ITT We share beautiful depictions of the human body through art.
These are some of the ignudi on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo.
I really like the amount of body fat they have in contrast to muscle, and their contorted poses are great from a physiognomy viewpoint.
>>35189826
Hmm yes, shallow and pedantic.
>>35189985
>tfw Jesus is more /fit/ than me
I can get behind this thread for sure. I'm in the middle of putting together a posing routine and this could help out.
>>35190274
With ancient greek statues, you'll notice that they valued a thick and strong-looking core moreso than the v-taper that is commonly sought after today.
>>35190279
Who doesn't love Hercules? Sadly I'm 6'6" and want to stay natty, so this will likely never be possible for me. :( What's my most realistic body being natty at 6'6"?
>>35190287
Arno Breker's sculptures blow me away.
>>35190295
More Arno Breker.
>>35190299
Batman's back in this is fantastic.
>>35190306
I love this one.
>>35190279
Probably because a thick core has direct relation to overall strength while v-taper serves no utilitarian purpose
>>35190313
samson vs lion?
>>35190306
Alex Ross is my favorite comics artist by far.
>>35190279
Another interesting point is that the chest was always rather understated. Some might even it is, daresay, underdeveloped. I personally love the Ancient Greek look, and it is the basis of my goal body.
>>35193113
In the past they thought large chests were feminine. I'd say they are, as well.
>>35190287
I wonder if there actually was guys that looked like this back then or if they just exaggerated the musculature.
>>35193122
I agree as well, to be honest. I'll always prefer the look of someone like Eugen Sandow over someone like Frank Zane. Nothing against Zane, I just prefer the Grecian/Classical/Sandow style.
>inb4 fedora
>>35193122
>>35193113
although i sorta agree with the aesthetic point of view and motivation, i'd feel awful to neglect my pecs.
also, bench press is fun
>>35193161
Nothing wrong with that if that's what you like bruh. I personally don't like benching, so the Grecian style is perfect for me. Different strokes for different folks
>>35193187
I love this sculpture.
>>35189985
>thinking you can surpass the Son of God
>>35193557
Second quote meant for >>35190002
>>35193135
The Greeks all looked like that. Every single citizen. Socrates was probably the fucking model for that sculpture.
They worked out for 16 hours every day, then fucked each other in the butt and wrote books about their feels.
Can you sprint a mile wearing 100 lbs of equipment?
Why are male aesthetics so superior?
Frank Frazetta is GOAT
>>35193758
New goal body.
Finally, I can post this. My magnum opus. I looked for pics of Doryphoros, measured them with the ruler tool in Photoshop and then started calculating by comparing the height of the statue (which is known) with what PS gave me. I then re-calculated all measurements as ellipses.
See pic for what came out of it. And here are Doryphoros' measurements scaled to about 5'11 to 6':
Neck 17"
Chest 45"
Waist 36.5"
Hips 39"
Biceps(tensed) 16.5"
Forearm 14"
Thigh 22.5"
Calf 16"
You can see the measurements are kinda weird by modern standards (thing legs, thick waist), but not unrealistic at all. Which should put to rest the old cliché about ancient artists not going with live models. Also, the urban legend from the 1900's that neck, biceps tensed and calf should NOT be the same size seems also to be true.
I'm wondering two things:
1) The waist is HUGE but not fat at all. What kind of exercise did they do for that?
2) The forearms are unproportionally big by modern standards if we compare them to modern athletes. What's up with that?
Please don't ignore this post, a lot of German autism went into it.
>>35194193
For the waist, a lot of core exercises. They probably did a lot of stuff like discus throwing, javelin, wrestling, and of course heavy physical labour everyday.
The forearms were also a result of this labour.
>>35193711
truly the epitome of civilization
>>35194256
Maybe. You see, from my researches, I know that what we recognize as "training" is not even 200 years old. The old Greeks, as far as I know, didn't do any lifts or pushups or situps, or, really, ANY exercises - because those were invented by the Germans under Jahn.
Instead, they did, as you said, throwing and wrestling and swinging heavy weapons. In fact, the Romans and the knights in the Middle Ages did the same.
