Ideal racing weight / BMI for runners
Options
Replies
-
Thank you everyone for your input on this. Thinking about your replies, it sounds like I should try to figure out my body fat %. I currently have a bmi of 21.4, but I really have no idea how much of that is lean mass and how much is "excess fat"...
That being said, it also sounds like proper training and increasing mileage are probably going to have a much more significant impact on my running performance than weight loss per se (especially at my level). So I'll try to focus on that, rather than fiscating on the scale so much
0 -
Thanks for the links - very interesting to see the comparison across sports!I offer no opinions other than what has already been stated above. You may however find this data of interest:
http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/bmis-champions
http://www.runnersworld.com/womens-running/bmis-of-champions-womens-edition0 -
I used my scales (they said 24% shock horror) and the calipers (they said 13%, I love them, they are my best friends) and I split the difference and decided it was about 18% (am not very good with numbers so please don't laugh too hard if all this is wrong)
then I did matt fitzgerald's thing to calculate my lard mass eg if you are 120lbs with 18% body fat then: 120 x 0.18 = 21.6
subtract that from your whole weight to find lean mass of, for example, 98 lbs
decide on a target (he suggests for women aged 20-29 anything between 10 and 16%) then express that lean mass goal in decimal form - so for example if you aim for 11% body fat then 100-11 = 0.89
then divide current lean mass by goal percentage
eg: 98 divided by 0.89 = 110 lbs
and that would be your target weight
but when I did this I must have made a mistake as it took me almost back to my birth weight so am probably going to not aim for that just yet!
I used the tables in the back of his book to set a goal BF%, worked out well for me. Good reading if you are looking to expand your knowledge of dietary requirements and why good food is important, bad if you are looking for a set in stone diet plan.0 -
Good reading if you are looking to expand your knowledge of dietary requirements and why good food is important, bad if you are looking for a set in stone diet plan.
Embarrassingly I think I would like a set in stone diet plan. Otherwise I just eat refried beans or pizza until I get somewhere near my daily calories (this might just be a winter/holiday/virus thing), yeah, I would benefit from a diet plan at the moment.0 -
So i just got the calipers put on me and they told me I'm at 9% body fat. I had no idea I was down so low already. I was about to embark on a full court press fitness crusade lol.
Curious what scales others are using and if they've fond them to be accurate... or at least, more accurate than my Tanita, which had me at 20% this morning.
Now I'm suddenly concerned about having too LITTLE body fat. I'm 10 pounds heavier right now than I was in Fall during racing season last year, lord only knows what my percentage was then. Trying to figure out what my fitness goals should be at this point. :indifferent:0 -
There is a book called "Racing Weight" by Matt Fitzgerald. Get it. 0
-
Thank you everyone for your input on this. Thinking about your replies, it sounds like I should try to figure out my body fat %. I currently have a bmi of 21.4, but I really have no idea how much of that is lean mass and how much is "excess fat"...
That being said, it also sounds like proper training and increasing mileage are probably going to have a much more significant impact on my running performance than weight loss per se (especially at my level). So I'll try to focus on that, rather than fiscating on the scale so much
So, I think there's something key hidden here. Can you train well at that "low" weight? Personally, when I've been scraping the bottom of the "healthy" BMI range, I've been prone to hypoglycemia and I get too sluggish to train well, or I skip runs that don't line up perfectly with my meals and snacks.
Anecdotally (I'm an ultrarunner), the ladies and I seem to notice that the thinnest among us tend to get injured more often, and we've been wondering if the extra layer of fat is somehow helpful with recovery. But that could be coincidence.0 -
Not sure about BMI - but when I went for a running assessment last year, they said that 8-10% was the ideal body fat %age for a male distance runner. May be different for female runner, though (most likely more)
Thanks for your input on this! Just curious - where did you go to do the "running assessment" and what did this entail, if you don't mind me asking?
Not at all.
I went to an Asic shop (in London), where they
- Weigh you and estimate body fat using some hi-tech looking machine
- They then put you on a treadmill, put a mask on you to analyze your breathing, monitor your heart rate, and then make you run on a treadmill, slowly upping the pace (until you surrender or fall off!)
