Distribution of body fat is associated with physical performance of male amateur triathlon athletes.

Abstract

Endurance sports are strongly associated with maximum oxygen uptake, anaerobic threshold, running economy and body fat percentage. Despite the importance for performance of the low-fat mass being a consensus in the literature, there are no data about the importance of the pattern of fat distribution. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the association between fat mass distribution with triathlon performance and physiological determinants of performance: maximal oxygen consumption (V̇O<inf>2max</inf>), ventilatory threshold (AT) and running economy (RE), and to verify the predictive value for performance of gynoid or android fat mass distribution. Thirty-nine triathletes (38.8±6.9 years, 174.8±6.5 cm and 74.3±8.8 kg) were evaluated for anthropometric (total body mass, fat mass, lean mass, android and gynoid fat mass) and physiological (V̇O<inf>2max</inf>, AT and RE) parameters. Split and overall race times were registered. Overall race time relationship with gynoid fat mass (r=0.529, P<0.05) was classified as moderate and with android fat mass (r=0.416, P<0.05) was classified as low. All split times and overall race time presented significant positive correlation with only total fat mass (%) (r=0.329 to 0.574, P<0.05) and with gynoid fat mass (%) (r=0.359 to 0.529, P<0.05). Overall race time can be better predicted by gynoid fat mass (ß=0.529, t=4.093, P<0.001, r2=0.28) than by android fat mass (ß=0.416, t=2.997, P=0.005, r2=0.17). Fat mass distribution is associated with triathlon performance, and the gynoid fat pattern is worse for triathlon performance than the android pattern.