Barbell Shrugged - Fat Free Mass Index Explained: A Better Body Comp Metric for Athletes with Dr. Andrew Jagim, Doug Larson, Travis Mash & Dr. Mike Lane #837

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash sit down with Dr. Andrew Jagim, Director of Sports Medicine Research for the Mayo Clinic Health System, to talk about what actually works for building stronger, more resilient young athletes. Andrew shares how his applied research feeds directly back into real-world coaching, especially for under-resourced D3 athletes, and why the best youth training is simple, fast, and consistent. The group also trades notes on training their own kids: short sessions, minimal setup, and keeping things engaging so the habit sticks for life. They break down practical youth strength programming: unilateral work for stability (step-ups, lunges), basic patterns (kettlebell deadlifts, goblet squats, push-ups), and building hips/glutes to protect knees, especially for tall, fast-growing athletes where coordination and lever changes force constant "auto-regulation." A major theme is injury prevention without turning training into a grind: 15–25 minute workouts, circuits/supersets, park workouts with med balls and kettlebells, and even sneaky "commercial break" core work to keep kids moving while still letting them be kids. The conversation shifts into sports nutrition, body composition, and a more athlete-friendly way to talk about physique, Fat-Free Mass Index (FFMI). Andrew explains how FFMI is calculated, what typical ranges look like for male and female athletes, and why it can be a more positive metric than body fat percentage, especially for female athletes where messaging can backfire. They close with a nuanced look at weight cutting in wrestling and combat sports: why massive cuts are physiologically brutal, how rules differ inside vs. outside the U.S., and why frequent dehydration (like in-season scholastic wrestling) is a completely different risk profile than occasional cuts with longer recovery windows. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, Doug Larson here, and today on Barbell Shrugged, we talk with sports scientist, Dr. Andrew Jagam. He's an expert on exercise physiology and sports nutrition with a PhD in kinesiology and exercise science. He's also the director of sports medicine research for the Mayo Clinic Health System. And today we get into a very practical way to think about body composition that we really haven't talked about on the show very often. And that is fat-free mass index, which is a measure of your lean mass, your muscle bone, connective tissue, etc. all relative to your height. It's very similar to BMI, but instead of your total body weight,

it uses your fat-free mass, which gives you insight into if you are over, under, or adequately muscled relative to your height. Like most shows these days, we also talk about strength training our kids without burning them out. It's kind of the dad-coach problem,

how to push your kids just hard enough so they build the habit without causing them to rebel and to push away and to try to get out of training. So if you're a parent and you want to learn how to train your kids or you're interested in learning

about fat-free mass index. This show is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm here with Mike Lane and Travis Mash and our guest today, Andrew Jagam. You came in from hanging out with Dr. Mike Lane. You guys have known each other for many years here. So welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, right on. For those that don't know you, let's kick it off with your background, how you got into sports performance and exercise physiology and all the things. All right. So currently my day job, I'm the director of sports medicine research. for Mayo Clinic Health System, and I'm at one of our clinic sites in the La Crosse, Wisconsin area. So that's kind of my home base. And then I also teach in an adjunct role with our local

university in town. That's the University of Wisconsin lacrosse at Division III school. Pretty good history for athletics. And so I used to even teach in a full-time capacity with that university. And so that's where we collaborate with a lot of their faculty, a lot of their student athletes. And then I kind of try to give back to their student athletes as well, because they're D3 school, so they're pretty under-resourced. So I kind of serve as an unofficial sport nutritionist, strength coach, performance consultant, kind of all these both. Yeah, just trying to give back to them. And especially the kind of research I do, it's very applied. So it's very easy to just kind of flip that around, give the answers or some of the information right back

to the coaches and athletes so they can benefit from it too. It's so cool. It's not something that three years down the road, we get our results back and, you know, say, hey, by the way, coach, you should have done this differently. You know, we try to help them kind of real time right in the thick of the season. Yep, absolutely. So are you a PhD as well? Are you, uh, Dr. Andrew then? Yep.

Yeah, I got my doctorate in exercise, physiology, and sport nutrition. So I came through Rick Kreider's lab at Texas A&M. And so there's a pretty big family tree of people that have come through that lab. A lot of similar kind of research interests around sports nutrition, uh, supplements, metabolism, body composition. So a lot of us, Chad Kirkson, Bill Campbell, Colin Wilborn, a lot of those guys, we all kind of are pretty like-minded

with some of the things that we study and try to do from a sports performance standpoint. When you've been training your whole life, how did you get into lifting weights in the beginning? Yep, just kind of like a lot of us in the exercise science field started playing sports. So I was a three-sport athlete all throughout high school. And then what kind of led me into the sports medicine,

exercise science realm was I got hurt and beat up all the time. And so I was always in physical therapy and rehabbing my way back. And at the time, I didn't even know exercise science existed. I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist because that was the closest thing that I knew of in that kind of realm. And then as I was going through undergraduate school, kind of flipped over to more of the exercise science domain. And that was something that really clicked with me of, I want to get on the front end of these issues and, you know, train athletes the right way, fuel them the right way.

