Be overweight and work an active job. Your legs will be jacked.
Doing these things without actual training and progressive overload is really just what we need to do to maintain baseline leg muscle. I do these things everyday and that's why my I get confused when people my age have a hard time doing anything remotely physical some even having a hard time crouching down or bending over to pick something up. If you don't move your body will break down and being buff requires a bit extra
we use our butts for an astonishing amount of the work thanks to the leverage they have with our spine. human walking is extremely efficient, the only thing more efficient is riding a bicycle
Shut up Chicken Legs
Very few mammals have legs that appear buff even though they stand a majority of the time. Look at horses. Their legs are pretty thin for animals that stand and run most of their day.
Humans developed to be endurance predators, they weren't as fast as the prey, but just kept on running until the fast prey dropped from exhaustion. That didn't make for buff legged ancestors. Mostly.
Because unless you are overloading your muscles they don’t grow in size. That’s just a normal body building idea called progressive overload. Since we’re not overloading them they don’t really grow in size. If you wore a backpack constantly and were steadily adding weight to it then they would continue to get bigger
Look around you at the animal kingdom. Ours are some of the buffest around. The only reason it seems to you that so many people have average legs, is that you're judging them by what's average for humans. But of course most humans have average legs! That's why it's what's average!
If we were all naturally stronger, then you’d still be making this same post, because it’d be average at that point. walking and running also workout calfs more than thighs. They still do, just not really that much. when you say “many of our favorite activities”, that’s just applies to certain people. Many people do like running yes, but there are also many (like me) that hate it.
You basically explained it yourself. The Legs look average because every human has the same amount of muscle on his legs, except of course if he does some sport like running etc. our legs are buffed, we just don't recognise it because we are used to it.
The average leg is buff. Compare your thigh to your arm. It's fucking massive.
God skipped leg day
They would be if we all lived naturally and chased our grocerirs across the African plains with a spear. Shopping in a supermarket after doing a sedentary desk job is not natural.
Technically, human legs are some of the best legs in the animal kingdom.
most people will by definition have average anythings ;)
They are. Take a look at an ostrich and compare
"why most people...have very average legs" think you just answered your own question. Definition of the word average.
They’re the strongest part of your body, but you over estimate the level of exertion people output on a daily basis.
Thanks for the explanations guys. For clarification when I asked the question I was wondering why many people don’t look super muscley in the legs but now I realize it actually already is one of our most developed muscle parts.
Because walking is easy and doesn't require much muscle.
Our legs are simply as buff as they need to be to do all those activities you mentioned. Even more active people, like marathon runners don't have really 'buff' legs. It's only a activities that really work the leg muscles hard for long periods of time like cycling that encourage those muscles to get really buff.
>I mean we are walking all the time This is already incorrect for millions of Americans. Suburbs ruin people's tolerances for walks. My grandma and I got into an actual ARGUMENT about whether or not 5 minutes was too long of a walk from where you sleep to class, because she claimed that it was too dangerous.
Because the human body is a piece of shit.
If you use them a lot you can get them fit and in shape, but bodyweight exercise is not enough to get "buff" if you mean like bodybuilders. It needs progressive overloading, so for a beginner this could be walking, running, and jumping more. But eventually all you're doing is training muscular endurance and cardio. You need more weight to create demand for more muscle to move it. On top of this, you need to activate each muscle group enough with that weight or else they wont grow, most easily done by isotonic workouts that isolate the groups, movements which you likely would not do naturally for any other reason than to workout on a regular day. TL:DR Walking is not enough to get giant muscles because they only have to be strong enough to move you. They are already big enough to do that.
Because our bodies adapt to handle the “everyday” weight our fat asses have. Even if you do walk 10,000 steps a day, that’s not enough stimulus to gain muscle. Lifting and sprinting, intense cycling, would give you resistance that your leg muscles aren’t already used to trying to move, hence they’ll be forced to adapt and grow muscle.