- They also film your feet, looking for where your feet strike etc, as well as using sensors to check your arm swing etc
- After all that, then test your leg strength (looking for left right balance).
At the end of all that, they write up a report an give you tips. They also predict how long you'd take to run a half marathon and a marathon (they were scarily accurate with me on the marathon last year - within two minutes!)
If you like I can send you some excerpts of their report0 -
So, I think there's something key hidden here. Can you train well at that "low" weight? Personally, when I've been scraping the bottom of the "healthy" BMI range, I've been prone to hypoglycemia and I get too sluggish to train well, or I skip runs that don't line up perfectly with my meals and snacks.
Anecdotally (I'm an ultrarunner), the ladies and I seem to notice that the thinnest among us tend to get injured more often, and we've been wondering if the extra layer of fat is somehow helpful with recovery. But that could be coincidence.
Interesting observation about low weight and increased rate of injury. I wonder if there is relating to differences in nutrition between the medium-weight and low-weight runners? I.e. More calories and protein to help with post-run healing...just a thought?
For me personally, I definitely find that I can train better at my current weight than when I was heavier. When I had a BMI of 26.6 running felt impossible (but I was also very out of shape and ate cr@p). At BMI 24.0 running felt okay but I was still pretty sluggish. Now at BMI around 21-22 range I feel much more efficient and energetic on my feet. But I don't know, really, if that's because I've been running longer and have built up my weekly mileage, or if that is truly due to the weight loss itself.
Either way, what I'm at right now seems to be good. Maybe I'd see improvements if I got down to BMI around 20.0 but maybe I'd start to get more hypoglycemic and/or injuries...so staying as is seems like a good plan for now at least :-)0 -
It strikes me as nicely ironic that the measure that almost everyone cares about, body fat percentage, is so difficult to get! As far as I can see all the ways of measuring body fat are some combination of expensive, impractical and inaccurate.0
-
So, I think there's something key hidden here. Can you train well at that "low" weight? Personally, when I've been scraping the bottom of the "healthy" BMI range, I've been prone to hypoglycemia and I get too sluggish to train well, or I skip runs that don't line up perfectly with my meals and snacks.
Anecdotally (I'm an ultrarunner), the ladies and I seem to notice that the thinnest among us tend to get injured more often, and we've been wondering if the extra layer of fat is somehow helpful with recovery. But that could be coincidence.
Interesting observation about low weight and increased rate of injury. I wonder if there is relating to differences in nutrition between the medium-weight and low-weight runners? I.e. More calories and protein to help with post-run healing...just a thought?
For me personally, I definitely find that I can train better at my current weight than when I was heavier. When I had a BMI of 26.6 running felt impossible (but I was also very out of shape and ate cr@p). At BMI 24.0 running felt okay but I was still pretty sluggish. Now at BMI around 21-22 range I feel much more efficient and energetic on my feet. But I don't know, really, if that's because I've been running longer and have built up my weekly mileage, or if that is truly due to the weight loss itself.
Either way, what I'm at right now seems to be good. Maybe I'd see improvements if I got down to BMI around 20.0 but maybe I'd start to get more hypoglycemic and/or injuries...so staying as is seems like a good plan for now at least :-)
It was 20ish and below where I was hypoglycemic.... but that's "race weight". The 21-22 range is a good place for me because I can train harder. But I'm never going to win anything, KWIM?0 -
So, I think there's something key hidden here. Can you train well at that "low" weight? Personally, when I've been scraping the bottom of the "healthy" BMI range, I've been prone to hypoglycemia and I get too sluggish to train well, or I skip runs that don't line up perfectly with my meals and snacks.
Anecdotally (I'm an ultrarunner), the ladies and I seem to notice that the thinnest among us tend to get injured more often, and we've been wondering if the extra layer of fat is somehow helpful with recovery. But that could be coincidence.
I've recently read a couple of books & articles on athlete nutrition that provided some interesting information behind this for women endurance athletes. They were written or edited by Dr Louise Burke who is the head of Sports Nutrition with the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport). The books were comprehensive enough for anyone wanting to learn to follow and some of the chapters are available online.
