Get to Know Your Body Type to Improve Your Fitness

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​γνῶθι σεαυτόν
Know thyself.
––The Temple of Apollo at Delphi

​A healthy lifestyle isn’t always easy to pursue. Exercising and eating well can be expensive, time-consuming, and tiring. Worst of all, it’s pretty frustrating when you dedicate your time and energy to it, only to see small or no improvement.
 
Ideally, you’d hire a professional to do the heavy lifting (not literally, I’m afraid) and pick the best programme and diet for you. In truth, many of us lack the funds for a personal trainer and have to resort to random workout programmes and nutrition plans that either overwhelm us or prove fruitless. A few lucky individuals may find the perfect physical activity and diet, but a lot more simply decide “this fitness thing” isn’t for them after all.
 
Nothing can substitute in-depth professional knowledge, but a basic understanding of your strengths and weaknesses can give you the tools to assess whether a certain fitness class or food choice will give you the results you’re looking for.
 
Although each body is unique, some of us share common physical characteristics, such as a propension to store more fat or more muscle mass. Taking these elements into account along with similarities between bone structures, scientists have defined three body types or somatotypes: the ectomorph, the endomorph, and the mesomorph. No one is 100% one type, but rather a combination of all three, with one of them being predominant.
 
For this reason, the science behind somatotypes can’t provide a perfect analysis of your own individual body. Nevertheless, understanding your somatotype can be a great starting point to select a workout programme and a diet you’ll want to stick to instead of a “too much pain and no gain” one you’ll abandon the next day.

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