Research

Mixed

Pre-training bone characteristics (bone mineral content, bone area, shoulder/hip width) do not significantly predict the magnitude of appendicular lean tissue mass gains following 10–12 weeks of resistance training in untrained adults.

Do not worry about your bone structure or frame size when starting resistance training. Whether you have wide shoulders or narrow hips, your potential for muscle growth is not determined by your skeleton. Focus on consistent training with progressive overload (increasing weight/reps over time) and adequate protein intake, as these are the drivers of hypertrophy, not your baseline bone density or width.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
These provide limited evidence suggesting pre-training bone characteristics do not influence lean tissue mass adaptations to shorter-term resistance training.
Dakota Tiede et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2025

Why this rating

Large cohort (n=119), diverse age/sex range, rigorous Bayesian statistical modeling controlling for sex and baseline mass.

Source

Resistance training-induced appendicular lean tissue mass changes are largely unrelated to pre-training bone characteristics in a larger cohort of untrained adults

Dakota Tiede et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2025

DOI 10.3389/fphys.2025.1681719

cohort · n=119
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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