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