# Optimum Cyclist Bodyfat %



## phoehn9111 (May 11, 2005)

Is there any way (not requiring expensive testing
to estimate a range % that would be optimal?
What are the physical signs I have entered the
"margin" or slipped below it?
Intrested to know the tricks of the trade the
more experienced riders use to optimize
minimal bodyfat % and still maintain ride
intensity and performance levels, also recovery.


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## stevesbike (Jun 3, 2002)

the simplest way is to track your performance/recovery along with weight (using a power meter is the most accurate way since you can calculate power/weight) along with a log of health indicators. More generally, defining what's "optimal" will depend on what sort of racing you do, age, etc. Matt Fitzgerald's books on racing weight are useful for general guidelines.

In terms of getting too lean, it's pretty unlikely this will happen unless you are following an extremely regimented routine. 10% is pretty lean, but getting to below 5% is almost impossible without major sacrifices - and what's the point of being as lean as a TDF GC contender if you aren't riding the Tour? 

Also, you shouldn't assume that testing is necessarily expensive. There are often labs on university campuses that will do DXA scans for a reasonable price (e.g., there's one by me that does it for $50).


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

I'll second the recommendation for Racing Weight.

He does discuss the subject. The "too lean" BF% varies among individuals. But at a certain point you get sick easily, feel cold much of the time, and lack resiliency. Missing a meal is a catastrophe.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

phoehn9111 said:


> Is there any way (not requiring expensive testing
> to estimate a range % that would be optimal?
> What are the physical signs I have entered the
> "margin" or slipped below it?
> ...


When I see veins around my belly button and running under the collar bone I know I'm pretty much leaned out and any more will very likely result in sickness. 

Basically when you're seeing veins everywhere your body fat percentage is pretty dang low.


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## Peter P. (Dec 30, 2006)

Some of the training books address the body fat issue. Check them for a discussion. Here are some I recommend, with Monique Ryan's book probably being the best.

Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes, Monique Ryan.

Cyclist's Training Bible, Joe Friel

Base Building for Cyclists, Thomas Chapple.

From Inside the Cyclist I provide this summary: In 1977, a study of 40 "high caliber" U.S. cyclists was conducted to measure body fat levels. Here are the results:

First, the average American is 18-21%.

The mean percentage for the adult male cyclists was 11.1%. If I throw out the high and low extremes, the fat ranges were from 4-13%.

How to tell you're at the right body fat level: Your mom says you look skinny and pushes another plate of food in front of you.


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## PBL450 (Apr 12, 2014)

Kind of a fun piece... 

Body Fat Percentage Pictures of Men & Women - BuiltLean


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## phoehn9111 (May 11, 2005)

Wow, according to the pics I am nowhere near being in any danger
of the bottom, I'm looking not even 12%. Thanks very much, got
both the Fitzgerald and Ryan books.


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

East African distance runners in their 20s (the top in the business) have body fat around 8-9%. Keep in mind that these guys are even skinnier than even the top Tour cyclist climbers. So I would say that 8-9% is pretty much the lowest % of body fat practically achievable and on the border of desirable.

But if you're an American male weekend warrior age-group athlete in his mid30 to mid40, eating a diet that has excess calories (typical for Americans), you're not going to see 10% body fat, ever.

Also, what needs to be kept in mind is that just because a guy is skinny, it does not mean that his body fat will be low. The reason for this is that the subcutaneous fat layer (necessary for biological functions!) underneath a person's skin is pretty much has the same thickness between a marathoner runner and say a much heavier bodybuilder. So by relative amount, the skinnier marathon runner will have a higher percentage of fat in his skin relative to his body mass as compared to the bodybuilder. However, the bodybuilder will have more overall fat, and I will bet that the bodybuilder (even at lower %bodyfat) will actually have more visceral fat (not good!) than the marathon runner. In fact, there are extreme bodybuilders known to have bodyfat as low as 3-4%, but we all know that this is manipulated for a competition only, using dope and chemicals, and that such low bodyfat is not sustainable nor healthy (i.e., bobybuilders in competition can't run 100m sprint without collapsing into a heart attack). It does seem that the most athletic and fit people seem to have bodyfat around 8-10%ish, depending on age group; the 20something guys will have 8%ish, and the 30-,40-something have 10%ish.