so that hopefully they don't break down and get hurt and then kind of end up in the rehab side of it. So I took more of a preventative approach to that. And during that time, I also got certified as a trainer and a strength coach. So as I was learning things, I was trying to apply it with the athletes I was working with. And even with my own training, I've kind of been a lifelong gym bro and always done, I'd say different styles of training. Some of it was more sport performance focused in the early stages. and then it was all for show once I got to college,

just trying to look the part more than be an athlete. And then I've even kind of gotten into a little bit more of master's level competitions on the later end of my life here. I've done some master's track and field competitions. My girls are big in a track. And so we've done track meets together even as a family. And so I do. Oh, it's so cool, yeah.

I do some throwing events and I've kind of stumbled my way back into the sports competitive world. And now, so I, again, I've kind of flipped up my training style. a little bit to train like a throwing athlete and a strength athlete and try to, you know, kind of dust off some of the old competitive juices and get back in there again. So that's really fun to kind of get a chance to go through that with my kids as I'm working with them and helping with their training and development. And then I kind of got to do what I say and get my own butt in the weight room and kind of keep myself accountable with that too. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. I mean, we do, I'm not doing Olympic weightlifting completely, but I, you know, I'm doing

cleans but my kids um rock is competing at the you the nationals this year for the first time you know say way looking so kind of the same thing they see me training they see me going hard and competing and so it's you know it's not big deal for me to say come train with me you know yeah yeah i think that matters so much when kids just see it and they grow up like that and they just think that's kind of the norm and you know sometimes i don't know what your kids are like but sometimes I'll get the eye rolls of like, oh, what does dad know? And it's like, believe it or not, I actually know what I'm talking about. So you might want to listen to me.

Yeah, I mean, same thing. Say I get the same thing. But now when they see me lifting, you know, and they see me getting lean and like in shape. And like they see me making the right choices. You know, I see, you know, I'm the head of sports science at a big facility in North Carolina. And I see so many parents telling their kids to make certain choices. And they got this huge beer belly. I'm like, I mean, it's kind of tough.

seeing you sitting in your chair eating chips and like yelling at them about making wise choices man you know like maybe start by making your own wise sources oh yeah 100% what you said you have you have two girls 10 and 12 is that what you told us yep yep so they're sixth grade and fourth grade and right now we're right in the heart of basketball season so that's kind of what consumes a lot of our lives both my wife and i actually coached their teams as well so we're extra busy kind of coaching them and then the same thing when we're not at the gym practicing usually we're out in our garage gym kind of getting some training in and helping them you know stay kind of strong and reduce the risk of injuries throughout the season

as best we can yeah do absolutely again i i got three boys um they are eight nine and ten at the moment and i've been pretty consistent especially lately with like doing a one-on-one training session with with one of them at a time i just put them on like rotation you know kid one kid two kid three over three days and I just I just keep the cycle going where I train somebody every day is my goal at the moment. How have you approached strength training with your daughters? Kind of in a similar way. I usually don't train them together. They're two years apart, so it would be somewhat challenging anyway, but they just, they like the one-on-one time and thinking it's kind of customized and more for them. And then I'll rotate it around like our

practice schedules and our game schedules. So right now it's mostly tournaments on the weekends. that means I try to get two to three days of kind of a strength session in of some capacity and, you know, throughout the week and somewhat navigating around practices or when they just need a day off and want to go hang out with their friends. I try to respect that and remember that they're kids and I don't want to overload them too much at this age. But what I find helpful too is even just like a 15, 25 minute session sometimes where they're busy. They don't really feel like and I'll just say, hey, let's just go, you know, go out there, do six exercise. Usually I pair things into, you know, kind of superset combos of some kind.