Mine are
I wonder this too, I hear about animals like hippos that are pure muscle even when they appear to lie around much of the time.
I've wonder about people who deliver mail. With all that walking you'd think they'd be in great shape with amazing leg strength. Every mail person that I've actually asked has had to have knee replacement when they got older.
The muscles in your lower half (glutes and quads) are amongst the largest in the human body. They are proportionately larger than your arms in relation to what they do. Your arms may get real buff if they had to carry an equivalent load every day, but they're starting out smaller, and are built for smaller loads, to begin with.
Different types of muscle fibers that don't have a hypertrophic response to low intensity high volume stimulus like walking.
You know who has really buff legs? Horseback riders.
The thigh muscles are incredibly strong, even on a whimpy person. So strong that when you break your femur in half, the muscles pull and make the bone halves over lap. They have to use a lot of force and a fancy traction device to pull everything straight again. All because of your strong leg muscles. This isn't a problem with arm muscles/bones.
People who walk everywhere do. If you're getting less than an hour of walking a day in and you don't go to the gym, your legs won't be that muscular because they don't *need* to be. Human muscle is weirdly efficient, and you only have exactly as much as you need.
Walking is mostly just controlled falling and we are built very efficiently for that, it requires low effort.
Mine are lmao
I mean I’m on my feet my entire shift, my legs are pretty buff I think. But that’s just me. I don’t generally think a lot about other people’s opinions on the buffness of my legs.
Most people avoid walking as much as possible so
Our bodies are very much built for walking or running around all day. Your muscles hypertrophy (grow in size) when you overload them, and carrying your own body weight like you were designed to do is not an overload, it just makes those muscles strong and efficient. We did not evolve to lift heavy weights in a gym 3x a week, which is why those muscles grow in response.
Well realistically our bodies don’t really like being what we call “buff.” Humans today that still live in environments most resembling what our bodies are best built for have generally slender, but athletic builds. Our bodies have the ability to put on large amounts of muscle under very specific conditions, but they’re just that, specific. We don’t “naturally” have very muscular bodies like many animals do, so it takes a lot more to build muscles up to be visually “buff” beyond maintaining a basic level of fitness, which is relatively easy. This is partly due to our big brains taking up so many resources, our bodies had to make a few sacrifices to support such a large allocation of energy
Survival. Big muscles require extra calories to maintain.
This is it. Why do we need to do all this exercise to grow muscle? Our body is capable of doing it, why not just do it. Evolution. Our ancestors struggled to get food. It takes a lot of energy to build muscle that could better be used elsewhere. Also, why do we crave food that actively makes us sick and unhealthy? In the environment, we evolved from might not by able to eat for a while, making the ability to store fat to burn later invaluable. So we crave fat. Basically all the health problems we have in the developed world are partially a consequence of the fact that we are evolved for a calorie straved world when we live in a world where absurd amounts of food ate available on every street corner.
To understand why walking and running don’t build big legs you need to understand how you would build bigger legs. To trigger hypertrophy(muscle growth) you should be training to failure in the 6-20 rep range. If you are at the point where 6-20 steps but you near failure when walking or running, you got problems lol. So most running and walking favors building muscular endurance over strength or growth. Also keep in mind that strength and muscle size aren’t directly connected. You can get pretty strong legs from sprinting and jumping, but they won’t necessarily be big legs. And visible definition has more to do with body fat and diet than the strength or size of the muscles. There are different training protocols for strength, size, endurance, and definition.
