Are you trying to get ripped for summer?
Or maybe add some new muscle but you feel like you are spinning your wheels every time
you step on the scale?
Well I am going to show you today why that could be lying to you and the three words
you need to get in mind are right here!
BODY FAT PERCENTAGE
What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM
I mentioned it in the open, Body Fat Percentage.
That's where your focus should be, whether or not you are trying to get ripped for the
summer or you are trying to add lean muscle mass.
Now why is that?
I just said it right there in the answer, lean muscle mass.
When you step on a scale, you are looking at the overall weight of your body.
It has no regard for the body composition, meaning how much lean mass and how much fat
mass.
And when we are talking about AthleanX and all the transformations that guys make on
this program, our focus is solely on what is happening to body composition.
How are we getting guys lean at the same time that we are helping guys to build all new
muscle.
So let me show you an example of that, to underscore exactly what it is I am talking
about.
Determining Lean Body Mass
Let's say you start out at 180 pounds and you are 20% body fat.
Ok, 20% of 180 would mean that you carry 36 pounds of fat.
Now the rest of your body, your lean body mass, is everything else, ok.
It's your organs, it's your skeleton, it's your skin, it's your blood, it's the water
in your body, all that together along with you muscle content.
Ok.
Let's say you went through your whole 90 days, and you wound up at 180 pounds again, but
you had 10% body fat.
You lost 10% fat.
Now you are down to 18 pounds of fat mass.
So when you look at the comparison, this guy, let's see, 31,50, 144 pounds of lean body
mass, in the first case.
And then after, 21,60,162.
So there would be basically an 18 pound increase in lean body mass.
Now we know that when you add muscle, muscle is a great depot for water.
And we are going to talk about that and the importance when we talk about measuring body
fat in a second.
So some of this is going to be the water that is also carried and absorbed by the new added
muscle that you have.
But you can see how this 180 pounder is going to be the skinny fat guy.
And this 180 pounder is going to look a hell of a lot different.
So right away, you have to realize that the scale would have told these two guys that
they were the same.
Our body body fat measure is going to tell these two guys they look drastically different.
So now let me cover a couple of ways that we can measure the body fat, because I know
you guys want to learn how to do that.
And of course, we don't all have thousands and thousands of dollars to go get into an
underwater testing environment, something like that.
So let's take a look at what we have at our disposal, to see how accurate they can be.
Testing Body Fat % At Home
Ok, so if you want to measure our body fat and you are not going to run out and jump
into a bod-pod or do some hydrostatic testing.
You want to get an idea or sense of where you are, because I have told you, it is an
important way to measure your progress, you have some options for the home environment.
Right here first and foremost, so you are going to see that not all of our options are
good ones.
Because these online calculator that I'm sure you have seen, you can completely disregard
those guys and throw them away.They are absolute crap.
Why?
Because they are basically telling you that they can determine what your body fat level
is by knowing what your age is, your height, your weight, and what your activity level
is.
And whether your activity falls into like these three broad categories of moderately
active, not really active or very active.
Right.
This is not an accurate way to get your body fat, so don't use those, don't let them discourage
you and don't let them encourage you.
Get rid of them entirely.
Bioelectrical Impedance
Now what is that.
Got one here, It is one of these types of devices, the kind that you hold in your hands.
Now you can also find the scales and they are doing the same exact thing.
But the way that these work, is they basically have these panels here that send out a low
level electrical signal.
Now the same thing if you were stand on it.
It goes into one foot or one hand and it measures how long it takes to travel to the other side.
Now fat is going to slow things down, muscle being a depot for water is going to speed
things up.
We all know how much water likes electricity, right.
So, it is going to conduct that.
If you have more muscle, more body water inside of those muscle will transmit that quicker
and that will give you the difference in the body fat measurement that you see on these
things.
Same thing if you were to stand on the scale.
Ok, same principle.
But what is problematic about this is, that there is so many things that can impact how
quickly that signal is transferred.
Even from the surface of our hands, so if you're a guy that does work out a lot and
you have got callosus all over your fingers, depending upon where you hold this thing that
is going to impact upon how quickly it can transfer through the skin and get to the other
side.
Same thing I just said, how you hold it.
The instructions of this thing are like a 20 page manual on making sure you are not
holding it in here, you are holding it out, your hand is not tilted, or your hand is not
twisted.
It's like it has it's own set of recipe here, instructions to get through this.
Now, I'll show you how this leads into the next problem that allows these home devices,
is the differences in results that you will see.
So I am going to turn this thing on and take my body fat measurement through here.
