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Does Fat effect athletic Performance

How Much Does Fat effect Athletic Performance?

I stumbled upon this excellent article by Builtlean.com. That I would like to share with the athletic community. After an athlete, I’m helping with a weights program advised me they ran there best 100 and 200 times at 115lbs and 120lbs. And now they feel heavy at 125lbs. It got me thinking about how much Does Fat effect athletic performance in Sprints?

While I will next be looking at diet programs to get him down to 118-119lbs for UAAP which this article has not yet addressed. And I will push through within my next write up.

In essence, if you can drop weight and maintain muscle and strength you will increase performance.

The most fascinating piece of this article is this

How much weight do you need to add to a horse to slow it down?

Yes, a horse is a 1300lb animal, but…

If you guessed 200lb, you would be wrong.

If you guessed 50lb, you would be wrong again.

What about 30lb? Nope, that’s not right either.

The answer is 2-5lb is all the extra weight needed to slow down a horse so that it loses a race. In fact, only 2lb extra will slow down a horse roughly 8 feet, or one horse length.

The Analysis: Testing Body Fat & Performance With A Weighted Vest

After learning this intriguing information about racehorses, Dr. Todd reasoned even gaining a few pounds of fat for an athlete could have significant performance implications.

He decided to put his reasoning to the test by loading 170-pound athletes with 3.4 pounds (or 2% body fat) and having them complete power-related tests, which he published in a research paper.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the results:

For a 170 pound athlete, a fat gain of 3.4 pounds (2%), could result in a vertical jump height loss of 2 inches, and a 40 yard dash time increase of 0.26 seconds. If you are not familiar with the 40 yard dash, 0.26 seconds is an eternity.

You can read the Full Article Here