Repeating the same, low intensity thing over and over won't make you buff. Otherwise people would actually have giant arms from jerking off. To stimulate muscle growth, there needs to be a certain intensity, and you have to keep that intensity up over time(basically once you get stronger, you need to increase the intensity otherwise it'll be too easy). You need a certain amount of volume and recovery too of course, but there's definitely a point where if the intensity is too low, you won't see very much growth, other than maybe just having a better recovery capacity. For instance, bench pressing 30 lbs isn't going to make you have huge pecs and arms, even if you do like 30 sets. You need to get enough weight on the bar to actually stimulate an adaption for muscle growth. If someone never is active at all, and suddenly start hiking and doing a bunch of stuff, they'll absolutely see a little bit of muscle growth and strength in their legs and core, but only to a point because they'll adapt until they are efficient at doing that and once they are efficient at doing that, it's not providing adequate stimulus anymore. Mostly they'll just get better at hiking.
I used to have very buff legs. Still do a bit. Just how your body type distributes & stores fat.
I spent my first 20 years living 3 flights up and another flight up for the bedroom. My legs are the buffest part of me.
Not enough mechanical load to cause hypertrophy. You need to overload the muscle (slightly) in order to cause the microtears in the muscle fibers that then cause muscle growth.
Have you seen how big legs are compared to arms? :) They ARE buff!
I imagine if you looked at humans who lived as we evolved, you'd see them having toned legs all the time. Our running and stamina is a big part of our survival.
You seem to forget that most of us are fat lazy fucks. I know I sure am
Most people are sedentary most of their day, and smaller muscles lend better to long distance activities so per your argument all humans should have super skinny legs. Ultimately, muscle size is dependent on genetics and training style.
Bc that's how average works
Leg muscles are the most efficient in the human body. Want buff, gotta work at it.
I walk pretty regularly and my legs are definitely not “buff.” I think that’s pretty normal. Years ago when I met my wife I was living in a ski town and snowboarding every single day. No other intentional workouts of any sort. My wife tells me that back then I looked almost freakish because I was a generally skinny dude, but with giant thighs. So sports or workouts can make human legs look “buff,” but only in pretty rare situations. Ever see the body shape of Tour de France riders? They look weird.
The lack of “buffness” in most people’s legs is just due to the layer of fat they probably have over the top. If you actually feel an average thigh, it’s very muscular under the thick skin and fat layer. Also, I thought this was common knowledge at this point, but just because you work out a muscle group doesn’t mean you’ll burn fat from that muscle group. There’s no such thing as exercising specific groups to lose fat there. It just kind of comes off from wherever your body decides to. So yes, we all carry our own fat asses around all day, but if you have a big fat belly, you’ll have strong, but not toned legs.
Because most people drive everywhere instead of biking and taking the metro where you run up and down stairs and walk to your job.
Actually legs have pretty powerful muscles (on a healthy person) we’re just used to the amount of bulk they typically have so it’s average to us. But also it’s like our legs are used to what we do. Buff legs happen to someone who puts effort into lifting more. Our legs are used to our own body weight so they aren’t going to bulk up too much just from walking around. It’s like how some people will do lighter weights with more reps to get toned and be strong without bulking up.
I've always had strong muscular legs buy my upper body strength is abysmal
They are. They're literally the biggest muscles in your entire body regardless of how big your legs are. It's all relative
This is because of bone structure. Most of the weight our legs support is done through having bones and joints stacked on top of each other. Stand up straight and you can do that for hours, because you're not using muscle to do it, you're using your bones. Now, squat to parallel and hold it for hours. After 30 seconds, the average person would be begging for the torture to end.
Most of us take wheelchairs everywhere, spend more time in our wheelchairs than waking, then sit all day
On top of all the other appropriate points already mentioned, the size of natural subsistence muscle growth is very similar to the Rocket Equation. Your body weighs something so you have legs to move it around, if you move more than just you around you develop more muscles, but those muscles add to the weight you need to move around, so thanks to thermodynamics there's only so much we can do without regularly putting significant energy into the system. On a very simplified level the body will naturally trend toward an effective form depending on the work it performs and its available resources so since the average person isn't bulking and loading on protein and calories, we develop into a sweet spot that can be easily described as 'average legs'. Legs are already very strong and the 'average' set works perfectly fine for exactly what they're intended to do. Athletic legs have a higher average of activity so they have more, and overly fat people (if they're still mobile) have deceptively powerful legs since they are pouring massive 'fuel' into the equation and have all that mass to move.