I'm 5'7", 117 lbs, and I have a pretty strict diet. I'm a vegan, so I do not eat meat. Also, I do not eat much processed fat such as oil. Most of my fat intake is from nuts and whatever fat that exist in vegetables (even bananas and apples have fat too!). My caloric intake is pretty much isocaloric (i.e., I do not run up a calorie surplus every day). My veins are always on the surface, pretty much all over my body, they're even on my abs (you don't even see bodybuilders with veins on their abs much). Although I'm not a massive guy, I'm a muscular and ripped guy. Many of my cycling buddies say that I'm a freak and too obsessed with my diet and exercise. Now that I'm scaling back my exercise, I'm still putting in 15-17 hrs/wk of exercise, mostly on the bike, but a couple hrs/wk will be dedicated to the gym. Guess what my bodyfat is? 5%? not even close. My bodyfat as measured by one of those little hand-held machine (uses electrical resistance) says I'm at 10%. Not a Dxa scan machine, but probably good enough ballpark figure. I'm past mid30 agewise. Honestly I don't think I can get below 10% bodyfat (without resorting to fad diets and drugs) simply because I will lose a lot of the subcutaneous fat underneath my skin, and my skin would stop to function as a protective organ to outside allergens.

So I would say that 10% is about as much as you wanna go and about as much as you could possible go naturally (I do not count bodybuilder's low bodyfat as sustantinable nor natural). For most amateur cyclists, a 12-13% bodyfat is awesome!


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

aclinjury said:


> So I would say that 10% is about as much as you wanna go and about as much as you could possible go naturally (I do not count bodybuilder's low bodyfat as sustantinable nor natural). For most amateur cyclists, a 12-13% bodyfat is awesome!


I think most everyone with experience in body fat would disagree with you.


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## Peter P. (Dec 30, 2006)

FYI-In my 20's my fat level was measured using the water immersion method, which is considered reasonably accurate. I was 4.75%.

In the article I mentioned above, 6 of 26 senior (18-35 years) cyclists were under 5% body fat.


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## stevesbike (Jun 3, 2002)

time for the gold standard: cyclists can get extremely lean (4-5%) for specific events, but it's not sustainable and probably not good for US style racing since you lose some absolute power once you start experimenting with extreme leanness. The upside is that when I was in my 20s racing (6'3 145 lbs) I crashed and hurt my ribs - the doctor said he didn't need an xray since he could see them fine, so I saved some money on the hospital bill...


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## jspharmd (May 24, 2006)

stevesbike said:


> (6'3 145 lbs)


This is crazy! When I was in high school, I was 5'6" and 145 lbs. I was extremely lean. When I would do pull-ups, people could see every muscle in my back. Similar things with the rest of my body (abs, pecs, quads, etc.). I can't even fathom 145 lbs at 6'3"! I guess you had a lot less muscle mass than I did. Amazing.


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## phoehn9111 (May 11, 2005)

We are almost the same height and you are 23 pounds less than
me and you are 10%. While I do have a small amount of upper
body muscle from previous years lifting, I would say no more than
a typical fit cyclist. If the numerator on the % calculation is lean
muscle mass, and the denominator is fat, and you have vascularity
and I am not even close to it, I must be like 20%. And yet from the
pictures (bodybuilders so I understand more Lean Body Mass) I 
am still looking like say 13%. As an ex auditor, I am having trouble
reconciling these calculations. The main thing is I could still go down
as low as 10% before having to consider performance detriments.


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

stevesbike said:


> time for the gold standard: cyclists can get extremely lean (4-5%) for specific events, but it's not sustainable and probably not good for US style racing since you lose some absolute power once you start experimenting with extreme leanness. The upside is that when I was in my 20s racing (6'3 145 lbs) I crashed and hurt my ribs - the doctor said he didn't need an xray since he could see them fine, so I saved some money on the hospital bill...


gold standard huh? that guy looks like an AIDS patient. Looks like he's struggling to pull his socks up. Who the hell wants to look like that.

now i'm currently 5'7, 117 lbs, and if you do the math, that's about 1.74 lb/in. And just for fun, last i checked, that is lower than Chris Froome's, Contador's, and most other top marathoners. You in your 20s would be at around 1.93 lb/in, and you'd need to drop to 130 lbs to match 1.74 lb/in. And I'm past mid30 today. Do I look like skinny? yes. Do I look like a sick AIDS patient? I hope not, that's why I hit the gym. You will not find too many cyclists (pro or amateurs) who can do 4 straight sets of 30 chinups, 4 sets x 100 situps, 4 sets x 50 pushups on his rest days. 

