I'm 6'3'' and have heard mild but consistent talk around the forums that being short will provide bigger looking muscles and ability to use greater weights in exercise with similar effort.

not only that, but since you are smaller and acquiring similar muscle mass, wont you also look more muscular?

how true is this? is it even true? just wondering if im predisposed to having to catch up. i hope not

Well, depends on your build, but my husband and I fit the description of an "Ectomorph" or hard gainers. http://www.bodybuildingpro.com/bodytypeinformation.html
I am 6"0, and my husband is 6"2, we both have a hard time gaining any noticeable muscle. Long and lean is the look that best describes. I think in general because the muscles are longer, they don't look as developed because they aren't short and compact as say, someone who is 5"7 or something. Just my thought.

6'2" ectomorph guy here as well, and yeah, the muscle growth is painfully slow. I think it is more the ectomorph than the height that is making it a drawn out process though.

The muscle growth *will* come over time. Might take us a little longer, but hey, that's just how it works. On the plus side, while you can grow your muscles, you cannot alter your height. I bet there are a whole bunch of medium height bodybuilders that would kill for an extra couple of inches. That's not to say I haven't sometimes wished I could trade a little of this height for a bit of speedier muscle development. Just a case of playing the hand you were dealt. Tall (and like me, tall and skinny) trainers get the bonuses later. Our journey is longer and harder, but we can end up in a better place. If we stay on the path that is.

At the end of the day, height is one of those factors we cannot alter. It is out of our hands entirely. As such, best not to worry about it, just accept it and work your hardest in the gym. Concentrate on the things you do have control over: your eating, your exercise, your sleeping and living patterns. The fabulous thing about this healthy lifestyle we have adopted (and in my case, after 30 years of very unhealthy living), is that hard work and dedication are guaranteed to pay off in so many ways. A year from now, maybe sooner, maybe later, you'll look and feel so good that worries about height, body type, obscure body part measurements and the like will be long gone.

We're all going to look great, trust me.

Ecto,endo,meso, whatever... if your diet and lifting was in check you could gain weight as easily as anyone else. I know a slew of guys that grew up as beanpoles and then packed on over 100lbs in 3-5 years of lifting. If you're not gaining, you're not eating enough.

6ft 3 bean pole here just wanting to agree with Supirman. Once you get it right gains come dosent matter how tall you are. However i have as much LBM as a friend thats is only 5ft 7 he looks massive (until someone like me enters the shot and puts his muscle size in to context)
Widers

I think this has more to do with photography than metabolism. A tall guy has to put on a lot more muscle than a small guy to look equally muscular in a stand-alone photograph, because you assume the guys are the same height.

But when you put the tall guy next to the short guy in person, the extra height and mass of the taller guy becomes pretty difficult to ignore. And a bigger frame can look pretty impressive with some muscle on it.

Hey, Arnold is 6'2" and Lou Ferrigno is 6'5". I don't think you have anything to worry about.