Endomorphic Ectomorph

The endomorphic ectomorph has a long, narrow frame but carries more subcutaneous fat than muscle on it. Skinfolds are above average; limb girths corrected for fat are small. This is the somatotype that lay readers sometimes call 'skinny-fat': light enough to read as thin but soft-textured rather than lean.

It is most common in sedentary adults of slender frame, particularly women in mid-life, but also in academic and clerical populations across the original anthropometric surveys. Heath-Carter's classifications recorded it as the dominant type among certain post-industrial occupational groups.

The training implication is the opposite of the endomorphic mesomorph: muscle is hard to build because mesomorphy is low to begin with, and fat is comparatively easy to lose because total mass is modest. Strength work pays off slowly but transforms the type more than cardio does.

The type also appears transiently: adolescents who grew tall before they grew strong often live here for a few years before either training or maturation moves them toward neighbouring types.