body fat measurement

I got a fancy measurement of my body fat performed this morning. Made an approintment for a place with a GE Lunar Prodigy DEXA / DXA scan machine.

Interpretation of results by expert was that I've got essentially Zero non-essential body fat: "Super-Lean".
Which confirmed my own attempts with skin-fold calipers which showed virtually no sub-cutaneous fat.  He said some of the ratios for specific regions of my body were the lowest he'd ever seen. He said losing any more weight would be unhealthy.

The actual number for my body composition overall was 7.5% body fat.
But perhaps that's not comparable with numbers from other measurement methods because it includes visceral and bone marrow fat etc.

Very helpful for me because my BMI is around 21.4, not very low for a rock climber. Some top climbers are reported as below 18.0.
. . . (I recall some competition governing body recently made rules against allowing BMI go much lower than that).

So I was guessing that I could climb harder if I lost more weight.
. . . (after I had dropped 7-13 pounds in the last three months just to get to this point).

Well some famous top climbers do have BMI similar to mine. I've got an overall muscular frame, especially leg muscles from skiing (perhaps also from hauling heavy pack with gear for a multi-person party up to crags). So I guess I'm yet another instance where BMI is mis-leading.

Of course there are inaccuracies in this measurement method, but the detail of the results is very impressive.
. . . (Very easy to do it: Just lie in one place for less than ten minutes).
I had been planning to schedule another appointment for a rather different method / machine (with different inaccuracies), but now I don't think I'll bother.

So now I've got a new body-weight strategy: just maintain this weight I finally got myself down to in the last few months.

Ken

Cool.  Sounds like you are in good shape.

Do you mind sharing your height and weight?

Curious as I am trying to slim down about 5-10 pounds.  I know that everyone's body composition is different but just curious.

Thanks and congrats.

You must be pretty shredded at 7.5%

kenr wrote: 
Very helpful for me because my BMI is around 21.4, not very low for a rock climber.

So I was guessing that I could climb harder if I lost more weight.

Jakob Schubert is one of  these climbers that have BMI lower than yours, and he, most definitely, climbs harder than you.
According to the internets, which are not to be trusted, his height is 173cm, and he weighs in at 63kg; resulting in 21.0 BMI value. 

So yeah, lose some weight, you will climb harder.
 And, if you drop your BMI to 19.8, you would have no excuses not to climb as hard as Adam Ondra.

I would argue BMI is pointless to look at in your position, losing weight is good and can obviously help your climbing.... but BMI is not a perfect measure because it does not directly assess body fat. Muscle and bone are denser than fat, so BMI can overestimate body fat in athletes with high bone density and muscle mass.  direct measurements of body fat require special equipment and are expensive, BMI is considered a reasonable alternative for identifying people who are overweight or obese, but short of a more invasive and longer series of test, I’d assume it’s a fun stat to check, but I wouldn’t put much stock in the number correlating to climbing efficiency.

Back in college at 22 and working out like crazy everyday... my peak existance as a human, We went through yearly physicals in college as an athlete and I recall getting my BMI calculated at 6-2 185 lbs. at something like 23% but I had a DEXA scan look at everything a much closer and my body fat percentage  was like 8%.

amarius wrote:

if you drop your BMI to 19.8, you would have no excuses not to climb as hard as Adam Ondra.

If the DEXA results are to be believed, never mind visceral + cellular + bone marrow fat, I simply do not have enough fat of _any_ kind remaining to lose to get my BMI down to 19.8.

Instead I'd have to also lose bone or muscle weight. I suppose I could de-train my leg muscles, but I love skiing too much.
. . . (Ondra has much skinnier legs than me,
. . . . but I bet he doesn't have as much fun skiing difficult snow).

The names of top climbers _close_ to Adam Ondra's level with BMI around 21.5 is pretty impressive. My belief is it's better to accept your body type, not get dictated by BMI numbers.

Ken

Would love to see a pic if you think you have zero fat to lose.  7.5 is moderately low but not excessive.  I currently walk around at between 10-11, but have been measured at sub 5% a few years ago.

