What is racing weight? I define it simply as the combined body weight and body composition (or body-fat percentage) associated with an endurance athlete’s peak performance level. The most important thing to understand about racing weight is that it is defined functionally, not theoretically. When you are in the best racing shape you can possibly attain, you are at your ideal racing weight. It doesn’t matter if that weight (and body-fat percentage) is higher or lower than you might expect or some formula might predict. Performance decides your true racing weight.
The second most important thing to understand about racing weight is that it is not all about body weight. In fact, the body-weight component is secondary to the body-composition component. This is true because any given athlete often can attain a desired weight, but at a variety of different body-fat percentages. Only when that weight is attained in conjunction with a minimal body-fat percentage will the athlete be capable of peak racing performance.
Racing weight is different from healthy weight. Each person has a fairly broad “healthy weight range” and can have more or less optimal health anywhere within that range. With the exception of some swimmers and heavyweight rowers, most endurance athletes achieve their best race performances when their weight is near the bottom of their personal healthy weight range, provided this weight is achieved through proper training and diet. This is true primarily because extra body weight increases the energy cost of movement. Body fat is the primary source of excess weight in most endurance athletes. Research has consistently shown that the best endurance athletes have the leanest body compositions. Not every athlete can get as lean as the world’s best, but every endurance athlete is at his best when he’s close to his personal leanest. The most significant change most endurance athletes experience in moving closer to their racing weight is a loss of body fat.
There is such a thing as being too light or too lean for maximum race performance. It’s a state that some endurance athletes end up in when they lose sight of the fact that performance defines ideal weight and not the other way around. The surest way to avoid becoming too light or lean is to eat and train expressly for performance rather than weight loss, trusting that appropriate fat loss will occur as your performance improves. Consistently monitoring your performance in training acts as a check against going off track. Any change in your weight or body-fat percentage that negatively affects your performance is a bad thing.
It is acceptable to make short-term exceptions to the principle of prioritizing performance over weight loss. That’s what a quick start period is for. But even during a quick start, when fat loss becomes the highest priority, performance remains the ultimate end. The training and nutrition practices that constitute a quick start are designed not only to yield rapid fat loss but also to create a solid foundation for future performance.
When I speak about weight management for endurance athletes, I often ask those in the audience who know their ideal racing weight to raise their hands. There are always a few. When I select an athlete to tell me how he or she knows his or her racing weight, the answer is always the same: through experience. There can be no other answer because there is no other way to definitively determine one’s racing weight. A typical case is that of my colleague Mario Fraioli, a runner with a 5,000 meter personal best of 14:30. He knows his racing weight is 136 lbs. because he has raced at that weight, at lower weights, and at higher weights, and he consistently performs best at or very near 136.
In the total population of endurance athletes, for every Mario Fraioli there are several athletes who do not know their racing weight because they have good reason to believe they have never reached it. How do you know if you have never reached your racing weight? You can make this judgment on the basis of some commonsense indicators:
• You weigh significantly more now than you did in your younger days.
• You have a lot of visible excess body fat.
• You are new enough to your sport to know you haven’t yet come close to having your best race.
Very few of us need anyone’s help in figuring out we could stand to lose some weight, even if it’s mainly for the purpose of racing faster.
A more rigorous way to determine if you are above your ideal racing weight is to have your body-fat percentage measured and compare it against the ideal racing weight body-fat percentage range for your age and gender. If you’re above that range, you’re above your racing weight.
If you have not yet reached your racing weight and therefore don’t know it, you could benefit from a reliable method of estimating your racing weight. If nothing else, such an estimate would provide a goal for you. Again, there is no such thing as a scientifically accurate racing-weight calculator, but there is a method you can use to create an estimated racing weight that can serve as an initial goal.
This method relies heavily on body-fat measurements because it’s really your optimal body-fat percentage that determines your ideal racing weight. While age, gender, genes, and other factors limit how much you can reduce your body-fat percentage, proper training and nutrition will help you get it down to a level far below the average for the general population. Researchers have gathered solid evidence of the body-fat percentages generally attainable for different age and gender groups, and scientists have identified certain factors that make these optimal body-fat percentages more or less attainable. On the basis of this knowledge, it is possible to make a realistic prediction as to how much any given athlete can lower his or her body-fat percentage. This prediction in turn can be used to generate an estimated racing weight for the individual.
Estimating your individual racing weight begins with a realistic prediction of how much you can lower your body-fat percentage.
BEFORE YOU STEP ON A BODY-FAT SCALE
HERE ARE SOME USAGE GUIDELINES THAT APPLY TO MOST BODY-FAT SCALES:
• Always measure your body fat at the same time of day, preferably at least two hours after eating.
