Fitness Testing, Body Mass and Body Composition - Understanding Body Mass Index (BMI)
A largely used fitness test is the body mass index (BMI), which gives some indication of an individuals’ body weight in relation to their height. The computation is based on body mass (kg) divided by height squared (in meters). It helps to determine if a person is underweight, overweight or ideal weight. However, this body weight measurement exhibits some limitations, namely it does not consider the body composition, which is an important factor for health and performance. Athletes like sprinters are very muscular, because their discipline requires considerable amount of explosive power. If for instance, a sprinter is tested with the BMI method, the result may show that the athlete is overweight, but it does not necessarily mean that is over-fat. On the contrary, sprinters are generally very muscular with low percentage of body fat.
Thus, it should be considered that BMI is a simple non-invasive technique, however, since it is based on weight/stature relationship fails to consider the proportional composition of the body. Specifically, the numerators of BMI are affected by factors other than excess of body fat, such as bone and muscle mass and even the quantity of plasma volume that increases with exercise training. In relatively lean individuals with great muscle mass in relation to stature, because of genetic makeup or exercise training, a high BMI could lead to an incorrect interpretation of overfatness.
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