NSCA Mid-Atlantic Conference - Body Composition

I attended my first Strength and Conditioning conference this past weekend. It was put on by my certifying agency the National Strength and Conditioning Association. They are one of the leading bodies in terms of S&C research, so I was expecting big things from the 12-hour conference.

Things didn't start too well for the conference in my opinion. Well, the fact that I was the first one there says a lot... Dr. Todd Miller, GW's representative for the conference, was there to greet me, but none of the NSCA folks were. After 45 minutes of waiting, they finally walked in and started registration. Due to the delay, our first presenter started late. This was unfortunate, because I believe the first session was the best of the day.

Dr. Miller was that presenter, and he seemed to be the best prepared speaker of the bunch. He designed the Exercise Science graduate program at GW and is one of the faculty members in their program. His topic was in regards to body composition testing of athletes before, during, and after their seasons.

Here are the two abstracts he referenced in his session (as you can see, he was one of the main researchers in each):

The effects of training history, player position, and body composition on exercise performance in collegiate football players.

Seasonal changes in VO2max among Division 1A collegiate women soccer players.

Dr. Miller's main argument began with an overview of the second study. Female soccer players were found to have lost lean muscle and gained fat mass over the course of their soccer season. This could be due to the adjustment of their workout schedule and the assumption that soccer players work as hard in practice as they do in the weight room (therefore causing the coach to schedule less anaerobic sessions during the season). The change in body composition could prove to be a detriment to the athlete's performance, but injury could prove to be even more detrimental. Although no data was available to show us whether these additional sessions may make an athlete any more or less injury-prone, it does seem a good argument for maintaining performance and body composition through the season.

His second study covers the addition of an external load on the speed of an athlete. The external load would represent fat mass, and would have to be done this way to best replicate the addition of fat mass onto the body. Obviously he couldn't have shown the differences in the same athlete with less muscle and more fat, because a study of that size would just be asking for inconsistencies and it would be extremely hard to create.

It was at this point that Dr. Miller brought up a very interesting real world application of this. Thoroughbred horses are sometimes handicapped to make their races more competitive. These 1300 lbs, 3% body fat horses are only handicapped 2 pounds to slow them down by 8 feet over the course of a mile. Only 2 pounds!

The translation to humans is pretty dire. If a 130 pound person added 2 pounds of fat and didn't lose any muscle we could potentially expect them to lose up to 80 feet over the course of a mile. That's quite a difference. The football players in Dr. Miller's study lost around .25-.5 seconds in a 40 yard dash by adding 2 pounds of external load. In a high stakes athletic competition, that's a big deal.

So, the take home message for those coaches out there? Take body comps often and continue to push your athletes in the weight room through the season. Dr. Miller recommends prescribing athletes mandatory cardio sessions if an athlete's fat mass begins to rise during the season (something low-impact like the bike or elliptical). A well-designed nutrition plan and education could also serve your athletes well in this regard.