Is there a reliable ratio for the weight of one’s legs, arms, torso, etc.? Say, for example, a man that is 160 at 5’7’’, with the weight evenly spread on his body (that is, he doesn’t have an abnormally huge belly in contrast to the rest of his body). Is there a procedure where I can calculate the values of his main muscle groups?
All I know is the average human head weighs 10 pounds. Is Jerry Maguire lying to me?
When I was doing work on Biomechanics I found several reports where people measured the parameters on cadavers, then cut up the bodies into their constituent parts…
(pause for collective Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!)
…then looked for correlations between the measurements and the results. They compiled correlation coefficients between the two, resulting in predictive formulas.
For example, if you wanted the mass of a forearm it would be A times the diameter of the wrist plus B times the distance from the elbow to the wrist. This gave you an answer with a 97% probability of being correct. Things like that (they gave you the values of A and B). They had formulas like that for the mass, moment of inertia, etc. of arms, legs, forearms, and other body parts. Such biometry shows up in interesting places. When I rented skis several years ago, they determined the release setting by measuring my arm diameter, obviously using some measurement that (ultimately) correlated bone size/strength to that measurement.
I don’t recall where the reports came from – some U.S. Government report. I’m sure it’s been updated. Search the 'net for biomechanics and biometry data.
Would you believe we’ve discussed this before? See here.
Maybe this this would help? "GEBOD will generate the body segment and joint properties for any size male or female based on their height and weight. It will also provide child data based on age, height, and weight. GEBOD was designed specifically to provide the body data needed by the ATB program for human body dynamic simulations. The data provided can be used by other similar programs and in applications where the body link and mass properties are needed.
And best of all it’s public domain, as far as I know. (My version is distributed as part of a commercial package, so I’ve never tried to get a free version).