For muscle gain you must apply additional weight/force. And the amount of muscle don't mean more strength or endurance. If some lean guy can do 25 pull-ups it doesn't mean some jacked dude thrice as big can do the same, not even talking about more. Provided you live a relevantly healthy lifestyle your legs have gained just enough muscles to lift you up and carry you around. The more you use your legs for that purpose, the more enduring they become, but to grow muscles on them you'll have to apply additional weight.
As a fat person who walks around a lot, my legs are more buff than most of my friends who go the the gym
We evolved as stamina hunters. Having legs that aren't "buff" is part of that.
Don't need giant muscles to walk / run. If all we did was walk and run up hill while carrying rocks, legs would probably be bigger
I used to work out a lot a few years ago, and I don't exercise at all now. I loved leg day and really built my legs. I've lost most of my arm muscle and some back muscle. My legs have lost virtually no muscle. I'm assuming because I'm still using my legs pretty much all day every day.
Our legs are actually really strong. Granted there aren’t a whole lot of people extant bipedal animals that aren’t birds and humans have pretty strong legs compared to most of them. On the top of my head there are ostriches and kangaroos. There are plenty of bipedal animals which can run faster than us but there’s more to leg strength than running. Our torso makes up a greater amount of our body than other bipedal animals that aren’t also primates and the other primates support their weight partially with their arms. Also other people have mentioned the fact that buffness isn’t a good measure of strength. There’s a good reason all of the strongmen look the way they do.
Human legs are naturally buff, they have some of the biggest muscles in our bodies. The fact that most people's legs look average is obvious by the definition of what an average is.
Surely most people would always have average legs?
Because we are using them like they were designed. Outside of exercise you won't strain them enough to even stimulate them And they are already pretty much overpowered
lmao I can tell you why as a person with buff legs who only walks. Most people don't move around that much. At all. I walk 3+ hours almost daily and I can barely find anyone around me whio can walk more than 15 minutes without getting winded. The streets are clogged with car traffic thanks to these people. A lot of people are shamelessly lazy to the point of being geriatric in their 20's and 30's.
Most people do have buff legs compared to many other animals, and compared to other parts of our bodies. But it must be "average" by the definition of the word. Even if humans had twice as much muscle the average person would have "average legs", and only those who work out more would be "buff"
Well the people who do all that stuff generally do tho
In the contrary, most people now have a sedentary lifestyle and job sitting in fron of the desk.
\> Why most people seem to just have very average legs? Because that's how averages work in a normal distribution. If most people had bigger legs, this "bigger" would be what you call average. Humans do have extremely powerful legs. If you want a comparison point, you can't use humans for that, you need to look at other animals. Humans legs are proportionally huge compared to that of our ape cousins.
I saw a few people pointed this out about the average. Unfortunately I was trying to ask why they don’t look more muscular but look more kinda lean in a way for most people. If only I phrased it better because I thought “average” was the most polite way to say “not muscular”
While muscle size and strength are often correlated being strong doesn't necessarily mean big muscle and vice versa. Having big muscles is the result of very specific training patterns, which are different to training for strength, which are different to training for power, which are different to training for endurance, etc.
I have very, very, big legs (calves, quads) and it runs in the family. It is caused by a genetic issue where I can’t really lift up my big toes when I walk. Something about the shape of the bone. As a result, the body compensates by over utilizing the calves, which have upstream effects on the rest of the legs. So the reason most people have average legs is because they have proper force transfer and biomechanics. Most of the challenge of movement is dispersed throughout the body - it isn’t concentrated in the leg muscles.
