How To Measure Body Fat With Calipers

An expert can take your skinfold thickness at several sites and use these to estimate your body fat.

How to measure body fat with calipers. Take all measurements on the right side of the body make sure the muscle group being assessed is relaxed grab a fold of skin between your thumb and index finger hold calipers over and perpendicular to the skinfold. The calipers only measure the fat under the skin and at a few locations. They are used to do the pinch test that takes skinfold measurements ranging from three up to ten points on the body. To determine body fat percentage using these measurements you ll first need to calculate body density using the jackson pollock equation.

Skinfold calipers measure the thickness of your subcutaneous fat the fat underneath the skin at certain body locations. The body fat calipers are not a tool to measure fat in the body directly. Enter the person s caliper measurements and age into the jackson pollock formula. Biceps with the arm extended naturally at the subject s side take a vertical fold at the front of the arm halfway.

The information is used with a formula to get the percentage of your body fat. Then with the calipers in your right hand place the jaws of the calipers as shown in the diagrams below. Several predetermined sites are measured by a gauge that records the thickness of the pinch created by the tongs. If you re right handed pull out the fold of skin with the underlying layer of fat with your left hand and hold it with the fingers of the left hand.

There is significant person to person variation in fat distribution through the body limiting the accuracy even with expert usage. How to correctly take measurements. Triceps have the subject bend the elbow to 90 degrees and mark the point midway between the top of the shoulder and. Subscapular measurements of the subscapular area should.

Measurements are taken at either 3 or 7 different sites on the body. 2 specialist skinfold testing.