What are the athletic benefits of being very lean like MMA fighters? #athleticbenefits #bodycomposition #MMA #leanmuscle
Have you ever wondered if having low body fat like MMA fighters actually improves performance or is it just for weight classes? #bodyfat #leanmuscle #athleticperformance
There’s a diminishing return. Anything below about 8-10% probably isn’t helping athletic performance, even in a situation like pro cycling or marathon running. If MMA fighters are leaner than that, it’s for making weight.
It’s primarily for weight class. For any given weight class, the less weight you carry in fat, the more muscle weight you can carry. Muscle is very helpful for athletic performance, while fat is almost not at all helpful in a fight.
But if there weren’t weight classes, it may be beneficial to be at higher body fat – firstly it’s easier to hold onto muscle mass when one is not super lean, and secondly human bodies are naturally more comfortable (hormonally, mentally, etc) at a higher body fat percent than some of the lean athletes, and thus function more smoothly.
Caveat is that in some sports without weight classes, carrying fat is hard because it is extra weight to move around (see gymnastics, or basketball, etc).
Fighters walk around 20-30 lbs heavier for most of the year than the weight they fight in. When they weigh in they are dehydrated as hell and they’ll put on 10+ lbs in a day after weigh ins.
Less fat= less mass to move= less energy required to move, and more available energy to use.
For many strength sports, it’s in your advantage to be as muscular as possible and thus, as lean as possible. The athletes here exert maximal strength in a few seconds. That’s all they need.
For other sports, where you don’t need max strength, it’s better to not maximize your muscle mass for the unnecessary weight.
For endurance sports, low muscle mass and body fat are ideal (like distance running)
Depends on the sport! If being quick is part of the sport, being lean helps. If strength is important, being lean is not so important. For running (especially long distance), being lean reduces your weight and you spend less energy with each stride.
Fighting is broken up by weight class so the fighters try to drop as much fat and water as possible before the bout.
For non weight restricted contact sports, I think a bit of fat is actually beneficial for softening impacts. If you look at American football linebackers, linemen, and running backs (guys who take the most contact) most of them don’t have 6 pack and and vascular arms like the safeties/wr. Same story in rugby.
Maximizing power to weight. For a given weight class, you want to hit the maximum allowed weight with the maximum amount of muscle. Less fat is less dead weight is more powerful strikes.
It depends drastically what kind of athletic performance you’re talking about. Human physical performance is so varied that you can’t really excel at it overall with one physique.
Runners and calisthenic athletes like gymnasts or climbers need to have as little fat as possible. They are endurance sports that rely on moving the body around, so the less “useless” weight they carry around, the better.
Sumo wrestlers and weightlifters meanwhile often have relatively high bodyfat percentages. The extra fat means they can sustain higher muscle masses, as the leaner you are the more your body biases muscle consumption in weight loss.
Being lean is correlated to athletic performance, to a point, where diet restrictions fail to fuel for performance.
As a basketball person who used to dunk at 160 pounds. I can tell you that at 200 and 220 that I definitely can’t jump as high or as fast. At 160 I was drinking with one hand. At 145 I was dunking with two hands.
It does. Agility and speed are more important than weight in MMA. It’s a very strategy based sport, and a lot of people compare it to chess. You have to think and move very quickly. Weight is important too, but agility+training tends to win.
Source: had my ass beat in bjj by a tiny dude half my size, and I learned something that day
In the context of MMA fighters do it for a potential size advantage, not athletic performance. Weight cutting is actually terrible for athletic performance because the fighters aren’t actually losing fat, they’re dehydrating themselves down to whatever weight they’re “fighting” at.
What they do is they pack on size leading up to the fight, disguise it as water by dehydrating themselves down to their contracted weight, and then rehydrate up to their natural (or close to natural) weight for the actual fight.
So when you see Conor McGregor fight, he’s only 155 lbs for a few minutes at the weigh-in ceremony, but once he’s in the cage he’s somewhere around 165-175 after he’s rehydrated.
It’s a way for fighters to exploit a loop hole, more than anything.
