Flex Australia – June-July 2017

108 FLEX|JUNE –JULY 2017

RALPH DEHAAN; PAVEL YTHJALL

■ For the longest time, body-

building’s ideal shape was a V. Don

Howorth, 1967 IFBB Mr America,

wasjustoneofthechamps

celebratedforhistorso’sV-taper.

Guys simply didn’t have enough

quad mass to form the inverted

V at the bottom of an X. By modern

standards, even the legs of Arnold

Schwarzenegger and Sergio Oliva

areundersized.Thelatterisknown

foremost for his V-shaped victory

pose. The first prominent X-man

was’80samateurphenomMatt

Mendenhall.Heownedtheouter-

quad sweep to complement his

capacious shoulders and slender

hips.Aslegstandardsexpandedin

the ’90s, the termX-frame came

into vogue. When he won his first

three Olympias, Ronnie Coleman’s

silhouette formed a broad X. And,

in my opinion, Flex Wheeler circa

1993 possessed the greatest

hourglass of all time.

As the name suggests, an

X-frame begins with the skeleton.

If you’re blessed with wide

clavicles and narrow hips, you’re

starting a 100-metre sprint with a

30-metre lead. The same is true of

your muscle attachments. If you

have lats that are neither too

high nor too low and widen from

bottom to top, and if your vastus

lateralis (outer quads) expand

easily,youcanfilloutideally.

It’s also worth noting that most,

but not all, great X-men have

been 175cm and over. Shorter

bodybuilders tend to have

correspondingly narrow clavicles,

and if they’re propelled by

appropriately large legs they’ll likely

have a blockier look. (The 160cm

Ahmad Ashakanani is an exception

to that clavicle rule, as was 165cm

Franco Columbu, although neither

is/was exactly X-shaped.)

But don’t dwell on what you

can’t change and instead focus on

what you can. The truth is no one

gets a great X without working for

it, and everyone can improve

theirX,evenifthey’reoriginally

shaped more like a 1 or a 0. Let’s

break the X-frame components

down to the top (shoulder width),

near top (lat width), middle (waist

and hip slenderness) and bottom

(outer quads).

Not everyone

can possess a

dramatic X-frame,

but everyone

can enhance

their top, middle,

and bottom to

maximise their X.