This piece is devoted to the importance of body fat percentage in relation to power and speed. Why gaining muscle mass isn't as bad as one may think.
Training to excel in a race or sport can be as stressful especially if you are competing to be a podium finisher. There are angles in training that need to be considered like power, speed, strength, endurance, nutrition and rest.
Comparing a long distance runner and a sprinter, a long distance runner usually looks super lean and sad to say some may look malnourished, while a sprinter or short distance runner looks muscular. Power to weight ratio plays a vital role in a long distance runner, the more weight you carry the heavier it feels as the distance progress and overtime you can feel the excess body weight either muscle or fat. For a sprinter and short distance races, you may need all those muscle power to explode and weight may have a lesser factor.
Swimmer, runner and cyclist have one common notion that is to stay away from weight lifting or strength training. Most of them thought that gaining muscles is bad as it will impede their speed because of weight gain. Actually it is a balancing act which one can monitor through measuring your body weight and body fat percentage. Take for example the two athletes who joined my camp last year. Both have same height but have different body measurements. Athlete 1 swims, bikes and run as much as six times a week, sometimes combining swim and bike in morning and afternoon session with a body weight of 170 lbs and body fat percentage of 30 percent. Without looking a picture or photo, one can project that Athlete 1 may have a beer belly around the waist line or and for Athlete 1 to improve, he has to lift weight, gains some muscle and maintain his body weight of 170lbs but has to lower his body fat percent to 17 to 19 percent by doing this. Athlete 1 will gain much power with the increase in muscle mass but will not impede his speed because he has maintained his body weight. While Athlete 2, who also swims, bikes, run and adds weight lifting five to six times a day, has a body weight of 195 lbs but has a body fat percentage of 21 percent. As for Athlete 2, he might be a beast inside the gym, bench pressing over 300 lbs and dead lifting over 240lbs. He may have a low body fat percentage and may look better physically compared to Athlete 1 but Athlete 2 in straight away race may suffer in an uphill run or bike where weight is a big factor. Athlete 2 has to lower his body weight by shedding of some of the muscle mass and still lowering his body fat percentage as well.
But then again, improving or lowering the body fat percentage may make you faster but there are other aspects of training one should also consider like the lactate threshold of your muscles, your max VO2, heart rate, nutrition and most importantly the rest.
Elite swimmer and athletes have now started to focus on using weight lifting and strength training to improve their time in competition. Take for example in a 100-meter freestyle race, one may get full advantage of the dive start and tumble turn as you push the wall, the amount of power you can generate from your legs when you jump can’t be achieved in the pool training. Out of the pool, training like squats, lunges and dead lift can do the trick but again one should monitor the body weight and body fat percentage to maintain power to weight ratio. Running and cycling just like swimming is a repetitive movement, using same muscle over and over again, which may cause muscle imbalance.
One may browse the web to check on the correct body fat percentage according to your age, gender and height.