I am always entertained when I hear people say things concerning muscle gain and body fat. I will often hear sportscasters talk about football players having 6, 7, and 8% body fat. I will hear people say after working out for a period of weeks they have gained 4, 5, pounds of muscle or even higher. OK. Let me say this happily and diplomatically, it just aint’ so.

I want all of you to understand these concepts so that you are not misinformed and have a solid understanding of both muscle gain and body fat. Let’s start with muscle gain shall we? When you start working out you awaken your dormant muscle content and now are asking your muscles to perform against resistance and in doing so the muscle responds and by your consistency the muscle changes its composition.

This will lead to weight gain but the weight gain is not an increase in lean muscle mass it is only an increase of water inside your muscle which is now being kept active on a regular basis.

An highly trained athlete given the task of trying to improve their lean muscle mass training rigorously and eating correctly might and I stress might gain 10lbs of muscle mass in ONE YEAR.

Now the average American Women has a body fat reading of 35%, the fattest in the known Universe, a recommended reading for women is 21-25%; female athletes like sprinters or basketball players come in around 17-21%, while the gymnast, ballet dancers and female fitness/bodybuilding competitors come in under 17%. By the way one big myth is that female fashion models are very low in body fat which is untrue. The models are skinny but their muscle tone is typically underdeveloped and their body fat is usually 25-30%.

The Average American Male is 26% again the fattest from here to “E.T”. A recommended reading for the guys is 14-18%, the sprinters, football and basketball players average 10-14%, the gymnast, bodybuilders, and Cirque du Soleil performers come in under 10%. To put this in perspective Professional Bodybuilders will typically compete between 5-7% body fat will only stay that low for about ONE WEEK.

So now you know and when you hear someone say they gained 7 pounds of muscle or speak of body fat that is abnormally low you can say “it just aint’ so”.

Categorized as:Fitness Articles

Posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 6:41 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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