And that way we can get in and out, get a pretty good workout in. And, you know, 20-ish minutes, I don't know what the exact time is. But that seems to keep them a little bit more engaged, a little bit less. Okay, yeah, we got to go do our hour and a half workout. Like, I always try to avoid things like that. So it's usually pretty short and sweet. I go through the compound movements, kind of check off the ones that I think are the most important and then, you know, kind of send them on their way and go, usually by that time,

it's time for dinner or do some homework and get ready for the next day. So you say they're in sixth grade and fourth grade. So like what movements do you consider important at this time? A lot of it I try to tailor around kind of the sports specific aspects too. So they're both tall. They're both basketball, volleyball players. So I'm always working on building up glute strength, hip stability. and then also at the same time

trying to not add more fuel to the fire. So their knees are always kind of sore, ankles are sore. So maybe in the off-season I'll add in some of the more pliometric type stuff, but a lot of it now is kind of more traditional in-season strength type programming,

I guess, and then I like doing a lot of unilateral type exercises in there as well because then you kind of get both the strength and the stability benefit of doing that way. And then with the younger one, you know, she's still tense, so she's still learning a lot of the fundamentals of movement patterns anyway. And so it's kind of get, trying to get creative of doing things that, you know,

work well for that age yet still get the training effect that I'm looking for. So like, headlbelled deadlifts, I guess is probably a staple. That's what Doug didxie. Yep. So that's one that she likes and it's easy for her to kind of do and follow. And then same thing, even just like a lot of body weight variations for her. So we'll do pushups. We'll do ice. so lunges or, you know, those kinds of things that are pretty easy, I think, for kids of that age to learn. And then, again, we're still getting the benefits of some strength. And then stability on it is, I think, one of the biggest needs for that age, at least for younger girls that I see, is they're just kind of loosey-goosey and don't have that strong base of like lower body strength and stability. And so it's like I'm always trying to be mindful of our, how can I work that in some of the exercises or things that we're doing to just, you know, always in the back of my mind.

And I'm thinking ACL prevention, like, nonstop. As you should be. Yeah. So it's like I'm always trying to find things that can help work around that and kind of just bulletproof their knees, hips, and kind of glutes and kind of go after it from that approach. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artea program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes,

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like the fifth grader the third grader and in my first grader all did snatches they're all doing them and it's really good and so do that 15 minutes snatch one goes and the other goes and the other goes And then when that's over, I choose one exercise and then each of them chooses one and we do a circuit. And it's like, so I chose, then we're going to do front squats at five reps at a certain RPE. And then like Magnolia chose the monkey bars. So we have monkey bars in our basement. And then there chose like sled pull and then rock pull up. And so it was just like going and going, you know, the only that I focus on, make sure the squats are perfect.

Then everything else, they just had the best time. We were done in 30 minutes, they got quality work movement. And then they got good conditioning, but they also got the great symphony. It's mostly, as you know, it's mostly neurological nature anyway at that age. It was just the greatest session. I'm like, all right, I feel like I found the secret sauce. And I like the part about keeping it fun and just stuff that they like to move around and do. So like when it's warmer out around here, we'll bring, we live pretty close to a park.

So we'll bring a couple kettlebells and like medicine balls down to the park. And we'll just use that like some med ball throws, you know, kind of strong man style type movements, walking lunges, kettlebell swings. And that way they're outside. They feel like they're just having a little bit more fun, just kind of moving freely. And that seems to keep them engaged more and more excited to do it, which is always the win in my book. If you could do that with kids. Amen. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I want to go back to the movement side since, I mean, I give context, you're what, 6'3? Yep. You take in. I got tall girls, too. Yeah. So like, and you figure, you know, depending on how fast they're growing as a 12-year-old, making sure that she knows how to control those limbs.

Because at some point, when she gets that gross birth, it's going to be like she's using gophers at the end of her hands. And so with how do you like to do the single leg? Like what do you found have been the best one for your girls? as you rotate them or kind of how's that look? Yep. So the two ones that I always work in each week is like step up. So we got a couple of plio boxes.

So we'll do different step up or step down kind of variations. And then like stationary lunges tend to work a little bit better. So just like a reverse lunge or forward lunge. And then sometimes if she's a little bit wobbly is how I would describe it, like we'll even use it's kind of odd. But we have old crutches in the garage for whatever reason. but I'll have her just like hold it is just a little extra support to make sure she's not fall into the side or anything like that so we can kind of keep it moving in the right direction.

But those two seem to work well for in execute them with pretty good form and then again have that added stability piece if she's struggling for whatever reason. But the growth spur part, she's already, I don't know if she would like me share it too much, but she's already kind of, I would say almost done with the girl spurt already is a 12 year old. That's what I was going to say. A lot of Mark. Yeah. Yeah. And it's sort of basketball team. Yeah. She is. She's like five, eight, five, nine. And she's in six grades. So she's, she's a tall girl. So the hard thing for me is the programming part of it because it's almost like you have to build in some auto regulation around the growth spurts because it's like,

well, the weights that we did a month ago just aren't working today. I don't know if you're, if the coordination piece is off, it's if it's, you know, just the levers or the, the biomechanical part of it. I don't know, but it's like we always are kind of making some adjustments to work around that. Or it's like, well, now we've got to reteach this exercise altogether because you're six inches taller than you were a couple months ago, it seems like. So that piece is hard of like from a programming standpoint. Sometimes I don't even track stuff and I just go by feel and just kind of, you know,

