#bodycomp

FITNESS:: 12/10/16

Orangetheory Fitness is lucky to team up with InBody. It’s a body composition analysis tool that tracks your body comp, muscle mass, water weight, and many other useful fitness tools!

Every so often, I'm accused of being a fast runner. Sometimes, I even catch myself believing it's true. Some of my friends are actually fast, but I can just do a decent impression of a competitive athlete. Still, it's nice to dream…

Ah, how nice it would be to… Wait, where was I? Right, have you ever wondered what makes a world class athlete exceptional? When it comes to the guys and gals like Micheal Phelps or Ryan Hall there's certainly a genetic component. There's more to it than that, though. Here's a look at a few of the ways top athletes measure their performance, and what they do to improve their fitness.

Perfect Your Mid Distance Racing with VO2Max

What is it? This alphabet soup is a measurement of how quickly a person is able to process oxygen. It's your "max volume of O2". It's usually measured as liters of oxygen per minute. Since this measurement is often used by cyclists, who are known for being particularly small, you will also see this measured as milliliters per minute per kilogram of body weight. Higher numbers are better, and those numbers will go up if you become better at sucking oxygen or losing weight.

Why does it matter? Races that last longer than about a minute long depend heavily on the aerobic energy system. Put your bio-chemist hat on for a moment: An "aerobic" chemical reaction is defines as one that requires oxygen. The more oxygen you're able to suck down, the more quickly your body will be able to perform aerobic chemical reactions. The chemical of concern here is adenosine triphosphate, AKA ATP or "energy". For a runner or cyclist, this translates directly to speed.

Elite cyclists and runners who specialize in four to sixty minutes tend to have an extremely high VO2Max. Shorter efforts, like a 100 meter sprint, tend to utilize mainly anaerobic energy systems (those that don't use oxygen). Performance for longer efforts, like marathons, tend to be limited by another parameter. If you'd like to set a new PR in the mile or 5,000m, then this is the metric to look at.

How do you improve it? A person's VO2Max is mostly fixed at birth. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work at it, though! Most amateur athletes aren't used to maximizing their oxygen flow so don't even know what it feels like to sustain that kind of effort. To practice, engage in your cardio activity of choice, like running or cycling, as hard as possible for four minutes at a time. You should feel the effort after one minute, really want to quit after two minutes, be unsure of whether you'll be able to continue after three, and after four minutes you should be on the edge of passing out. Repeat these four minute efforts 4-6 times with a few minutes rest between each effort. Keep yourself honest by bumping up your speed by a small degree with every effort to try to hit that max speed you can maintain. This kind of workout should only be done once every week or two.

The first time you hit this workout correctly, your throat and lungs will likely hurt quite a bit when breathing deeply afterward. Your lungs aren't used to expanding that much and processing that much air! Don't worry, though, this is one that gets much easier and much less painful after just one workout.

Metabolic Efficiency for Going the Distance

There has been a trend in recent years of long distance athletes training on low carb diets. To what end? You guessed it! In order to improve their metabolic efficiency! What does this mean? It's a bit like the miles-per-gallon measurement you see on new cars, but for your body. We all know that carbs and sugar are the body's preferred fuel for high intensity exercise and racing. However, every human has a limited supply of glycogen, the body's sugar based energy stores. Even after the obligatory pre-marathon carbo loading, a runner will only have enough glycogen to run about 20 miles or exercise for about three hours at a moderately high intensity.

Marathons are 26.2 miles long. There are some races that are 50 or 100 miles long. Some are even longer. These are running races. Where people run. For 100+ miles. Nonstop. It doesn't take a mathematician to realize 100 miles is longer than that 20 mile limit.

Luckily, even the leanest people have enough fat stored on their body to run thousands of miles (theoretically). Metabolic efficiency is a measurement of the proportion of fat to carbohydrate that's being burned at any given intensity. Higher intensity efforts will burn more carbs and less fat. Improving metabolic efficiency allows an athlete to burn more fat at higher intensities, thus sparing their precious glycogen stores for when it's really needed.

This is a relatively new measurement of performance, but you can generally find labs in major cities that are equipped to determine your metabolic efficiency. This is done by examining the gas that you exhale while exercising using big, scary looking masks while running on a treadmill or riding on a stationary bike. Comparing the carbon dioxide levels and comparing it to the amount that'd be expected when burning pure sugar for any level of energy output allows people in scientific lab coats to tell you what percentage of energy you're generating is coming from fat. It's a little more complicated than that, but it's kind of an unpleasant and expensive test so I wouldn't expect anyone other than the most type-A athletes to get actual numbers for their metabolic efficiency.