For the most part no. The MMA weight cuts are purely for making a smaller weight class. Fat is basically dead weight so technically there’s a benefit in carrying around less of it. But these guys would naturally be very lean from the extreme level of exercise they do. That fat deficit they would have compared to even a normal fit person is an advantage. The problem with shaving off those last couple of pounds is your body has evolved to want to carry around a bit of fat as energy storage. When you get to shaving off those last couple pounds and getting below like 5-8% fat depending on the person, your body resists it. You’ll feel hungry and fatigued and have to keep a very lean diet to avoid putting that weight back on. At that point, it isn’t worth it to be 2-3 pounds lighter. You’re compromising your bodies performance. There’s a reason that the only sports that do “weight cuts” before competition are the sports where you are required to get down to an arbitrary weight limit. You won’t hear about marathon runners doing a weight cut the week of a race.
I’m a climber, and as you can imagine, pro climbers are all very lean. The dark side of that is there are a lot of issues with eating disorders because lbs matter so much when you are trying to hold your body weight with such small or sloping holds.
Not speaking to MMA etc but just say weightlifting, my pound for pound strength is much higher when I’m “lean”. Stacking on muscle adds weight that definitely has a diminishing return for practical strength, such as pull ups, push ups, and overall agility and moving your own body. There’s a reason you won’t see anyone really stacked succeed on those ninja warrior type shows.
On the one hand, fat is just dead weight that slows you down. On the other, you can’t really build tons of muscle without having a good amount of fat as well. Basically you need fat for athletics that require crazy amounts of strength (power lifters, boxers), and not if you require agility (running, climbing, etc.).
It’s a huge deal in climbing, where there’s apparently serious issues with eating disorders among pro athletes.
I heard a very interesting interview between a pro athlete and a sports physician on the topic, and the sports physician, first of recommended not getting overly lean for a number of reasons, but also stated that the super lean athletes may be able to perform well for one season, but then would get injured, burn out, have mental issues, etc, leading to poorer training and performance over time, compared to those that kept a healthy fat amount, and could train consistently for longer.
I will give you an example from baseball. A pitcher or batter that is leaner will not have as much weight to add to their throw or swing respectively.
A pitcher uses their weight to help with the momentum in their throw, making the ball move faster. The batter uses the weight to gain momentum in their swing causing the bat to travel faster.
There is a line, which is different for every player, where they have too much weight, causing them to be slower or inhibits their range of motion. That being said, it’s not all about body fat, muscle can cause range of motion issues in baseball too.
Lean is only part of it. You need to also become strong, body and lungs, to see athletic benefit
I’ve had a dexa scan put me at 4,8% BF and I can tell you, it has zero athletic benefits. Atleast for me that is. I’m trying to gain weight to get back to a healthy BF percentage because I am just constantly tired, thinking of food, moody, my test dropped, I’m out of breath walking up the stairs.
I can still do a run without problems, hell I still go for runs 3-4 times a week, but I notice it especially in the gym (no strength whatsoever) or in high intensity sports like football where you need to instantly be able to do a sprint, kick the ball very hard etc, I have no strength either and my legs feel weak.
I find that when I put on weight during low activity periods between November – February, running is a real pain in many senses. When I get down to my target weight, it’s less of a bone/body strain.
10-15 for males is the way to go. Most NBA players fall in that range. If that range allows them to perform at top level without suffering from low energy or explosiveness, it should work for 99% of the population
Are we only talking about MMA here? If not, then being lean can absolutely have enormous benefits. I’m thinking specifically of running and track and field events. Just from my own personal experience, I’m an avid runner, but also an avid eater and as such, I’ve always had an average build. However, about a year ago, I cut back on my eating and really “leaned up” and just carrying less weight around shaved a couple of minutes off my 10km time simply because I was carrying around less weight and putting a little less strain on my body/joints.
If you go to Research Gate or any other hub of scientific literature, you’ll find plenty of research showing a correlation between lean body types and athletic performance (especially in track and field events).
Hmm, dropping 10lbs would make a lean person go very lean. Depending on the sort it is an advantage like running. Not carrying 10lbs for 20 miles is an advantage.