Aspies and Bodybuilding/Poor Muscle Tone

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Like someone else said, muscle tone can mean two different things. The first, most common definition, which is more of a slang definition, means firm muscles with a low percentage of body fat. The second, more technical definition is how finely a muscle is able to contract. Someone with fine muscle tone is more coordinated, and can do things like have nice hand writing, drawing skills, can catch etc. Someone with poor muscle tone moves in cruder, grosser movements, knocks things over, might be "clumsy" etc.

As far as putting on muscle, believe it or not, the weight/rep ratio (1-4 reps ) that produces the greatest strength gains actually produces minimal size gains. The best range to increase size is 8-12 reps, and it produces less strength gains. This would explain why some people are stronger than they look.

The reason being is that the nervous system affects a muscles strength and endurance more than most people realize. It could perhaps be the most important "body part" for any athlete to exercise. It controls the percentage of muscle fiber utilized in any given motion. People claim that a chimpanzee is like 6 times stronger than a human. It's actually more like 3 times. One reason is bone structure. The main reason is coordination and muscle tone. Their nervous system isn't as coordinated and they use most of their muscle fiber for everyday movements like picking something up, etc. For a human to utilize all of their muscle fiber, we usually need a fight or flight adrenaline rush. Which is why mothers can lift cars off of their children and stuff. Basically, as the percent of muscle fiber used increases, coordination decreases.

OK. Hope my two cents is insightful.

I didn't know Autism was a physical disorder.

My boyfriend has Asperger's and is very thin. However, his mother, who is NT, is thin, also. It could be genetic. If you have a family member who is thin, you might have inherited their traits. On the other hand, there might be a connection. I read that people with Asperger's tend to look younger than they are. It's a form of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) on the Autism Spectrum. This means that you could be in your 20's, or 30's, or however old you are, and still look like a teenager. For example, my bf and I are 33, but we look much younger. It could also be a poor diet, or lack of exercise. Ask your doctor.

I don't understand what you mean. As far as I know, autism is not considered a physical disorder, hence why it is in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

This is my experience with muscle/athleticism, etc.

I work out 3-4 days a week. It helps me so much with mental well-being, physical well being, balance, clumsiness, physical energy, mental energy, etc. But if I stop for two weeks, I regress very quickly. I never understood why until I discovered I was AS and found out about the inherent physical/motor problems associated with AS.

I'm pretty active and I like to exercise, but there are months where I can get out of sync and do almost nothing, despite this my muscle tone stays pretty much the same, except my abs, chest and biceps will get a little less defined.

I'm 6 foot 5" and have been heavily involved with sports all my life, which possibly had some impact on my growing up with such a toned body, but I think it's mostly just genetic predisposition. My best friend, who also has AS complains about his inability to put on mass, especially in his chest - but even he's noticed significant difference after a few changes to his workout routine and he's getting quite defined now (he's 37, i'm 25).

I refuse to believe that people "can't build muscle" - it defies biology and is usually a result of bad diet, bad routine, not enough cardio, too much cardio, not enough dedication or a very unfortunate metabolic rate, which even still can be overcome with the proper approach. Ofcourse...people say it's impossible for me to eat as much as I do and not put on weight, which is perhaps just as ignorant as what I just wrote .

I'm not physically weak. Just emotionally weak.

i used to be unusually strong and quick when i was young, took kickboxing and was told i hit and kick like a man. i'm five two and used to weight a hundred and eight. i refuse to say how much i weight today...
i do have a very bad posture, so does my brother who i believe has the syndrome too, but milder. there's a theory about autism that says the baby gets too much testosterone in the womb, so we're supposed to be stronger, not weaker. and i've read in this forum about an aspie that puts his fist through a wall when getting angry. my brother is strong and quick, too, but we do have poor posture, and i don't mean just my brother and me...

I think some people are gettting muscle tone, and muscle control confused.
Muscle tone IS about how strong your muscles are for a given size and to a large extent how large and defined the muscles themselves are. This is how most people (including myself ) exercise, with the aim of becoming fitter, stronger etc.

Muscle control is where the physical problems associated with mental conditions can manifest. someone with a 'normal body' may well have very good muscle tone, but poor fine control as a result of being constantly on edge, and 'twitchy'. Many people with AS report not having very good hand-eye co-ordination for fast-moving sports etc, but are Ok for regualr daily activities, and hence turn to sports where quick reflexes are not quite so important . I go to the gym, for example.