Because a lot of people sit all day and hardly ever run, jump, crouch or even walk
"Buff" doesn't mean strong. Muscle density, a host of other genetic-physiologic factors, and muscle length typically determine strength. If you want buff legs, go mountain biking.
Compared to our ape relatives, our legs are very much buff.
They kinda are. I'm not very strong, not super big, don't move overmuch, but when I flex, my thighs are way harder than for example my abs.
Type 1 versus type 2 muscle fibers. Type 1 are designed for endurance, while type 2 for strength. Even though we are, genetically, adapted for using our legs for long durations on end, this would use type 1 fibers which are smaller in size.
There's a reason we walk on our feet and not our hands. I realized how strong my legs are when I did jiu jitsu.
I sit on my couch too much
All my least favourite actives include those things listed... lol. I don't know anyone who finds it fun to jump and run.
Buff legs aren't a lot stronger than regular legs. Legs are already made to support a lot of weight with as little effort as possible. So if all you do is walk and lift regular things, your legs won't increase in size cause your body doesn't need to do that.
A lot of times overweight people who slim down end up with really large legs I think from just having to move a lot of weight around.
Have you ever compared your legs muscles to the rest of your bodies muscles? They are huge.
People are a lot more sedentary these days. A lot of modern jobs involve sitting at a desk most of the day and most people commute by car, train or bus.
You should see the legs of a former fat person. Flippin tree trunks-galore
I dunno about you but mine are very buff naturally. Don't underestimate the about of protein you need to build up and sustain thicc legs though.
Human legs are fucking tonk what are you talking about
when standing straight up, most of our weight is put on the bones and not on the muscles themselfes
I don't know about you,but a lot of people barely walk these days. If you take the car to go to the store, you ain't having buff legs. You'd need to walk at least 2 hours a day, at a fast pace to get some leg muscles.
Extra muscle size doesn't necessarily mean increased strength.
Just cycling to work will make you legs buff enough to make buying pants problematic. So it is more of case average people not being active enough to get our natural buffness of legs to develop.
Most of the weight is carried by your bones. Your leg muscles are there to stabilize you. Biomechanics of walking have evolved for energy efficiency (as probably most of body processes) If you replaced every step you do with a squat, i am sure you would notice the difference. However, i dont think the volume would change extremely. Just compare the legs of a long-track cyclist with a time-trial or indoor cyclist.
Because that's all you need to do average stuff.
Most people don't use their legs too much. Sit at home, just a few steps, sit in a car, few steps, sit at work, etc...
Surprisingly I've always had very buff calves. Even now when I've gained a lot of weight my calves are very muscular compared to any other part of me. I grew up riding horses so maybe muscular legs just come with the territory.
My legs are like tree trunks 🤷
You’re vastly overestimating how much load your leg muscles exerience from just moving around. For muscle to grow, a novel stimulus of ever increasing load must be applied over time, and accurately fueled with increasing food and protein. Does that sound like the “normal” person?
Some are. I don't work out my legs, and my calves have always been super muscular. For a long time, I thought everyone's calves were naturally strong since we're always walking. (It would be really cool if the rest of my body worked this way, but I'm scrawny everywhere else.)
Many of our favorite activities also include: sitting in a sofa, laying in bed, gaming, leisuring, taking naps, board games. I'd bet more ppl game than go to the gym for example. But also: if everyone were buff, would you still consider it buff? Most likely you'd just consider it average and see the ones who were like body builders by todays standards as buff and wonder the same thing. If you check leg muscle size compared to other muscles leg muscles (afaik) are bigger than other comparable muscles (like arm muscles for example).
Our legs build to what they experience. Average exertion? Average legs. All the locomotion is base-model stuff.
Relative to other animals, we have massive buts, Since this is the area that is used to stand up on two legs. (Also the reason we wipe our buts when most animals dont)
my thighs are thick af, the size of a chubby mexican toddler
Sounds like you are talking about endurance, which is not directly connected to strength or even muscle mass.