Digging into the Bodyrecomposition Mailbag
Hi Lyle, I recently did a dexa scan to get an estimate of my body fat % – I’m female, 28 years old, weight train regularly. My dexa scan results: 5’3, weighing 59kg and an ‘average’ of 20% body fat. I say ‘average’ as the scan showed that the body fat % in my upper body (arms, torso) was 14% while my lower body (hips, thighs) was 27%. Is it fair for me to take the average of these and consider myself to be 20% body fat?
Squats Hormones and Growth
Now, the general argument for the whole squats/lower body training and growth has to do with the hormonal effect. This was an idea that came around in the 80’s and has kept going since then. And not only did it provide what I consider a red herring for training for the past 4 decades but showed how not to do science. Researchers had observed that, generally speaking, bodybuilders of the day were bigger than powerlifters. We might debate this but let’s roll with it.
Changing Technique Part 3
A factor that I think is often forgotten is the impact of training age and goals in the choice of whether or not to even consider changing someone’s technique. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, training age refers to how many years someone has been training and this is in contrast to biological age which is who old someone is. A 24 year old who has been training since they were 4 has a training age of 20 years; 24 year old who has been training since they were 22 has a training age of 2 years.
Changing Technique Part 2
But people walk into the weight room every day and not having a coach is more the norm than not. Olympic lifting is a possible exception (and I can usually tell 9 out of 10 times if someone comes from a true OL background by how they squat and lift). And this is where a lot of the Internet arguments and overall issues show up. This isn’t to say it doesn’t apply to other sports of course; for all I know people on ping-pong forums sit and analyze technique with the same arguments as I see on weight training forums. Ping pong players please chime in in the comments.