• Make sure you are well hydrated.
• Use the bathroom before stepping on the scale.
• Moisten a towel and step on it with bare feet before stepping on the scale (to enhance conductivity).
• Make sure the scale is on a flat, hard surface (such as bathroom tiles).
• If you have a good reason to believe that your body-fat percentage is already low (e.g., you have visible abdominal musculature), purchase a scale with an “athletic” mode. Scales without this feature are less accurate for lean individuals.
To generate an estimate of your optimal performance weight you will need to start by getting an initial body-fat measurement. The easiest and most affordable way to measure your body-fat percentage (but not the most accurate) is to step on a body-fat scale. But there are other methods. The most accurate is DEXA scanning, which you may be familiar with as the method physicians use to measure bone density. The disadvantage of this method is that the testing is expensive and not widely available, so it’s not a method that most athletes can use to regularly track changes in their body composition. Hydrostatic weighing, or dunking, once known as the gold-standard method of body-fat measurement, suffers from the same disadvantages and is not as accurate as DEXA scanning. The most popular do-it-yourself method of body-fat testing before the advent of the body-fat scale was the skinfold caliper method, but this requires training and practice to do correctly and is no more accurate even when done correctly.
Table 1.1 presents body-fat percentage ranges associated with ideal racing weights in men and women of different ages. In other words, it shows the body-fat ranges of men and women of different ages who have attained peak fitness through optimal training and diet. For example, women between the ages of 30 and 39 who train and eat right long enough to attain a lifetime peak race-fitness level typically have body-fat percentages between 11 and 17 percent. But there are individual variations within this range. Those with genes favoring lean body composition, who have never put on substantial excess body fat, and who train maximally for their sport will have body-fat levels closer to 11 percent. Those without genes favoring lean body composition, who have put on excess body fat in the past, and who do not train maximally for their sport will have body-fat levels closer to 17 percent. But that’s still pretty low.
TABLE 1.1 IDEAL RACING WEIGHT BODY-FAT RANGES
MEN |
WOMEN |
||||||
20–29 |
30–39 |
40–49 |
50+ |
20–29 |
30–39 |
40–49 |
50+ |
3–10% |
5–12% |
6–15% |
8–17% |
10–16% |
11–17% |
13–20% |
14–22% |
DEFINE YOUR GOAL BODY-FAT PERCENTAGE
Use your initial body-fat measurement and Table 1.1 to make a realistic prediction of the body-fat percentage you are likely to have in a state of lifetime peak fitness. If your current body-fat percentage is substantially outside the range for your gender and age group, then your initial goal should be to get your body-fat percentage down to the upper limit of your range. For example, if you are a 49-year-old man and your current body-fat percentage is 25, your initial goal should be to get it down to 15 percent, which represents the upper limit of the 6 to 15 percent ideal racing weight body-fat percentage range of men between the ages of 40 and 49 years. You may eventually be able to get it lower, but you might not. It’s especially difficult for those who are substantially overweight to know how lean they can ultimately get because in some members of this population a certain amount of excess fat accumulation is irreversible and in others it’s not. So if you are substantially overweight, it’s best to set a safe target in the beginning. That said, 15 percent body fat is a very lean body composition for a 49-year-old man and represents a more aggressive target than most physicians would give an overweight patient of that age.
If your current body-fat level is close to the upper limit of the range for your gender and age or already within that range, then your target body-fat percentage should be based on how much room for improvement there is in your current diet and fitness level. The more drastically you plan to improve your diet and increase your training load, starting today, in the pursuit of peak fitness, the more you can expect to reduce your body-fat percentage. The better your current diet is and the closer you are to peak fitness already, the less change you can expect in your body-fat percentage.
For example, suppose you are a 24-year-old woman with a body-fat percentage of 23 who lives on fast food and is returning to cycling after a long layoff. You plan to clean up your diet and gradually build your training load to the level it was at when you competed in the past. Therefore, you can expect to reduce your body-fat percentage quite a bit, perhaps down to the middle of your ideal range of 10 to 16 percent. Now let’s assume you are a 33-year-old man with a current body-fat percentage of 14; you consider your diet already very healthy and you are returning to triathlon training after a short break that followed a personal best Ironman 70.3 race. In this case you can expect to reduce your body-fat percentage only a little in tidying up your diet that last little bit and returning to peak fitness. Perhaps you can get it down to 10.5 percent.
