The more accurate picture is going to be revealed when you can figure out what your own body fat level is and try to maximize your lean muscle mass while diminishing your levels of body fat.
It's about creating bodies that are maximal muscle, natural muscle gains while minimizing body fat so you can have that athletic and lean look.
Now, the more expensive route: You've probably seen a Skyndex before, or body fat calipers. These are good. These are on the more expensive end.
However, calipers are a really important tool if you're talking about how much you're going to rely on them to dictate your progress. Again, as opposed to how many times people will buy new scales and continue to jump on their scales.
So as a man what you want to do is measure in three places.
Your first location is going to be your chest. From the center of the top of your shoulder, you want to divide a line down to the middle of your nipple and then over across to the corner of your shoulder. So somewhere right in between, you're going to take this one at a diagonal.
Now you want to pinch the muscle right there on that diagonal and pull away from the muscle underneath. You can ensure that you're actually grabbing just the body fat and not the muscle by contracting your pecs underneath. If you're grabbing the muscle itself, when you contract it it's going to pull away. So, you're left with the pinch of what you want, you grab just to the top of that, then you click the caliper button to pinch that – register that mark.
The next mark is on the abdomen to the left or right of your navel. It's about 1" away. You're going to grab on there, in a vertical way, and then you're going to pull away, contracting the abs underneath to make sure that you're getting just the muscle. Pinch with the caliper and then register that part.
Finally, for the thigh – it's actually good to lift one leg up as high as you can because you're going to activate the muscles underneath the rectus. We do our pinch on the thigh and register it on the caliper.
The most important thing is that you continue to body composition testing on a consistent basis because the one thing you want to do is guage your progress. If it's always you doing the measurements then you can rely on that, even if you're off a little bit it's looking at the relative change between one measurement and the next.
Now, if you're at home and you don't know, or have access to this, and you don’t have access to a pair of calipers, there's actually an old fashioned way to do this. I just want to show it to you because there's a tool that I'm going to put a link to below that you can actually use and enter in the numbers. All you'll have to do is get the numbers.
So what you do is – you would probably be best off if you had someone that can help you with this, but they'll do the same three pinches and they'll measure the thickness of that pinches.
That's all the calipers are doing anyway. They start at a 0 mark and then when you stick something in between and they measure how thick the thing that you stuck in between is.
In this case it's the body fat fold. They'll take this and they'll measure how thick that fold is and they'll go from there.
They would measure how thick that fold is and then it comes up with rough estimates.
For example, the Ellington Dardon equation – that basically says where the pinch and inch came from.
What you would do is pinch and measure, pinch and measure, and pinch and measure, add them all up together and average them. That would give you your rough body fat level. Again, this is not an exact science here.
Neither are the calipers for that matter. They're giving you something you could at least use as a tool.
If you can pinch a 0.25" on that location you're basically looking at about 5% to 8% body fat.
0.5" of pinching, 9% to 13%.
0.75" of a pinch thickness, 14% to 18% body fat.
1", if you can pinch an inch, 19% to 23% body fat.
1.5" is 24% to 27%.
A 2" pinch is 28% to 32%.
And a 2.5" pinch yields 33% and up.
The key here, is to remember to focus on your body fat over your weight.
If you're adding plenty of lean muscle, your weights going to go up as it's a much more dense tissue and that's what you're looking for.
You're not necessarily concerned about what the body weight is on the scale, it's how you look, how you feel, and how much lean muscle you can densely pack onto your physique.
It's the body fat that's going to reveal the true picture and you want that number to go down.
Of course, different people have different goals. Some athletes might want to hover around the 10% to 14% body fat only because it's going to help them in their sport.
NFL players are going to do better with a little more cushioning to be able to withstand the rigors of their sport.
Even some MMA fighters will be able to withstand some of the impact of their sport carrying a higher %.
One number is not always going to be good for everybody, but from an aesthetics standpoint, some guys want to get lower and lower. The key is focusing on that number.
If you're looking for a way to get yourself down – there are facilities and fitness professionals that can offer you training covering how to maximize lean muscle and minimizing the amount of body fat that you have in your body.
That's the whole goal. That's what you are striving for, without having to go through ridiculous bulking, cutting phases.
If you want one other way that you can quickly scan for what your % might be right now, so you know what you want to get to, you can always do a visual scan.
You can go look at, and quickly compare an example of what a 13% or 18% would look like on a person's physique.
You can compare yourself and see where you fit and what % you want to get to.
Although you can monitor and measure body composition progress by yourself at home, do not underestimate how a professional and skilled Personal Trainer; with a 1-on-1 customized Program can be a very viable resource that can help you to focus, nail down your fitness goals and fast-track your results.
As found on Youtube
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.nanaimoathleticclub.com/index.php/2019/02/12/how-do-we-measure-body-composition-in-home-method/