The DXA Method
Body Composition and Bone Mineral Density of NCAA Division I Collegiate Male and Female Track And Field Athletes DONALD R. DENGEL, PH.D.
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ot too long ago, I wrote an article (Dengel & Dengel, 2016) for Techniques for Track & Field and Cross Country on the importance of measuring body composition in track and field athletes. In that article, I discussed the pros and cons of various methods that can be used to determine body composition. In addition, I also presented the percent body fat values from a number of papers for male and female track and field athletes by event. Most of the meth-
ods used to determine body composition fall into one of two categories (i.e., twocomponent model and three-component model methods). These categories are determined by the number of compartments the method can actually determine. The simplest (and typically the cheapest) methods to measure body composition fall into the two-component model to estimate body composition. These methods place the total body mass of an individual into two separate components: the first
component being the amount of fat mass in the body and the second component consisting of the amount of fat-free mass contained in the body. The second component (i.e., fat-free mass) combines bone and muscle into the same value. Common two-component body composition methods are hydrostatic underwater weighing, bioelectrical impedance (BIA), skinfolds, air displacement (BodPodTM), and circumference measures.
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