I want to write one last post about the Grow Taller Guru, Lance Ward and finally put a nail in the coffin on the Grow Taller Guru (GTG) case, and finally explain everything away using common sense, and reasonable science why his claims are not achievable.

So in the last few months I have been getting more and more messages from people who claim that Lance Ward, the Grow Taller Guru is not a scam but is real. The claim is that there are videos of his students or people who go through with his program who get results, most specifically the example of Michael and another YouTube height increase seeker, SkinTightFlash. (You can see his YouTube uploaded videos by clicking on his name to the left.) I actually recently wrote a post about the progress and the information I collected from watching almost all of SkinTightFlash’s videos and compressing all the important facts and numbers he stated on one post entitled “Reviewing A Height Increase Success Story By SkinTightFlash From Youtube, A Lance Ward Supporter“. So I don’t feel like I need to explain anymore about his situation and his progress.

So let’s look at Michael’s case. If we watch the videos for Michael’s progress, “How To Grow Taller – Day 1 of Michael’s Transformation” who was measured at 161.6 cms in the 1st video and than in the video “How To Increase Height After 20 – Day 90 of Michael’s Transformation + SU” at around 163.7 cms in the 2nd video, we can say that he increased around 2 cms in 90 days. From a quick look at his posture, and his feet positioning close to the ground, let’s assume that he is not cheating or trying to scam us but that the measurements are real. His positioning and posture suggests that he is trying to extend out his height to make sure it is at the maximum possible at that moment.

In the 2nd video linked Michael comes on to read from not a script but notes about his main points. He tried other products before but this one worked for him. He had tried insoles, lotions, and ointments before. Later on Michael would go into his reasons and his story for his desire for height. In his story about his past and his upbringing, he mentioned that he rarely ever exercised, ate unhealthily, and never working his body to be healthy and fit. he talks about how his relatives made fun of his body in terms of being overweight and short. Only very recently did he decide to incorporate exercise into his daily lifestyle and the exercises began with using Lance’s program of exercise routine.

Michael continues on to explain that the main reason why he wants to increase height is because of his desire to have a career in the entertainment industry. He talks about the “Haters” and “Sceptics” who want him to stop this program since they think Lance is cheating Michael out of his money by promising him something that will not work. Let me give my own opinion, and my final opinion, on Lance Ward at the end of this post.

He notes, and many of the views also notice, that he is getting healthier, fitting, and more muscular as the days go by. He says that Lance has become his friend, mentor, and coach. He makes the point that he never used to do “all this training and dieting” until Lance came along and changed his lifestyle to be more active, and healthier. Later he would talk about the need to be persistence and persevere past the pain and the suffering and focus on the end result. From the tone of his voice, let me give this Michael guy the benefit ofthe doubt and say that he reall does believe in this stuff. He is being honest in his thoughts, showing genuine intent, and is trying not to scam other people (unlike some people). So, he’s not lying, and at least believes in the program himself.

From a 3rd video “How To Grow Taller in a Week – Day 125 of Michael’s Transformation” he went up to 164 cms. In the 4th video “How To Grow Taller After Puberty – Day 130 of Michael’s Transformation” his recorded height seems to go up to 164.2 cms. On the 5th video “How To Grow Taller – Day 160 of Michael’s Transformation” the recorded height is around 164.3 cms. The 5th video “How To Get Taller – Day 260 of Michael’s Transformation” shows his height to be 164.4 cms. The last video I would talk about is “How To Get Taller – Day 300 of Michael’s Transformation” – where his measured height is around 164.3 cms. Overall, there is another dozen videos showing his height throughout 300 days but I chose to take some random data points but focused on taking more of the beginning and ending data of the time span.

I don’t want to spend 20-30 minutes putting all this data into Excel and graphing out an x-y plot to show Michael’s height progression but if we did, we would see that Michael has effectly hit his maximum height possible.

Analysis:

I am going to dissect Michael’s situation to such a level that it would be relatively easy to explain away why Lance’s method is not as effective as he claims. Originally Lance Ward claims that he can help you grow between 3-6 inches in only 90 days. That is in metric units around 7 cm-15 cm in height difference. With Michael, we see around a 2.2 cm of height difference between his initial measured height on day 1 to the height measured at the end of 300 days. What is clear from looking at Michael’s physique is that he is definitely getter healthier and more fit. You can see that his body does change and become broader, more muscular, and better shaped. Since Lance did put him through an exercise trainign program, this was bound to happen.

Overall, Singapore like many other developed rich cities in Asia, most people are not very active due to the fact that the environment they live is rather cramped and has little room to exercise well. This might explain why Michael in the beginning looked skinny and was not very healthy. From what I’ve seen of people in the upscale and high class of developed asian countries like Seoul, Shanghai, etc. they don’t get out much but stay indoors. These days the cities of Beijing and Shanghai has such a bad air pollution problem that most people are strongly advised to stay indoors and not go outdoors. Am I supposed to assume that everyone in these cities has a weight set and treadmill in their apartments and homes?

There is no doubt that in terms of health, overall life quality, and maybe also mental health has greatly improved due to Lance’s help and his exercise program. Michael at the end of 300 days looks stronger and buffer than in the beginning. However, has he really grown? From the looks of it, I would say that Michael has grown, but not to the degree that Lance claims he could get for people.

Like always, this again goes back to this concept or idea I created, called “Hidden Height“. Again, Hidden Height is the idea that within many people, they have not truly maximixed their full height potential that their current bone and vertebrate structure allows them to have. In many of the developed world, because we live such sedentary lives, we don’t actually stand up completely straight, develop bad posture, and our bad eating habits cause us to grow wider, around the waistline. With Michael’s situation, he says very clearly that before Lance, he almost NEVER exercised. It seems that the first time he ever really decided to live healthily and work out, was when he took up Lance’s program.

