Low Body Fats in Athletes

Low Body Fats in Athletes

Introduction

Sports performance depends on the skills- and health-related factors of fitness such as reaction time, body composition coordination, speed, balance, power and agility. And all components rely on body composition to some extent. To maintain fundamental operation, each human requires a particular amount of body fat, and more often, athletes are a group of individuals that need to watch their body fat regularly (Shephard, 2017). This is because they are negatively impacted significantly with a higher body fat percentage, and therefore, each athlete needs to approach weight loss and gain with a lot of attention. Failure to adhere to this can result in severe consequences such as muscle loss as well as effect training negatively.

Advantages of low body fat

To some extent, almost every fitness aspect relies on body composition and the requirements of most games demand that athletes maintain standard levels of body composition. One of the merits of low body fat in athletes is that it helps increase the development of power and strength because they are related to the size of the muscle (Shephard, 2017). Low body fat results in cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance, development of speed and agility.

Disadvantages of low body fat

An athlete’s body should be at its full potential to perform as required and maintain body fat is one of the ways of achieving this. Because low body fat makes most athletes prone to severe heart conditions because the ability of the cardiovascular system to operate is typically affected (Bradley, 2017). Moreover, the athletes are faced with frequent energy levels plummets because when their fat levels are low, they have no reserve energy stores and their bodies are not able to operate at optimal levels as they are starving from energy.

References

Bradley, W. (2017). Investigations into the physiological and metabolic demands of elite rugby players: understanding how best to fuel the athlete (Doctoral dissertation, Liverpool John Moores University).

Shephard, R. J. (2017). NARRATIVE REVIEW. How should we assess body fatness? 2. Quantitative field methods are available to the epidemiologist and the practitioner. The Health & Fitness Journal of Canada, 10(4), 45-97.