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Body Composition

June 18, 2005 09:09 AM

I am a believer in good body composition. I think this is more important than plain mass; too many people with large muscle mass are too fat and actually have a poor body composition. Above 13% body fat, bad things begin to happen for a male at least. On the other hand, the research claims that as we age we lose about 2 pounds of lean muscle mass each decade. Given today's sedentary lives, the loss is likely to be even greater than this.

Reading the evidence in skeletal remains and muscle attachment points allows anthropologists to assess the body composition of our ancestors. They had large powerful muscles (the attachment points are very large and their bone density shows their muscles exerted substantial force). So the body composition of a Paleolithic ancestor would have been something like a lean, powerfully-built, wrestler, but a large one not in the 132 pound class but more like the 200 pound class.

Hormone profiles are favorably shaped by body composition and the activities necessary to attain that composition. Lean body mass is your active tissue, it is the metabolically active you, the force that moves you through life. If you watch your weight, it should mean to you that you watch your lean muscle mass. Don't lose it or you begin to age because you lose your insulin sensitivity and alter your hormones unfavorably.

A small experiment on wrestlers illustrates the importance of body composition to performance. If you take two people who weigh the same amount, the one with a larger lean body mass and less fat will have an advantage in strength and power. They have less dead weight to drag around and they have more lean tissue.

In the International Journal of Sports Medicine, 10 (1989) 165-168, researchers Horswill, Scott and Galea compared the maximum aerobic, anaerobic and fat content of weight matched high school wrestlers. One group of 18 wrestlers were considered to be elite, having placed 6th or better in one of 6 national regional tournaments. The non-elite group of 18 had never placed or gained entry into these national regional tournaments.

The elite wrestlers had less fat content, higher anaerobic leg power, and higher arm and leg power relative to body mass. [By the way, on body composition measurements, most seem to be close to one another except for the bio impedance measures. There still isn't even a good theory on why these would measure body composition according to the main expert in the field, Forbes.]

They also had slightly higher VO2 max. Their respective peak leg powers in watts were 672 for the elite and 570 for the non-elite. [I have been experimenting with peak leg power, as I mentioned a short time ago in describing one of my very brief workouts. I hit 200, 300, 400, and 500 in stages with interludes between them. I think I can easily hit 700 as I work up the resistance on the machine, but we'll see. 500 was pretty easy with the machine at 12 out of 16 resistances.]

I recall a time in Ivan Lendel's tennis career where he appeared to top out. Michael Colgan recommended to his coaches that he drop some body fat. He did and he went on to high success. His body composition had been holding him back. It can hold all of us back and in ways that may surprise you and I will try to show in the book.

· Evolutionary Fitness

Comments

Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 12, 2006 3:41 AM

Wouldn't higher motor unit recruitment, using a greater percentate of muscle fibers, result in higher bone denisty without making the assumption that greater strength equaled greater muscle? I do not know enough about ligament attachmetn points to make the same argument there, but I have seen some amazingly strong people who did not carry a great deal of muscle, but rather were far more adept at recruiting thier muscles than someone of equal size. Could our ancestors have been muscularly small and efficient, at least smaller than you are asserting, but still have skeletal remains that exhibit the patterns we have found?

Posted by: warnerkallus at June 20, 2005 9:24 AM

Dear Art
I'm glad you said this.I never got the Paul Anderson thing.The strongest man in the world at the time but he was fat.People seemed to suggest
that the fat -body weight helped him lift heavy weights.I don't know.
Also it is suggested that for a lean person to gain muscle that he gain a little fat and a lot of muscle.again conventional wisdom.
Any comments.
sincerely
Barry

Posted by: barry bocchieri at June 20, 2005 8:28 AM

The Tour De France participants have the absolutely best and sneakiest doping doctors in the world attending them.

Posted by: S. Shafley at June 19, 2005 9:27 AM

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