I don’t want to sound condescending but every single trainer and fitness “guru” in the world can push, give orders, and coach a unhealthy living bad posture, slouching person to work out to a better body. Give me 2 months with a lazy person who is out of shape and I can turn him into healthy with a slimmer, more muscular body. But that is NOT the point. Lossing weight, gaining muscle, and becoming healthier was never the goal. Millions, if not billions of people around the world can get themselves to loose wight. What is clearly almost impossible is getting people to increase in height.

As I said before, many people, actually a good percentage of the population in society, can grow taller, but they will only grow up to a certain point, and completely plateau because they have gained their “Hidden Height“. That plateau for 99.9% of the people is around the 2-3 cm mark. Before they were a sloth, who leaned down a lot, slouched working in front of a computer most of the day, and that means that their lifestyle caused them to progressively over time loss a little bit of height every month. After 5 years, they would find themselves maybe 1-1.5 cm shorter if measured during the same time each day. Michael has hit his plateau, and used up all of his “Hidden Height“.

It may seem counter-intuitive at first but if you sit down and think over the common sense, it would make sense. Here is a rough outline on the height potential of people with different types of lifestyle.

• Person who has never exercises before, slouches a lot, and is overweight, obese –> They can gain upward of 3 cms, maybe even 4 cms if they really push and use traction devices.

• Person who has only occasionally exercise and slightly overweight –> They can gain upward of around 2 cm, 2.5 cms if they are lucky.

• Person who regularly exercises  –> The maximum they can gain is maybe 1-2 cm in real extra height.

• A person who does yoga, and stetches –> They can get only 0.5-0.1 cm of extra height since they have already been using up their “hidden height”.

• A high level athletes who exercises regularly –> They will get maybe 0-0.5 cms

All that this correlation of height increase shows is that if you come from a lower level, in the beginning, you will see a greater difference in the change if you go through with the program. Duh, common sense. 

“Hidden Height” is potential height that they have never actualized.

Very few people have reached a fitness level where they really have pushed to their heigh potential. Bruce Lee measured himself at 5′ 7.5″ (171 cms). There is absolutely no way in hell Bruce Lee would ever gain any height no matter what exercise program he used. He already has exercised and trained his body to their maximum ability, which the bones allow. The same can be said for Olympic level gymnasts and people who do yoga. If you area already healthy and doing exercises, you will NOT gain height. If you have been living an unhealthy lifestyle devoid of any exercise, you WILL see height increase, and a substantial one too, possible up to 3 cms. But that is It. SkinTightFlash gained around 3 cm of height. However his overweight body and slouching torso suggest that he might be able to gain 1 -2more cm but I don’t think he will get any more unless he does something dramatic. With Michael, his skinny frame shows that his body is not compressing much vertebrate. All that Lance has done was get michael to develop enough fitness in his torso to give him better posture and have a stronger core. I once wrote a post suggesting that is might be possible to reduce the height loss throughout the day if a person had a stronger core of muscles holding up the top torso.

At some level, I think Lance knows that what I say is absolutely true. You can not get an average person with no slough or scoliosis in their back to increase their height by 3 inches.

What Michael has done is grow taller, but his height was always there. He has been able to get it to be realized through an exercise program. If we wanted to get technically, Lance Ward can claim that his protege and friend Michael from Singapore using his Grow Taller program did grow maybe 2 cms taller, but I would be able to get Michael the same results if I worked with him for the same amount of time and developed a reasonable exercise program with a lot of stretching and vertebrate decompression.

Note #1: Something else to note is his hair. Michael’s hair style changes a lot throughout the year of 300 days. In some videos I notice that he is not completely pressing the height measuring machine fully down, but only lightly putting the device on the top of his hair, but not his real head. Years ago, when I was doing my routines, I was obsessed enough to shave my head bald to remove that barrier which would cause measurement error. What I would guess is that in some videos, Michael is either intentionally or unintentionally not completely pushing the device fully down to his head. This can account for even upward of 0.5-1 cm of height gain we see in the measuring device.

Note #2: Certain asian males have stronger, thicker hair than their caucasian male counterparts. This means that if they cut their hair really short, their short hair will stick up completely and not fall to the side. The device would not be effective in showing their real height since the flat horizontal measuring “ruler’ will only touch the hair ends as the flat surface drops down, not the actual head. This leads to an inaccurate height measurement. From the Wikipedia article on human hair…”Asian hair typically has a round fiber and is quite straight.” From ScienceMag.com …”The cross-sectional area of East Asian hair fibers averages about 30% larger than that of Africans and 50% larger than that of Europeans”

From more sources, “Asian hair has twice the diameter and a much thicker cuticle than Caucasian hair. Most hair types have around five  layers of cuticles while Asian hair has closer to ten….Asian’s have anywhere between 80,000 and 140,000 scalp hairs but, typically, they have fewer hairs per square centimetre than Caucasians. (They also tend to have less body and facial hair.) However, because the individual hair shafts are thicker, it gives the impression of greater hair density.”

For the pictures I found from the internet, Note that Yao Ming’s hair when cute really short causes his hair to stand completely up. It does not fall down due to how thick and sturdy certain asian male hair are. This may be why Yao Ming looks even TALLER than he already is. His hair makes him look a possible 1-2 inches taller. On the left we see a natural real blonde, a swedish female which light blue/green/hazel eyes. From looking at the roots, her eyebrows, and even the micro hairs on her face, we note that she is not like so many bottle bleach blondes we find in say Hollywood but has natural fair blonde hair color. Note how her hair is rather thin and falls on the side. If her hair was cut to be short, her hair would not stand up.