ORIGINAL ARTICLES  BODY COMPOSITION, NUTRITION 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2016 November;56(11):1331-8

Copyright © 2016 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Insights into body composition adaptation: should we reconsider the use of Body Mass Index in some sports?

Tijana DURMIĆ ^{1, 2}, Marina DJELIĆ ^{2, 3}, Jelena SUZIĆ LAZIĆ ⁴, Biljana LAZOVIĆ POPOVIĆ ⁵, Milica DEKLEVA ^{2, 6}, Ivan SOLDATOVIC ⁷, Sanja MAZIĆ ^{2, 3} ✉

¹ Institute of Forensic Medicine, Belgrade, Serbia; ² School of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia; ³ Institute of Medical Physiology, Belgrade, Serbia; ⁴ University Clinical Center “Dr Dragisa Misovic-Dedinje”, Belgrade, Serbia; ⁵ University Clinical Center “Zemun”, Belgrade, Serbia; ⁶ University Clinical Center “Zvezdara”, Belgrade, Serbia; ⁷ Institute of Medical Statistics, Belgrade, Serbia

BACKGROUND: The purposes of this study were to indentify the under/overweight/obese frequencies by Body Mass Index (BMI) and body fat percentage (BF%) in athletes within groups of sport and to investigate the accuracy of the BMI as a measure of BF%.
METHODS: Cross-sectional design study on elite male athletes (N.=2234, aged 22±4 years) from 51 sports disciplines who were classified according to two different sport classifications: predominant characteristic of training (four group model) and type and intensity of exercise (nine group model). All athletes underwent full anthropometric testing.
RESULTS: After stratification, the majority of athletes were in normal weight category. According to 4 group model, BMI is showed as statistically significant, reliable and independent predictor of BF% in all groups of sports. In nine groups model all correlated parameters were positive for athletes being statistically significant (P<0.001) with exception of group LSMD, MSMD and HSMD (P>0.05). The highest positive correlation between BMI and BF% was in group MSLD (r=0.53; P<0.001) and in power sports group (r=0.24; P<0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: BMI could be an accurate predictor of BF% in athletes but that depends on group of sport. Our results suggest the BMI could use only in power and MSLD groups of sport.