Body Fat Percentage
September 12, 2008
If you’re serious about your cycling you probably care about your body fat percentage for the simple reason that the less fat you’re carrying around, the greater your power to weight ratio will be.
Body fat percentage is an estimate of the fraction of the total body mass that is adipose tissue (or referred to as Fat Mass), as opposed to lean body mass (muscle, bone, organ tissue, blood, and everything else) or referred to as Fat Free Mass. This index is often used as a means to monitor progress during a diet or as a measure of physical fitness for certain sports. It is more accurate as a measure of excess body weight than body mass index (BMI) since it differentiates between the weight of muscle mass and that of the fat mass while BMI lump all masses into one figure. However, its popularity is less than BMI because equipment required to perform the body fat percentage is not readily available and skills are required to perform the measurement. Even when measured by a skillful person, there are factors that contribute to a significant margin of error.