Ok, so I am going to get my hands out in front of me, it is measuring, ok.
It has got me at 10.5 is the top number there.
Alright.
Now I am pretty confident that I am not at 10.5% body fat.
We'll rely on the next tool here to tell us if I really am.
Skinfold Calipers
And this here is skin calipers.
Now the Skindex is the exact same tool that we used to use in major league baseball.
To take our intake body fat in spring training, make sure we did this throughout the season.
Now, as I said guys, I don't tell you about things that I don't do myself here, whether
that be from nutrition, working out, supplementation.
Well the same thing with body fat testing.
If I say it's important, IT'S IMPORTANT!
And I think you guys should be doing it and we were doing it every month in baseball,
just to make sure that our athletes were where we needed them to be.
With skin caliper testing here, you are going to get a bit more accurate but the problem
is, you can have a lot of variation here between the tester.
You certainly don't want to have your buddy testing you and then you testing yourself.
Because the difference in how you do it can vary dramatically.
So you want to make sure that you are always doing it.
It is not all that easy to do on yourself, but I am going to try here to see where I
am at with the calipers.
Again, chest measurement, abdomen, leg.
You are supposed to basically pinch, and then you can flex so you make sure you are not
grabbing any muscle, but you flex until you can pinch away, grab.
You are supposed to be a little bit below the fold but I can't get underneath there
so I am going to grab right down here.
Lock that in.
Here, The abdomen again flex, in here.
Then finally with the leg, on the thigh.
5.8.
So as you can see, I was able to drop almost half of my body fat.
I don't remember what it was 10.8 or 10.9, now down to 5.8 without even having to do
a single workout.
So you can see that it is not all that accurate.
But one thing you can do, if you have one of these devices, just try to do it sort of
on it's own merit.
How does it compare to itself, you know your measurements from one day to the next.
Or even if you don't want to rely on the fold, the skin fold measurement to do the entire
formula, just do the folds themselves and see if the thicknesses go down on the folds
each time you do that.
So even if you don't have a real expensive set like that , you picked one up for 10 bucks
at Sports Authority, you are just trying to measure the skin fold thickness at the different
locations.
And as long as you can keep that consistent where you are measuring each time, that is
at least going to give you a little bit of an idea of progress.
Rely on The Eyes!
Now I mentioned the last one here, it is sort of the one that is not named.
Because it is one that we take for granted but I think could be the one of the most accurate
ways to measure where we are at and where we are going.
And that is to rely on the eyes.
I always say that.
You can look into a mirror and see a lot more and tell a lot more about your progress, objectively
than any other way of trying to measure it here with your devices.
Why is that?
Because the mirror will tell you where you are at.
You are going to see.
You can also see clothes fit, clothes can start to fit a lot looser or you can start
to see your arms fill your sleeves more.
The idea is you want to find out what it is that you look like so you can identify where
you want to be.
So what I did was, if you look below this video guys, there is a link to a blog that
I wrote that put together a chart, a visual chart, a cheat sheet for you.
Where you can look and see, what does certain body fat percentages look like, this is for
men.
What do they look like, so you can more easily identify where you want to get to, ok, in
the next 90 day.
We even have identified the Athlean range, in between that sort of 4 and 8% or 8 to 10%.
That's where we try, that is our zone guys, that is the zone for our program.
To get guys into that zone.
I don't care if you are starting out at 25 to 30%, or if you are starting out higher
than 30%, or if you are just on the outside of that in the 11-12 range.
Our goal is to get you in there and to maximize your lean muscle at the same time.
So that you are just not becoming , what I said, skinny or skinny fat, but you are getting
in that zone. and you are being ripped and athletic at the same time.
Because that is what it is all about.
So if you guys haven't already, if you, first of all, if you are in need of a program to
get you there, then by all means, AthleanX is the program for you.
You just got to go over to the website right now, you can actually get there by clicking
on that link below.
You are going to go to that blog, see what that cheat sheet is like and identify, do
two things for me, identify where you are at now and then identify where you want to
be.
Once you know where you have to go then you know how to get there.
And it is my job as a coach to get you there.
And that is what AthleanX is all about.
Hopefully you guys have found this video helpful, if you did make sure you leave a comment and
thumb it up for me.
At the same time, you know, investigate some of these things, see which one works the best
for you.
But the fact of the matter is, you could find some very greatly different results, depending
upon what you are using.
But the fact of the matter is sometimes when you rely on your eyes, you are going to get
even better and more consistent results.
Guys, I'll see you back here in seven days.
In the meantime I'll see you over at AthleanX.com