The Complete Guide to Food for Sports Performance or Clinical Sports Nutrition0 -
Can you tell me more, Bounce2?
If you take a look at some of the women who are winning ultras, SOME of them appear to be in the BMI 18/19 range.... but most look like (and some even report this) they are in the 21/22 range. It could be that the talent pool isn't as great in ultrarunning as in marthoning right now, but it could also be that we really need the extra fat!0 -
Can you tell me more, Bounce2?
If you take a look at some of the women who are winning ultras, SOME of them appear to be in the BMI 18/19 range.... but most look like (and some even report this) they are in the 21/22 range. It could be that the talent pool isn't as great in ultrarunning as in marthoning right now, but it could also be that we really need the extra fat!
So I'm not sure if you could use the links I sent via PM or if they were useful or not, but I suggest that if you have access to a University library or know someone who has, looking into more current research by Anne Loucks could be beneficial (or for the OP on ideal BMI).
Perhaps look here:
Energy balance and body composition in sports and exercise
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0264041031000140518#.UtcnGdJDuSo
The female athlete triad: Components, nutrition issues, and health consequences
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410701607320#.UtcnUNJDuSo
Low Energy Availability in the Marathon and Other Endurance Sports
http://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-200737040-00019
Energy availability in athletes
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2011.588958#.Utcn5tJDuSo
If nothing else these articles are interesting to anyone interested in sports science/nutrition 0 -
Can you tell me more, Bounce2?
If you take a look at some of the women who are winning ultras, SOME of them appear to be in the BMI 18/19 range.... but most look like (and some even report this) they are in the 21/22 range. It could be that the talent pool isn't as great in ultrarunning as in marthoning right now, but it could also be that we really need the extra fat!
So I'm not sure if you could use the links I sent via PM or if they were useful or not, but I suggest that if you have access to a University library or know someone who has, looking into more current research by Anne Loucks could be beneficial (or for the OP on ideal BMI).
Perhaps look here:
Energy balance and body composition in sports and exercise
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0264041031000140518#.UtcnGdJDuSo
The female athlete triad: Components, nutrition issues, and health consequences
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410701607320#.UtcnUNJDuSo
Low Energy Availability in the Marathon and Other Endurance Sports
http://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-200737040-00019
Energy availability in athletes
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2011.588958#.Utcn5tJDuSo
If nothing else these articles are interesting to anyone interested in sports science/nutrition
Wow, thanks! I didn't get a PM, BTW.
Yes, I do have access to a university library. I'm a biology professor!
But that makes me embarrassed because I really had no idea that there was a body of research to back up what my ultrarunning lady friends have been saying. 0 -
It's all good, I was procrastinating the other day instead of writing my thesis and came across these. The other links were just to Australian research that the head of the AIS sports nutrition had been associated with. I'm not sure that you will find exactly what you are looking for but hopefully there is some information there that will help or some references within the articles that will lead you in a better direction.0
-
My current BMI is 21.5 and I am doing the absolute best running of my life. My BMI calculated at 5' 7.5" and a weight of 138-140 pounds.
Now my doctor advised me not to lose any more weight. However, I do wonder if I was to get down to 135 or 130, how much faster would I become... and would it mean the difference between a BQ or not?
RIght now, I am focused on better training to get faster. But the topic of ideal weight does hold my interest. Especially if I could drop weight just for 1 goal race, and be able to BQ just once.0 -
I have a bmi of 26.6 at the moment, and to be honest it is embarrassing being seen out running. When I have been 21lbs lighter I got close to a 2hr half marathon. Can only dream of that at the moment. I have body fat percentage of 44 which obviously why I am so slow.0
-
Stick with it Marathongirl1 - it will be worth it in the end!
Very interesting topic - I know that I was MUCH faster with a BMI of around 20 than now - there again, I was also training and eating better too! I do think it's easier not carting around extra weight and when I got my *rse back into gear my joints felt like they were feeling the extra weight as well.
I do however get thoroughly cheesed off with my work colleagues (who are generally sedentary and think I'm mad for exercising at all) commenting on my weight and saying that I'm too skinny when I'm at proper running weight, they just don't understand that I want to run well, it's not an image thing! GGGRRR!0
