You can control this way if your body improves or not

By ChulucanasGym

Everyone who goes to the gym or does any type of training  is expectant about his or her progress. Have I overcome something I couldn’t overcome before, am I on the same spot when I started, or, in the worst scenario, am not I closer where I started neither?

The problem about measuring our progress is how much objectivity we put to our appreciation. In that sense, the first mistake we use to commit is trusting in the bare-eye, in what we see on the mirror, and almost never the diagnosis we get is reliable. Then, the prognosis we set uses to be wrong.

Is there any objective form to control our progress? Yes, there is. The anthropometrics is the discipline that helps us to have information adjusted to the reality on we can do our analysis and set up our strategies for improving or correcting our physical achievement. This information must be key for your and your trainer at the time to define if it’s necessary to adjust the training routine, the diet, the lifestyle in general, or everything.

Coming up next, we introduce you those key indicators you can control from your home, inclusive, and those will give you that objective vision about what is happening to your body. Look at the data you get – they can’t be taken isolated but grouped. So, the conclusions you arrive and the action plans you take will be more accurate than acting by simple supposition or guessing.

Height

This measure is basic because it serves to calculate other body measures such as absolutes, indexes, and percentages, we will talk about later. You can use a stadiometer, that is the specialized tool in measuring your height, although you can also take the job to paste a measuring tape on the wall or to paint a number scale in centimeters (or feet and inches in the U.S.) setting the ground as the point zero.

Next, take off your shoes, raise naturally, stick your body to the stadiometer or the wall column. Over 20 years old, the height is unvariable for both sexes, at least until the senescence when it can reduce because you will lose bone and muscular tissue.

Body Weight (BH)

It’s a first progress indicator, but alone is not enough because it only will say us if we have increased or have decreased respect to the last measuring. However, it offers us first clues.

The manner of taking it is as easy as put you up on the weighing machine and waiting for the reading in kilos and grams (pounds and ounces in the U.S.). What you have to be careful for sure is  how you take your weight: you ever have to take your shoes off and put on the device; don’t worry about your clothes (if sportswear) because the adding increase is irrelevant, unless you’re a professional or contesting athlete or bodybuilder, and it will be actually necessary you take off almost all your clothes or get naked for having the correct number. Of course, it will depend on how much privacy the place has and how much you trust in the one who could be with you.

The bathroom weighing machines use not to be much accurate as the clinic weighing machines that might be at every good gymnasium. Some electronic devices are only reliable as much as the manufacturer warns it so; then, read the instructions carefully before considering it as reliable and compare many readings taken with different devices to know what is the most accurate. In the same way, we suggest you have a monthly or biweekly record of your weight. Some trainers probably will demand you to have a weekly control if you’re training for a competition. Obbey them.

Absolute Body Measures (ABM)

We call them absolute body measures or ABM because they give us advance or slowing down indicators what only apply to our body as much as parts of it have got wider or have got thinner than a previous control. For that, what interests us is to have countour or perimeter measures expressed in centimeters (or inches in the U.S.), those put in a table give us a mathematical idea of your body volume. Who are dedicated to be models or bodybuilders or athletes know perfectly what we mean. However, a proffessional physical trainer will have here compplementary information to the BW  through he or she can evaluate the effectiveness of the training plan, the diet, or the lifestyle.

The best manner to take these measures  is by using a measuring tape that is put over the skin, not stretching it or releasing it too much, but letting it adjusts naturally to the shape of your body. The precission of the measure gets when the tape makes direct contact with your skin. If there are clothes between them, the excess must be depreciated or definetly avoided. Another trick, if you want more precission, is taking the measure before having meals or starting your training session. And if you still want more precission, take three measures of the same zone and then go to have the average for eliminating the excess or default error.

The measures are taken on specific areas of your body. Remember we need to know the contours, in other words you have to take the measuring tape and round each part of the body, going around it. We are not interested on lineal measures (as taken in dressing), we want to have an idea about volume. The places where those measures are gotten:

• Shoulders: Take as reference the part where it is seen more prominent and put there the start line of the tape. Then, pass it under your two clavicles until arriving to the most prominent part of your another shoulder. From here, make the tape to run over the upper part of your backuntil meeting the pointwhere the tape begins. For you to have an idea if you have taken the measure correctly, if you’re a male and you’re 170 centimeters or 5 feet 7 inches height, your shoulders perimeter should be between 118 to 120 centimeters or 46.5 to 47.1 inches. However, this measure is relative according to your age, body shape, and sport goalds.
• Chest: Whether you are a male or a female, take as a reference the part where it is more prominent (probably the nipples in both cases) and go the tape around you including your scapulas. For the women, taking this measure will be easy because it belongs to the same like the bust contour, very required in dressing or beauty contests. If you’re a 170-cm or 5’7-feet male height, your chest contour could be between 106 and 108 centimeters, or 41.2 and 42.5 inches, but we remind you the measures are relative, as we clarified you on the previous point.
• Arms and forearms: The biceps and triceps allow your to know how you are in arms, so you will have to round them at the same time with the measuring tape and take the reading. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, it is possible your arms grow until 38 or 39 centimeters, or 15 or 15.4 inchescontour. In forearms case, take as a reference its most prominent part and put you the tape around, although this measure is almost never used.
• Waist:    In the males, it’s taken as a reference a point 3 centimeters or 1.2 inches below your belly button, and in the females, the zone where it becomes strechest, 2 centimeters or 0.8 inches above the belly button in general. Then, you take the tape around including the lower back in the case of males and the medium back in the case of women. The World Health Organization recommends the males should not be more than 95 centimeters or 37.4 inches waist contour, and the females no more than 65 centimeters or 25.6 inches, although not much because of a beauty criterion but preventing many conditions caused by the overweight and the obesity.
• Belly: In the case of women it’s the same than the taken for waist in men. Basically, it looks to know how much flat your belly is, in mathematical terms, obviously.
• Hips: In male as well as female, it’s taken as a reference the most prominent part of your gluteus, rounding both sides where the pelvic bone is more prominent, passing over your pubis. If you’re a male (and adding the squads, your genetics helps you too), it is possible you reach 102 centimeters or 40.2 inches contour if you’re 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height.
• Thighs: It’s the section of your leg that begins in your pelvis and ends in your knee. Look for its widest part and round it with the measuring tape. Look! You have to take just one thigh per measuring, never both at the same time. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, your thigh can be between 59 and 60 centimeters or 23.2 and 23.6 inches at least, although it’s going to depend on your kind of training. What is clear, indeed, is that for every 3 centimeters or 1.2 inches of thigh you get, your arm can not be more than 2 centimeters or 0.8 inches.
• Calf: It’s the part of your leg between your knee and your ankle. Look for its more prominent part and round it here with the measuring tape. As equal as the thigh, both calves never must measured at the same time but one at once. If you’re a male 170 centimeters or 5’7 feet height, your calf can be 37 to 38 centimeters or 14.6 to 15 inches at least. Yes, at least.

Indexes And Body Percentages

If you think it’s too many Maths for today, we have not finished yet. There are more specialized indicators those allow you to measure your progress, especially if you are in a professional or competition training environment.

• Body Mass Index (BMI): Basically, it gives us a more accurate idea if you are your ideal weight, or if you are overweight or in obesity. It is calculated by dividing your weight in kilos by your height’s square. Let’s suppose you’re a male 170 centimeters (1.7 meters or 5’7 feet) and you’re 70 kilos (154.3 pounds), your BMI will be 24.2 – it’s inside the healthy.  If it would exceed beyond 30, we could talk  about obesity.
• Body Fat Percentage (BFP): It’s a more specialized measure that, as its name says, looks for knowing if there is a healthy balance between the body fat you need for your vital functions and the fat you store to do your elective functions –we mean- as training. Here Maths are not enough but we need to use special procedures and devices for having us a reading. It is obtained by multiplying the quantity of your body fat by the quantity of your body mass and all that divided by 100. Women will ever have a BFP greater than men because some fat is reserved for reproductive functions. About percentages, it is considered that athletes go from 10% to 15% depending on the physical activity they do. A professional trainer will educate you about how to control your BFP for optimizing better your training, although will combine it with diet and improvement in your lifestyle. In fact, it is probable this catch more attention.

So, if you only trusted in your mirror, your weighing machine, or your measuring tape, you see we have to combine all this and much more in the end if we want to measure progress. And, by the way, it’s not a bad idea you feed all your data on an electronic  spreadsheet that allow you to view graphically if you improve, you keep, or you need to work harder. Yes, it’s a lot of work but you deserve it well. It also will give you more conscience about you, especially if you add some psychological advisory to see if there is any motivation problem, or something like this.

Like everytime, we will be pleased to know your questions here on the comments, or on our Twitter account, or by writing us at chulucanasgym@gmail.com

The models featured on this post are Pedro Changanaquí, Fran Checa, Alfredo Rivera, and Anderson Sandoya