As with the range of mental differences, everyone is physically different too and this needs to be taken into account.

My muscle tone can't be that weak - I learnt to sit up at 7 months, crawled at 9 months, and walked at 11 months. My NT cousin didn't walk until she was 17 months.

I think people are confused here. This doesn't have anything to do with size. I have been a weaker "bigger guy" overweight for a long time, and there are plenty of skinny guys who are very strong and coordinated.

This is about strength and coordination. I played baseball and basketball when I was a child. My coordination in throwing the ball accurately and with power was not the same as the other kids. I practiced, and I practiced, but my muscles just didn't develop as they did for the other boys.

I could throw a baseball accurately with moderate power on one throw, and then on the next throw completely miss wildly. The time when my arm and shoulder would cock back and then release the ball, my hand would screw it up and let go of it at the wrong time. Other times I would get it right, but it never stuck.

I gave up on sports in middle school when I didn't make the basketball team. I was really good at basketball sometimes, and then really mediocre at other times and never consistent.

When I was a soph. in HS, I took a weight training class. I was verbally bullied a little a bit by some POS, but it never lasted long, and I mostly ignored him. I was just an easy target because I hardly talked to anyone. I never ever remember saying anything to provoke him or anyone else, some people just hated me.

I had never lifted weights before, but apparently I was way weaker by default the other guys who never lifted weights either. My starting weight for benching, was the bar plus either 10 or 15 on each side. I couldn't do 25s. It took me months before I could get up to 45s, and then maybe + another 5 or 10max. And then I could only do maybe 3.

I can do 15 military perfect push ups, and maybe 25 regular ones.

I have been kinda weak my whole life obviously, and even worse that I have been mentally weak as well. I don't think they have to be tied together completely, but in my case and for guys in general, it is obvious see how being weaker and uncoordinated physically can be detrimental for developing self-confidence. Don't need to be S. Holmes to see it.

....and I don't consider myself to be the weakest or most uncoordinated 24 year old either, and I wasn't the weakest teenager either.

I think playing sports did help me when I was a kid. I might have been completely different had I never played sports.

so it seems muscle tone that AS people lack is more about clumsiness and not about actually building mass.

What most people call 'muscle tone' is actually muscle strength. Muscle tone is different.

Muscle strength is determined by the biological structure of the muscles. A person with stronger muscles actually physically has more muscle tissue, and exercising prompts the body to grow more muscle tissue.

Muscle tone is determined by the messages the brain sends to the muscles to contract or relax. With high muscle tone, the muscles are constantly tensed, which makes it hard to move the joint. You see this in cerebral palsy, for example a person with mild CP may walk on tiptoe because they can't relax the muscles tugging on the Achilles tendon. Low muscle tone means the muscles tend to be relaxed and it's harder to get them to tense enough to hold a position. An extreme example would be paraplegia, where no messages are getting to certain muscles and therefore they're perpetually relaxed. I've seen paraplegics grab their ankle with their hand and move their leg around, such as balancing their ankle on their other knee, and the leg just stays limp and floppy throughout this. Milder low muscle tone, the message gets through but they generally are tensed just barely enough to actually do the activity, which means the joints are unstable and the slightest pressure can push them out of their position.

A person can have any combination of strength and tone. Generally those who are at an extreme of tone have poor strength simply because they don't exercise the muscles - I know a 10 year old with severe CP who has the motor skills of a 3 month old (despite normal intelligence) and he has virtually no muscle because he's in a wheelchair and moves very little. He obviously has very high tone, his arms tend to be rigidly stuck outward and if you grab them and try to bend them it's very hard to bend them.

So basically when we talk about AS folks with poor muscle tone, what are we referring to?
Posture?
Motor skills?
Muscle size?

I don't think you can single any of them out. Just like in the spectrum of diagnoses there are alot that overlapping symptoms.

We can debate and people can say AS and muscle tone/coordination have nothing to do with each other, but I don't think that is the case.

I think very few guys on here actually have normal or above normal muscle tone and strength, AND its probably because they spend ALOT of time in the gym....just sayin..

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