If your current body-fat percentage is outside your ideal range by 10 percent or more, it’s best to set an intermediate or stepping-stone goal instead of aiming directly for the upper limit of your ideal range. In this circumstance, getting all the way from your current body-fat percentage to your ultimate goal will take long enough that you’ll need the motivation provided by an intermediate target. I recommend that you begin with closing the gap between your current body-fat percentage and the upper limit of your ideal body-fat percentage range by splitting the difference. For example, suppose you are a 35-year-old male whose current body fat percentage is 26. That’s 14 percent above the upper limit of 12 percent for your age group’s ideal range. Half the difference between 26 percent and 12 percent is 7 percent. Thus, your intermediate goal should be to reduce your body fat to 19 percent (half the difference plus the upper limit, or 12+7). Getting all the way down to 12 percent is probably an attainable long-term goal, but aiming for it directly might lead to frustration, as it will take many months to get there.
Many people find it more difficult to lose weight as they get older. This may have less to do with age itself than with the effects of body fat accumulation over time, muscle loss, and declining activity levels on metabolism. Research has generally shown that older persons experience the same improvements in body composition as younger persons in response to exercise and calorie restriction. Older persons cannot get quite as lean as younger persons due to the irreversible accumulation of fat around the internal organs, a reality that is accounted for in the ideal body fat percentage ranges presented in Table 1.1. But if you are an older athlete you should find it no more challenging to reach your ideal range through the quick start and Racing Weight methods than a younger athlete will find reaching his or her lower ideal range.
Does this approach to setting body composition goals sound a bit like guesswork? It is to some degree. But it’s the best we can do. And they are not wild guesses. If you follow the structure I’ve provided and use your God-given reasoning faculties, you can come up with a personal target that is very appropriate.
One other guideline I can give you that will help you make good guesses is this: Don’t aim for the very bottom end of your gender and age-group range unless you are naturally lean (that is, if you naturally put on fat slowly and lose it easily) and plan to train maximally for your sport.
Maximal training means doing the maximum amount of training beneficial to the athlete without consideration of schedule constraints or personal preferences. Few endurance athletes are willing and able to train maximally for their sport. And the difference between maximal training and the amount of training the average endurance athlete is willing and able to do is enough to make a significant difference in terms of what body-fat percentage is realistic. For example, a triathlete for whom 25 hours of training per week would be maximal but who actually trains 15 hours per week cannot expect to get his body-fat percentage down quite as low as if he did train maximally. Keep this in mind when predicting your racing-weight body-fat percentage. If you are unwilling or unable to train maximally for your sport, don’t aim for the lower limit of the racing-weight body-fat percentage range that applies to your age group.
CALCULATING YOUR WEIGHT LOSS
The final step in determining your racing weight is to calculate how much weight—more specifically fat—you will have to lose to get down to your goal body-fat percentage. Let’s look at how to do this with an example.
Let’s say you are a 38-year-old female who weighs 140 lbs. and has 22 percent body fat. Your diet is already very clean, but you have always had great difficulty shedding excess body fat. Therefore you decide to make a conservative racing weight estimate, at least to start with. Your initial goal is to get down to 17 percent body fat (the upper limit of your ideal range) through improved training and diet. Here’s how to calculate how much you will weigh when you get your body-fat percentage down to that level.
STEP 1: CALCULATE YOUR BODY-FAT MASS
To do this, you multiply your current weight by your body-fat percentage.
In this example, 140 lbs. x 0.22 = 30.8 lbs.
Body fat mass = current weight x current body-fat percentage
STEP 2: CALCULATE YOUR LEAN BODY MASS
To find this number, subtract your fat mass from your current weight. In this example, 140 lbs. – 30.8 lbs. = 109.2 lbs.
Lean body mass = current weight – fat mass
STEP 3: CALCULATE YOUR GOAL WEIGHT
First find your goal lean-body-mass percentage by subtracting your goal body-fat percentage from 100. Now express this number as a percentage, or in decimal form. In this example, 100 – 17 = 83 leaves our athlete with an 83 percent goal lean body mass.
Now to find your goal weight, divide your current lean body mass (found in step 2) by your goal lean body mass percentage (as you just calculated). In this example, 109.2 ÷ 0.83 = 131.6.
Goal weight = current lean body mass ÷ goal-lean-body-mass percentage
There you have it: an imperfect but reliable method to estimate your racing weight (and body-fat percentage). It is not a 100 percent accurate prediction in most cases, but it is accurate enough to serve its purpose of giving you a solid goal to aim for in your quick start and beyond as you follow the Racing Weight system to train and fuel your way toward peak fitness.