I have always thought that I had 71.5 cm arm length and 166 cm armspan at most but yesterday I marked my left arm with three 20 cm segments from acromion and 60 cm came down at about 1/4 of inner palm. Since my palms are exactly 17.5 cm from wrist crease to tip of middle finger, when I measured the remaining length of my arm, it came out 74 cm. It sucks having 17.5 cm hands when in theory a man should have at least 19.5 or 20 cm so I lose a solid inch of arm length due to my small hands.
Now, regarding armspan measurement, I put a mirror in front of me, stood against the wall but instead of pushing my arms to the wall and losing the length due to not forming ideal 90 degrees when outstretching the arms in parallel of the wall, I tried to minimize the arm tilt and formed 180 degrees stretch horizontally without tilting it backwards or forward by monitoring it in the mirror closely. That way, my armspan comes out 176 cm when stretching the arms fully.
In order to double check that I measured correctly, I marked my arm length up to about armpit and then measured the rest of the distance from sternum to armpit of my left arm when stretched at the side fully. It comes out about 88 cm so it should be 176 cm when doubled.
I remember user Uppland who said that he is 179 cm and has 75 cm arm length with 174 cm armspan. Since my arm length is 74 cm, in theory my armspan should be 172 cm if I compare to him but it's 176 cm due my wide frame. Since armspan is the sum of x2 arm length + frame width, it turns out that Uppland has 75 x 2 = 150 cm total arm length and 24 cm long shoulder blades which put him to 174 cm armspan whilst I have 74 x 2 = 148 cm arm length and 28 cm shoulder blades which puts me at 176 cm armspan.
Interesting to note is that I am 166 cm tall midday so 74 cm arm length is a bit above average for someone my height. I notice that when I'm at my absolute low height after working out, my fingertips go way past down the mid thigh. This is after about an inch of spinal compression so that one inch makes a huge difference when your arms go lower at night due to spinal compression.
At wall I was measuring my armspan at 165 cm consistently up until this point due to bending my arms. Given how wide my frame is it's impossible for me to have that low armspan and always doubted the accuracy of my measurement attempts.
When I look in the mirror after losing an inch from spine at the end of the day and relaxing my shoulders, my hands clearly rest quite low on my thighs and if I had an inch longer hands, it would look monkeyish level but in theory I should have had about an inch longer hands since mine is very small at 17.5 cm.
That's the reason I look fine with 2 inch lifts I presume. Even when wearing those 2 inch lifts I feel that I can add another 2 inches and look even better IMO, espeacially after I lose my morning height since arms hang lower for about 2 or 2.5 cm at night due to spinal shrinkage and believe me, it's very noticeable when I look in the mirror right out of bed and right before bed. My arms are hanging way lower at bedtime, way past mid thigh and if my hands were 1 inch bigger, it would be very close to my knees at night. That's how important every cm is when it comes to proportions.
Someone cited on this forum that ideally leg length should be about 1.2 times longer than total arm length so in my case, 74 x 1.2 ~ 89 cm. But, my legs are at most 79 cm (leg length is tibia + femur, not with feet).
I look like a gorilla nked due to my huge and wide trunk and big arms with this short legs. It sucks to be honest because I have no choice other than tucking in everything I wear in order to balance my proportions in favor of legs. This is the main reason I want to do quadrilateral LL to be honest, to appear proportional. Height is just a bonus for me with LL. Appearing balanced and wearing anything freely is what I want the most.
This build I have is good for swimming and boxing / MMA, but I'm competing in neither of those unfortunately. Even Michael Phelps looks short due to short legs & long trunk combo at 6'4 height, that's how bad having short legs is.
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Topic: I was measuring my arm length & armspan wrong all this time (Read 938 times)