Pretty much every Hollywood film misportrays warriors historically. They always use bodybuilder types with massive muscle builds but that has rarely if ever been the case. In medieval times and prior - warriors were typical citizens who took up arms. Sure, they were rugged and strong, but most were much smaller in stature and much leaner with less muscle mass. Even professional worried like the Spartans didn’t look anything like the ones in the movie 300. They were ripped in their own ways but were more planky and bulky, not shredded on a fitness machine that targets a specific muscle group 😂
Discussion
TIL I am a real warrior 😎
One indigenous warrior in Australia that fought against the British for years and killed like a hundred British soldiers had a clubbed foot and could not run properly.
First film that came to mind after reading the first sentence: Apocalypto
Second one that came to mind right after that: Band of Brothers
🤷♂️
Look at any fighting sport and show me where the greatest of all time also look like they could benchpress 200kg.
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How sure are you? Ask the statutes that survive are shredded in just that way 🤷♂️
I’m seems like that was the ideal, but it probably wasn’t all that uncommon
About 95% certain. Caloric intake alone was lower which meant less body mass. If you look at the clothes people wore, they were all small. They’ve dug up tunics and all sorts of stuff and you can see people were smaller on average. People didn’t have full time warrior professions for the most part (I mean there were always some that did but not most citizens). Your day to day life would have been already fairly difficult and likely running a caloric deficit unless you were specifically recruited to fight and were well fed. In those days men had to march a lot from place to place for battle and that would mean you’re running on caloric fumes. You’d be lean and strong in a strong farmer or strong metal worker type of way, but not bulky with muscle mass. People didn’t lift weights for training as much as they did for labor.
There are exceptions of course like Spartans who trained solely for battle and practiced fighting. That likely made them very tough and agile - maybe equivalent to a professional wrestler physique today with a hint of mma fighter. And you may even have had some bigger guys who were considered big for that time, but on average you’d probably be between 5’6-5’8. Archaeological evidence supports this.