ANTONISH wrote:Cugel wrote: All this talk about "resting" or "not overdoing it" is for pencil-necks!
Cugel
What's a pencil neck ?
An ancient phrase of derision employed by body-builders for the feeblings found in modern life, as they sit for hours in their car seat, office seat or sofa, their muscles literally wasting away with disuse. When clothed, it's hard to tell if a slim person is so because of their basic physiology or because they have wasted away with inertia - but the neck is exposed and may indicate the condition of the rest of the body by being thicker or thinner.
A strange phenomenon found in many physical development scenarios is as follows: development of one type of body part in one body-location often causes some similar development in another corresponding body part. For example, If you do bicep curls only on one arm, any eventual muscular development will see the other arm grow too, despite it not doing any bicep curls. However, that other arm may still be relatively weak as not everything in the arm grows like the muscle. The sinews and nerves involved, for example, don't seem to develop.
If one does a lot of any kind of exercise, various parts of the body not employed much in that exercise may grow. Others don't. Cyclist sometimes have immense quads, calves and glutes but scridgy chests and arms, for example. But most kinds of exercise seem to cause the neck muscles to thicken a bit, even cycling. I suppose the head gets tossed about or cantileverd out in most kinds of vigorous exercise, so the neck too must do a bit of work.
Cugel