>>35194301
Yes, I agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Romans explicitly only train to make themselves better soldiers? All their exercises and lifting was for completely practical purposes. In those times, survival was more important than vanity.
>>35194334
>but didn't Romans explicitly only train to make themselves better soldiers
That is correct. It's a funny story, really. In the beginning, Greeks were like that, too - exercise was meant to make you a better warrior. Later on, Greece fell into boyfucking decadence, and athletes overtook the training - with the following results:
1) The records at the games became better and better
2) The Greeks got worse and worse at actually fighting
Then the Romans came. Now, don't get me wrong - the Greeks weren't shit at fighting at all and gave the Rmans a lot of trouble. However, everyone back then agreed that the Greeks would have won if they had kept the old ways of training. Well, history is history: War training overcame training for sports and when the Romans fell into boy-fucking decadence, they also realized that their war-like neighbours (for example, Germans) who still did physical exercises for war (Germans were especially known to have no athletic training at all, it was just pure war training) had become their betters.
People like Vegetius tried to re-create the old ways (and guess what, it was throwing, fighting with heavy weapons, jumping and running), but in the end, war training again overcame athletics.
And then came the Middle Ages which gave birth to knights, who ruled the battlefield for over 1000 years, trained, again, the same as the old Romans and original Greeks and were basically seen as invincible in close combat - something the Mongols had to learn the hard way, contrary to popular belief.
And on and on it goes until the 19th and 20th century where war training is almost unknown and people don't even do athletics anymore, but just lift for looks.
Anyway, it's a long story. Very interesting, though. The sad part is that we don't really have any workout routines except some basic rules.
>>35194408
You seem to know a lot about this, have you studied this in higher education? It is all so very interesting to me. I know this may sound vain, but I wonder how the bodies of those who trained for military prowess would be different to those who trained for athletics. It's kind of interesting that in 6000 years of society, it was only within the last 200 years that bodybuilding and muscle development became a sport unto itself. I suppose that's probably a result of having a safe enough society in which such things could be possible, or perhaps it is just a symbol and reflection of decadence and the disintegration of a society. Who knows...?
>>35194488
Not the guy you're replying to, but it's definitely representative of how safe our lives are. We live such a cushy existence that our society is PLAGUED by obesity and fatness. The few of us that do pursue aesthetics just do it for the fragile vanity, not for any real purpose. Powerlifters are a freakshow in and of themselves. It's all a farce.
>>35194549
I completely agree
>>35194488
>You seem to know a lot about this, have you studied this in higher education?
No, I do the research in private and it's sometimes hard to get the right books.
>I know this may sound vain, but I wonder how the bodies of those who trained for military prowess would be different to those who trained for athletics.
According to the old Greeks, the body of a warrior is dry, hard and sinewy. In comparison, the body of an athlete is extremely muscular with more fat. The athlete is much stronger, but slower and has no endurance. The warrior is weaker, but faster and accustomed to all kinds of pains and bad circumstances (cold, wet weather, no food, no sleep, fighting until you drop without rest, etc). They were seen as opposites.
>I suppose that's probably a result of having a safe enough society in which such things could be possible, or perhaps it is just a symbol and reflection of decadence and the disintegration of a society.
If you believe the old Romans and Greeks - it's definitely the latter. They asked the same questions and had the same problems. They even had our low fat vs low carb fights.
Nothing has changed, really. Well, except we don't have a fucking clue about how they trained, which makes me mad to no end. Sure, we have the general rules:
1) only train until the equilibirum of your body is distrubed (ie. you get a red face, you start to sweat or you get our of breath - depending on the author)
2) Periodize your training (There were several systems but we only know the Tetrad) and don't overtrain (worse than not training at all according to Hippocrate, Ibn Sina and Galen)
3. Work on skills, strength will come by itself (ie. as we said before - don't do exercises, but fight, beat on something, jump, run against a friend, throw stones etc)
4. Speed and endurance is more important than max strength for a warrior. Max strength and body mass is more important than anything else for an athlete.
>>35193959
If you ignore the weird choice of weapons in his art.
