Ripped Genes?

MH trials genetic profiling, touted as a path to Uber effective training.

IF YOU’RE LIKE most guys your favourite subject is yourself. And if you’re obsessive about your fitness there may be nothing you’d like to know more than the ways in which you’re remarkable as a physical specimen.

Well, newsflash: your time has come. Until recently, I’d thought genetic profiling was something used for talent identification in the Eastern Bloc. In fact, it’s been trickling down into the mainstream for several years now.

Today, a weekend warrior like you can drop a few hundred bucks and be told all kinds of stuff about your athletic potential and the training methods most likely to release it. Tantalised? So were we.

THE EXPERIENCE

Muscle Genetica sends me a DNA test kit to be used first thing in the morning. It’s easy. I swab the insides of my cheeks with a cotton stick, which I seal in a container and mail off. It’s bound for a lab in Estonia where technicians will analyse the DNA from my saliva for 50 genes and 181 variants linked to performance and diet.

While awaiting the results I speak with Muscle Genetica cofounder Stephen Arnold, a former semi-pro footballer in England who’s now a Perth-based natural bodybuilder, fitness coach and spirited advocate for genetic profiling. The thrust of his case is that most guys train blind, relying on years of trial and error to figure out what works for them and what doesn’t, all the while dropping their hard-earned moolah on supplements they may or may not need.