I would also add that visceral fat is the fat you could lose, even if you don't have a ton of sub-cutaneous fat.  Visceral is the reason some "skinny" people can have a lot of fat to lose.  

Eric Carlos wrote: I would also add that visceral fat is the fat you could lose, even if you don't have a ton of sub-cutaneous fat.  

Sounds like I'm not really understanding all the physiological terms.

Thanks for correcting me and spurring me to do better.

Ken

Eric Carlos wrote: Would love to see a pic if you think you have zero fat to lose.  7.5 is moderately low but not excessive.  I currently walk around at between 10-11, but have been measured at sub 5% a few years ago.

Dude that is really low. 5% is too low.

Buck Rio wrote:

Dude that is really low. 5% is too low.

Yes, and I felt it.  7% is a good number, but sometimes you think lower is better.  I suffered with recoverability, but for a few weeks on my way down, I climbed super strong.

Eric Carlos wrote: 7.5 is moderately low but not excessive.  I currently walk around at between 10-11, but have been measured at sub 5% a few years ago.

But 5% measured how?

There are inaccuracies in all the methods. I guess DEXA is the most sophisticated.
The only way to know for sure is to kill me and slice up my cadaver.
Everything else is just an estimate.
Even some of the older "most reliable" methods like water immersion needed to make assumptions, and had well-known errors. So then they had a 4-part approach with fewer assumptions, but I thought those was only used in research settings.

Various other methods were usually calibrated to the 2-part water-immersion as a standard -- but that "standard" itself already had substantial errors.

So it's pretty tricky.

All I know for now is that an expert practitioner (and a serious athlete himself) with some of the most sophisticated expensive modern equipment told me this morning that I had no significant fat to lose healthily.
. . . And that in his practice he had never seen some of the specific regions as lean as mine.

Ken

Relevant video comparing bodybuilders who have done DEXA scans. Jamie Alderton was crazy shredded at 10.8%. For max strength gains and general well being I try only dropping below 10% for shorter periods of bold flash like 1 month out of every 4.

7,5% is super shredded...and is not optimal for mountain climbing in high altitudes (and not even super healthy on the long run) but hey to follow in Alex Honnold footsteps that's what you need :)

Valerie Orsoni Page Perso wrote: 7,5% is super shredded

The reason I got this test done was because my favorite long-time partner saw how I looked at my current weight and got _scared_ by me talking about losing more weight to get my BMI down to a (supposed) "serious climbers" BMI range.

But no doubt dropping 8-12 pounds to reach my current weight has correlated with significant improvement in my (indoor) climbing performance during this winter.

I'm never going to have anything like top Sport-climbing performance numbers because of obvious biochemical and physiological disadvantages -- and because I just know too many other ways to have fun, so I can't motivate that level of focus. But losing weight does help all my non-Sport-climbing performances also (ski mountaineering and long scrambling / solo / trail-running and cross-country ski skating), so I've decided to embrace it.

Ken

I'm no friend of the lower body fat spectrum. I seem to lose stamina if I get too far below about 15%, based on the pinch test. And I climb as hard now as I ever have. I will admit that I do very little sport climbing and almost all multi-pitch trad and rope soloing single pitch.

I feel weak when I am always hungry. Plus my wife hates it when she can see my hip bones...she says they give her bruises   

Lets see dem abs!

Jaren Watson wrote: 7.5% is bodybuilding competition level leanness, and those guys drop down for shows but don’t stay there. A few top-tier men go even lower than this, but they walk around at a significantly higher percentage.

Hyper focus on the percentage rather than a performance goal, e. g., dropping weight to redpoint a project, strikes me as disordered behavior.

One of my former employees who competed locally and then nationally used a lot of diuretics to get a really lean look. On top of the 'riods and GH I would think it wasn't really good for his overall health, but he was massive. All he ever ate was skinless chicken and steamed broccoli. And about 50 pills.