I'm probably not the gold standard, but I should get my body fat checked by the medical pros, just for fun. But I won't bother. Why? Reason is because for an aging person going toward 40s, health (which is not the same as fitness) is/should be the dominating importance. And in this area, I'm fairly certain i'm good: total serum cholestrol 125, LDL 51. Understand that even pro athletes, including those with extremely low bodyfat, living in the Western world eating a Western diet, will unlikely see TC 125, LDL 51. To me this is the gold standard to ask for an aging athlete. I know it's not what the OP was asking, but I'm just saying, that's all.

And when talking about bodyfat, it's good to distinguish between subcutaneous (fat under the skin) and visceral (fat surrounding internal organ tissues). The visceral fat is really bad. Typical technique of bodyfat measurement does not tell you if the fat inside your body is visceral or subcutaneous. A bodybuilder with a low bodyfat can actually have a very high amount of unhealthy visceral fat (probably one reason why a lot of seemingly fit bodybuilders get so many heart issue, that and steroid abuse). If you have elevated cholestrol and elevated LDL, you can be actually have a low bodyfat% and still have high visceral fat content, and along with it come atherosclerosis of the artery. There are in fact some very fit age-group endurance athletes (mostly runners) who have collapsed and upon postmortem examination, it was found that despite their low bodyfat%, they had high visceral fat content and atherosclerotic arteries. Visceral fat and atherosclerotic artery seem to go in tandem. So low bodyfat is not the end game, IMO.

ah anyway..


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## stevesbike (Jun 3, 2002)

that's one of the infamous pics of Michael Rasmussen, who used to count the number of grains of rice he ate, peeled the stickers off his bike (and used PEDS). He's often mentioned as the limit of leanness in cycling.

Re looking healthy vs. being freakishly lean, there are studies demonstrating that around 12% bodyfat for a male is the optimal for being considered physically attractive...



aclinjury said:


> gold standard huh? that guy looks like an AIDS patient. Looks like he's struggling to pull his socks up. Who the hell wants to look like that.
> 
> now i'm currently 5'7, 117 lbs, and if you do the math, that's about 1.74 lb/in. And just for fun, last i checked, that is lower than Chris Froome's, Contador's, and most other top marathoners. You in your 20s would be at around 1.93 lb/in, and you'd need to drop to 130 lbs to match 1.74 lb/in. And I'm past mid30 today. Do I look like skinny? yes. Do I look like a sick AIDS patient? I hope not, that's why I hit the gym. You will not find too many cyclists (pro or amateurs) who can do 4 straight sets of 30 chinups, 4 sets x 100 situps, 4 sets x 50 pushups on his rest days.
> 
> ...


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

phoehn9111 said:


> We are almost the same height and you are 23 pounds less than
> me and you are 10%. While I do have a small amount of upper
> body muscle from previous years lifting, I would say no more than
> a typical fit cyclist. If the numerator on the % calculation is lean
> ...


losing the fat while keeping the muscles is the holy grail of athletic training and dieting. Usually, when people lose fat, they also lose muscles and water. And when people gain muscles, they also gain fat and water. But here I'm talking about "absolute" gain, not % gain. In term of percentage gain, you can actually lose more fat content yet still gain relative bodyfat%. But you can go down to 10%, but it'll takes months if not years to do this, while still keeping your power. Using myself as an example, before getting seriously into cycling, I was at 130 lbs. Then after about 1.5 years into cycling (but no seriously training), I dropped to 125 lbs (no serious training). Then I got serious about training, became obsessed with it, and also become obsessed with my diet (vegan now), I dropped to as low as 114 lbs! Yes, you saw that right, 5'7", 114 lbs. I actually got weaker, and was always fatigued. Then I slowly eat a bit more (by now I was vegan), and rest more, and now today I seem to be stablized at 117 lbs. It took me 6 months go from 114 lbs to 117 lbs. I wanted to gain the weight slowly, because by gaining the weight slowly, I minimize the fat addition. Today, my power is excellent! Today I can hold over 5.0 W/kg on a 5 min climb, nothing pro number, but considering that I've only been doing it seriously for 1.5 years and past mid30 age-wise,.. I say I'm doing something right. Honestly I used to obsessed with bodyfat%, but now I realize it's not really the most important end question an aging age-group cyclist should be asking, not to say it's not important


