Today, there are many ways to measure overall health, and body composition is one of them. In today’s medical, nutritional, and fitness worlds, “body composition” refers to the percentages of fat, water, bone, and muscle in the human body.
More telling than body weight alone, body composition measurements allow trainers, gym members, and nutritionists to work together to determine a healthy target weight and set fitness goals.
Fortunately, measuring body composition has become much easier recently, thanks to advanced body composition tools.
This blog will look at a few different body composition tools and discuss why we like them and how they can help gym members crush their fitness goals.
Let’s dive in.
The Benefits of Measuring Body Composition
Why measure body composition? What does it offer compared to traditional metrics, like BMI and body weight?
Here are just a few of the perks:
- Body composition measurements allow for the creation of individualized health, workout, and nutrition plans. For example, people who use body composition measurements can optimize workout routines to meet specific fitness goals and accurately calculate daily caloric and nutritional needs. Body composition measurements can also be used to help people stay healthy as they age and avoid preventable conditions like diabetes.
- Since body composition measurements isolate the percentages of fat, water, bone, and muscle in the body, they allow gym members to target the development of lean muscle mass while also decreasing body fat percentage. BMI and body weight measurements don’t provide that type of insight.
- Body composition measurements provide an accurate picture of a person’s overall health and can help reduce the risk of health conditions like diseases and cancers.
- Body composition measurements can be tracked to provide an accurate, real-time picture of a person’s fitness journey and results.
- Advanced body composition tools like InBody (more on this in a moment) are more accurate and consistent, especially compared to devices like calipers and scales, which just measure one component like fat or weight. Since it’s impossible to pinch the same amount every time you use calipers, it’s challenging to get accurate, repeatable body composition measurements with tired tools, like calipers.
How Alloy Uses Body Composition Measurements
Here at Alloy, we’ve got one body composition tool we love more than all the rest: InBody. We’ve been using InBody body composition measurements for over ten years. We love how the technology allows us to use accurate and detailed information to help our personal training clients meet their health and fitness goals.
InBody is an advanced device that allows us to accurately measure body composition via bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). BIA works by measuring the resistance of an electrical current through the water content of the human body.
This allows the machine to calculate lean body mass value since everything that is not lean body mass is considered fat. The device also offers additional frequencies to measure intracellular and extracellular water to calculate dry lean mass and lean body mass.
While dry lean mass is the weight of the body’s protein and mineral content, lean body mass is the weight of everything in the body besides fat.
A completely non-invasive technology, InBody provides accurate, highly detailed body composition measurements, including muscle, fat, and water percentages. Unlike traditional BMI measurements or skin calipers, InBody doesn’t require pinching of the skin or dunking into a tank of water.
How InBody Body Composition Measurements can Help Members Meet Fitness Goals
In the past several years, we’ve noticed a trend in the fitness industry: people are doing more weight resistance training to build muscle.
As a team of personal trainers, this is excellent news.
After all, weight training builds muscle and increases bone density. And, since muscle burns more calories than fat, weight training is a great way for people to get and stay fit.
Unfortunately, it was challenging to measure muscle mass and track results accurately – until now.
Here are just a few of the ways InBody body composition measurements are helping our members meet their fitness goals:
- InBody measurements improve time-to-value TTV for members. Thanks to the incredible detail and transparency offered by InBody measurements, clients who use it are improving their time-to-value and seeing measurable results in less time. This helps clients feel more motivated while allowing us to boost retention and client longevity.
- InBody measurements focus on the three Es. At Alloy, the three Es are education, empowerment, and engagement. InBody measurements provide education on muscle mass, fat, and water percentages and allow visibility into how body composition changes over time. The measurements also empower people to take charge of their fitness and health journeys and engage with a community that will help them succeed.
- InBody measurements help members stay motivated. Say a member wanted to lose ten pounds in a month but only lost 5. If we’re just measuring that client’s progress on the scale, disappointment is guaranteed. If we do an InBody measurement that reveals the same client replaced fat with lean muscle tissue and actually lost body fat, however, it becomes fuel for motivation. That’s the value of transparent, detailed body composition measurements.
Body Composition Measurements: the Way of the Future
While body weight and BMI have long since been the go-to measurements in the fitness industry, they’re not accurate or transparent enough to truly provide any value for trainers or members. Fortunately, InBody body composition measurements are here to save us all.
Designed to break down the various components of the body and allow for isolation and transparency, InBody measurements are an excellent tool for establishing fitness goals and making plans to crush them.
Plus, since the technology is accessible and non-invasive, it’s an excellent option for anyone who wants a more advanced, streamlined experience.
Ready to learn more about InBody and how the Alloy team uses the technology to complement our personal training offerings? Check out our recent podcast on the topic.
