Body type isn’t subjective. We’ve all met them, those annoying gits who barely lift a finger and have the kind of ripped physique that makes Channing Tatum weep. Then there are those poor sods who pour blood, sweat and tears into their workouts for barely visible results (err, us).

If you want to see a change in your body, working out your body type using the above categories, can help you train smarter

Yeah it sucks, but one of the reasons could be down to body type. There’s nothing new about the idea of body types, Plato mentions them in The Republic in around 380BC, and American psychologist William Sheldon popularised three broad ‘categories’ of body in the 1940s: the ectomorph (lean), the endomorph (big with high body fat), and the mesomorph (muscular).

If you want to see a change in your body, working out your body type using the above categories as a rough barometer can help you train smarter and discover the best way to exercise to complement your build. Not as easy as it sounds though – this means paying less attention to your natural strengths and concentrating more on your weaknesses.

Read on to discover your body type and how you should be training.