Physical Health

Measuring Body Composition-The Whole Package

Posted by HIM on Tuesday June 28th, 2011

So far I have covered three of the four primary components of fitness. Which are, Cardio Respiratory Capacity, Muscular Capacity and Flexibility. The fourth component of fitness is Body Composition.

By definition, Body Composition is “the proportion of fat-free mass (muscle, bone, blood, organs, and fluids) to fat mass (adipose tissue deposited under the skin and around your organs) within our bodies. When you improve your body composition you will naturally feel and look better. Other long-term benefits are a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, improved metabolic rate, improved bodily function as well as improved body mass index or BMI. With all these benefits it’s clear why making the choice to improve or continue a healthy lifestyle, which in turn improves our body composition, is so important.

Few things send prospective clients into a mild panic attack like the thought of having their body fat tested. As a trainer I personally do these tests often and can see the anxiety on some of the faces of the people while I’m pinching and measuring areas of their body they are self-conscious of. Generally, measurement comes down to skin folds and girth. With both of these measurements it’s important to stress that room for error is high.  Both types of measurements should be used as an estimate of body composition only and not fact. Also, results obtained by testing can be used as a means of tracking the changes of the body over a period of time.

A skin fold test, or sometimes called a pinch test, measures the thickness of a double fold of skin using a body caliper. There are three precise areas of the body where the measurement is taken by raising the skin fold and applying the caliper to the fold.

Girth measurements are the total circumference of a limb or trunk, again, at predetermined areas of the body. Girth measurements include everything from skin, fat, muscle and bone at that specific area.

By using these two measurements you can track the development of the individual. As an example, if the skin fold measurement goes down but yet the girth increases then we would know that muscle has increased in size, which is a good thing.  However, if both the girth and skin fold increase, we would know that the girth has grown because of increased fat deposits. This could be frustrating information to receive. Either way, you would be  able to determine if your attempts at changing your body composition are working or not.

Body Mass Index is often used as a way of predicting Health Risk to an individual. By using someone’s height and weight you can calculate whether they are carrying an acceptable amount of weight for their height. You can calculate your own BMI by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height squared in meters (BMI=kg/m squared). Even made easier would be to Google “BMI Calculator” on the Internet, fill in the information and have it done for you. A BMI of 18 or less, or greater than 25, would put an individual at increased heath risk. A BMI of 30 or greater would indicate obesity. That having been said a person that was very fit and has a great deal of muscle mass could also tip the scale to 30, so interpretation of this measurement needs some discrepancy.

So, now that you have all this information here’s some food for thought. While literally writing this week’s column I had a conversation with a client about the changes I’d noticed in her physique. I was not the only person that had passed on a positive comment to her as others had also noticed. Informing her about the fact that I was writing a piece on body composition, her response to me was that it’s not about numbers and comparisons but more about how she feels and the changes in her body that she, herself, has noticed. The satisfaction of hard work paying off is always more motivating than any pinch test or waist measurement.

Written by:

Dominic Turgeon

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