After discussing this with BigJoey via private emails, I think I got it this time...
However, just out of curiosity, how many of you could follow the instruction on how to measure your elbow...?
I had 3 of my fiends, who are average guys fomr the gym, read it, and all of them were as confused as I was...
I think the measurement is meant to measure the width of the end of your arm bone, the distal humerus, from the inside to the outside.
The instructions of all the shoulder and elbow and hands movements were mostly confusing, and unnecessary. As a matter of fact, when your elbow is at the extended position, meaning that they are not bend, there are only 2 palpable bony prominences: the inner and the outter points of the arm bone, or the distal medial and lateral humerus.
When you bend your elbow, you are exposing the proximal Ulnar, or your forearm bone in your elbow, out of the elbow joint (the olecranon), thus actually exposing 3 bony prminences. You then can choose to measure from the outter arm bone to the forearm bone, or outter arm bone to the inner arm bone... Very confusing...
There really was no need to bend any joints... Either measurement path will not cross any soft tissue structures. The only oft tissue structure is the Ulnar Nerve inthe Ulnar Nerve Groove, or your funny bone, which will not affect either method of the width measurment as the nerve inside a groove...
And extending your fingers would contract some forearm muscles just as much as making a fist... But in any case, all the muscles of the forearm will not affect either width measurement methods in any way... The soft tissue is all beyond these bony prominences towards the hand...
BigJoey said this is easy for most people but it seems only my friends and myself are confused...