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

stevesbike said:


> that's one of the infamous pics of Michael Rasmussen, who used to count the number of grains of rice he ate, peeled the stickers off his bike (and used PEDS). He's often mentioned as the limit of leanness in cycling.
> 
> *Re looking healthy vs. being freakishly lean, there are studies demonstrating that around 12% bodyfat for a male is the optimal for being considered physically attractive..*.


when I was 130 lbs, just getting back into the roadie game, my g/f said that's good honey because you'll be healthy. Then I got obsessed with training and dieting (vegan now), and one point dropped to 114 lbs. Yes you heard it right 5'7, 114 lbs. She was 5'5, 104 lbs, and she was starting to see herself as fat when we both stand in front of the bathroom mirror together, then she joked that she no longer wish to see me in the bathroom with her. There is some point that being too skinny is equated to AIDS! I'm now 117 lbs and the g/f told me to get to at least 120 lbs and that's an order!


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## aclinjury (Sep 12, 2011)

jspharmd said:


> This is crazy! When I was in high school, I was 5'6" and 145 lbs. I was extremely lean. When I would do *pull-ups*, people could see every muscle in my back. Similar things with the rest of my body (abs, pecs, quads, etc.). I can't even fathom 145 lbs at 6'3"! I guess you had a lot less muscle mass than I did. Amazing.


speaking of pullups (technically chinups if back of hands is facing your face), my max back in the days was 100 straight chinups w/o rest. Though the last 10 or so involved major cheating, kicking the legs. Today my max reps is probably around half as much.


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## jajichan (Jul 9, 2014)

aclinjury said:


> gold standard huh? that guy looks like an AIDS patient. Looks like he's struggling to pull his socks up. Who the hell wants to look like that.
> 
> \


The point is that your ridiculous statement about 10% body fat is, well, ridiculous.


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## PBL450 (Apr 12, 2014)

Just FWIW... Body image disorders are VERY treatable. If they progress into clinical eating disorders, treatment gets a little more complicated... Well, OK, a lot more complicated. But, the sooner a treatment protocol is established the better the long term results. Dysmorphic disorders, while a whole different animal seem worth mention here. Evidence-based treatment approaches are pretty good... With cooperating patients they are decent. Dysmorphic disorders are moe classically psychiatric in their similarities and co-occurrences with OCD and depression/anxiety. Excessive exercise as a means to overshadow that perceived physiognomic anomaly is a common behavior.


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## JSUlly (Jul 10, 2014)

PBL450 said:


> Just FWIW... Body image disorders are VERY treatable. If they progress into clinical eating disorders, treatment gets a little more complicated... Well, OK, a lot more complicated. But, the sooner a treatment protocol is established the better the long term results. Dysmorphic disorders, while a whole different animal seem worth mention here. Evidence-based treatment approaches are pretty good... With cooperating patients they are decent. Dysmorphic disorders are moe classically psychiatric in their similarities and co-occurrences with OCD and depression/anxiety. Excessive exercise as a means to overshadow that perceived physiognomic anomaly is a common behavior.


Endurance athletes have the highest occurrence of eating disorders too. A lot of times it is because people feel out of control with their lives, but food and exercise can be something they have absolute control over.


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## phoehn9111 (May 11, 2005)

Not to prop up an old thread, I just read the beginning of the Fitzgerald
book and discovered bodyfat scales actually work and to get one with
athlete mode. Can anyone recommend an accurate one.


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## Duane Gran (Feb 3, 2004)

phoehn9111 said:


> Not to prop up an old thread, I just read the beginning of the Fitzgerald
> book and discovered bodyfat scales actually work and to get one with
> athlete mode. Can anyone recommend an accurate one.


I've used a Tanita scale for years. I can't claim it is accurate, but it is consistent.


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