If you've ever "hit the wall" in a marathon, or would rather not ever experience it, or are planning on jumping into ultra-distance racing, then it'd be a good idea to improve your metabolic efficiency. It'll help. I promise. This is done by eschewing the usual high carb, high sugar advice for endurance training. Your body tends to burn the energy you feed it so eating less carbohydrate and more fat shifts the natural tendency of the body to burn more fat. Some athletes will take this to the extreme and engage in fasted workouts by going for long runs and bike rides immediately after waking without eating any breakfast. That's usually 12 hours after their last meal. If you plan on doing fasted workouts, proceed with caution. This can result in some serious damage if done willy-nilly. Fasted exercise should be done at a relatively moderate intensity, and not engaged in too frequently. If fasting isn't something you're interested in, try trading the morning fruit and oatmeal for something with fat, like bullet proof coffee or an avocado. Switch the sports drink and energy gels for water when working out to kick the reliance on that sugar rush.

I've gone in depth on this subject in previous articles, and there are lots of good resources across the internet for more advice on improving metabolic efficiency. Bonus: You'll get better at burning fat so getting lean is a nice side effect.

Body Composition and the Unexpected News on Fat

A person's body composition is a measurement of their body fat as a percentage of their total body weight. Despite what you might expect, lower is not always particularly better. Unlike other measurements, there are very large differences between men and women. The absolute minimum body composition of men is about 3% compared to about 10% for women. This is generally known as essential fat. The only way to reduce body composition below these levels is generally attainable by dying. So I'd discourage shooting for levels that low.

Since the majority of us don't want to look like living, walking skeletons, let's stick with the more common levels. Athletic men tend to have between 6% and 12% body fat, and women fall between 14% and 20%. Your average, fairly fit man will be in the 12-18% range, and women will be in the 21-24% range. Non-athletic men may have a body composition up to 24%, while average women are up to 31%. Higher levels of body composition are usually only seen in obese individuals.

Elite athletes tend to be, well, in the "athletic" range found above. Contrary to what you might expect, they aren't all at the very bottom end of that spectrum. Marathon runners are generally the leanest at the bottom of the spectrum or even going into the "essential" category. Cyclists and triathletes are the next leanest, usually near the bottom or middle of the "athletic" category. Elite swimmers and skiers are near the top of the "athletic" range as some of the least lean athletes. It's likely that Michael Phelps is leaner than most people will ever be. However, something tells me that not just anyone would be reading this, so keep in mind that getting leaner may not actually be the best thing for your athletic performance.

Why is this all important? I'd like to see this measurement replace more common methods for determining health and wellness. Hopefully, we all know by now that BMI is almost worthless, but simple body-weight is also a pretty poor measurement. Very lean, muscular athletes, particularly smaller football players (American handegg, not real football) are sometimes categorized as "obese" despite having waists that are narrower than their shoulders. Likewise, gaining weight isn't always bad as long as body composition remains steady. This could imply an individual is gaining muscle mass, or simply temporarily retaining water for some reason. All of this is the long way of saying that you shouldn't put too much credence into the numbers you see on your average bathroom scale.

There are a few ways to measure body composition, each with pros and cons. The lowest tech method is with the use of calipers in the hands of a skilled nutritionist. Measurements of skin folds in various areas of the body are taken, then this is compared with height and weight to determine a body fat percentage. Despite how low tech this method sounds, it can be very accurate when done by an experienced and knowledgeable individual.

If you'd rather go the high tech route, there's bio impedance. This works by measuring the electrical resistance between two point of the body, usually between your feet with a fancy scale or the hands with a handheld device. These are notoriously inaccurate, but not altogether useless. Despite being inaccurate, their inaccuracy is very consistent. They're useful for tracking upward or downward trends in your body composition even if your exact body composition isn't known at any particular time. The main advantage of these devices is their convenience; you don't need any expensive tests or procedures to simply step on the bathroom scale. The efficacy of these devices tend to be directly correlated with their price, so don’t expect much from the cheapest device you can find on your online marketplace of choice.

The gold standard for accuracy is called hydrostatic weighing. This method uses water displacement to very accurately measure your bodily volume which can be compared to your weight to approximate your body composition. This process requires a lab test and can become pricey if you want to test multiple times. If you're interested in knowing, though, a single test tends to run a fairly reasonable $30 - $60. The actual test can be a bit unpleasant since it involves submerging yourself in water, then exhaling all of the air in your lungs; a process that feels a little like drowning, especially for anyone uncomfortable in water. Still, a cool way to get a very accurate measurement.

The last, common option is a DEXA scan. This is a great option for those who love quantifying everything about themselves and have plenty of money to burn. DEXA scans are more commonly known used for measuring bone density, but can also provide detailed information on body composition. Depending on the lab you visit (and you will need to visit a lab for this one) you may be able to see the composition of different parts of your body. Want to know what percentage of your left arm is adipose tissue? This is for you! Unfortunately, this kind of scan will likely cost $100-$200 for a single scan. Those who use DEXA scans tend to go for one or two scans a year.

So there's a few things to keep in mind if you want to quantify your athletic ability. Keep in mind:

VO2Max measures how much oxygen you can use. Improving it can help with your top end efforts in races.

Metabolic efficiency measures your ability to burn fat. Do some research if you want to go for the long-long-long distance events.

Body composition, a better measurement than weight or BMI.