work around whatever the issues are for that given day. Yeah, I rarely track unless, you know, I keep. up with PRs you know but like rarely I'm just like it's movement I'm looking at movement quality so like that's the main thing I track right now but you know once a month I'll pick a day and maybe we'll try to beat their 5 RM squad or you know or maybe even in the snatches we've been working on you know three RNs or two RMs and you know I don't want to get caught up in maxing you know they're so young yeah it's still in my nature I'm trying to not to pass it

to my kids but to go heavy is like you know you're too and I still do it so yeah not to pass that on to them yeah I'd say these days like oh sorry I'm playing the zoom game right now yeah you go ahead I've been talking too much you're up the physics makes sense you know work is just force times distance so the load might stay the same but if your girl's got to go squat six more inches because she's six inches taller the same or more work yeah yeah it's a it's a it's It's a range of motion PR. I don't know, is that what you'd call it? I mean, for real, it's a brilliant way to look at.

Yeah, it pretty much is. So, like, barbell squats are hard for her, you know, as they are with a lot of tall athletes. So we'll do kettlebell or goblet squat, you know, kind of variations or some box squat stuff to just get that mind muscle connection. And again, I'm like you, Travis, I always am focused more on the movement pattern than anything beyond that. So it's like, we'll select whatever odds and ends piece of equipment we need to, execute that movement and same thing with the weight or the resistance whatever is working if it's resistance bands kettlebells we'll kind of adjust on the fly yeah you can care I can care less as long as

they're doing the movement so my kids don't have that problem they're never going to be six foot three rock might be kind that's all but I mean the other two so like back squats are just in there like my son bear is this a phenom like he's so strong he's only nine and like so I got to hold him way back like he can way out squat his brother who's two years older and so uh he's he's the thick but i'm not trying not to like i keep them the same for like rock's ego's sake because i don't want to kill him just you know and uh and mainly i don't want to get my nine-year-old maxing out just yet but it's just a brute boy yeah dude these days i'm just trying to build the habit i'm just to build

the consistency and anything that requires like set up time i try to avoid void. I want no downtime where they can get distracted or get bored or any of that stuff. So like I'll set up the whole set the whole circuit, so to speak, ahead of time. Everything's laid out. That way when we get out there, my ADHD, actual ADHD diagnosed eight year old when he gets out there, like it's all there. I don't feel like if I go, okay, you stand there. I'm going to go get the bar and we're going to put some weights on. It's a wrap. He's going to be in the yard, like throwing paper airplanes. Like, he's going to be gone. I just want to make it easy and convenient. And then to your point from earlier, uh, and you like making it 15, 20 minutes max is about all he really can handle right now. We're going to do four exercises at the most and he's back to, you know, hopefully playing outside,

but probably probably back inside, you know, watch TV or whatever, whatever he was doing before I, I yank him out to the garage. Yeah. Yeah. And even to that point,

like there's sometimes we're all, we'll get our strike movements in and then it's like, all right, let's go watch TV and hang out in living room. But then I bring the minibands out with or some other things that we can do just kind of mindlessly while we're just hanging out the living room watching TV. So just little, you know, kind of hip type strengthening exercises and core work,

like do a plank challenge on commercial breaks or just little things like that where we can kind of keep the workout going a little bit. Yet we're still, I'm still letting them watch TV and kind of unwind. So I try to mix those things in there. They probably don't even realize that I'm doing it. But they're like, yeah, if I get to watch TV, who cares? I'm still happy. Yeah.

How have you found the balance between like pushing them into? to strength training and and encountering any amount of resistance like where I don't want ever be the dad that like pushes my kids so hard that they they resist and then they're just like I don't want to do that anymore because it's kind of like dad's thing he's making me do like how do you how do you play that game yeah I always try to use education is the kind of reason why we're doing it you know it's like and strength training I think is a hard one to sell sometimes because you're playing the long term game you know for athletes so it's like we're doing these little things here and there throughout our week, throughout the months, so that

when you're in middle school or high school, like, you're going to be at a big advantage compared to some of the other kids that you're competing against. You're going to be stronger, more powerful, more explosive. So in time, it will translate to better athletic performance. And then I always highlight the injury, you know, elements of this is like, we're doing these things so you don't get hurt, or at least you're lowering your risk of getting hurt. Because the older one has already, she's had a couple injuries. They weren't necessarily anything that strength training would have prevented. She busted her collarbone at the playground, which a lot of kids do things like that. But he knows what it felt like to miss an entire

sports season and she hated it and she was miserable. And so it's like, remember how that felt? Like this kind of strength training early on is going to certainly reduce your risk of pairing your ACL or some of these injuries that, you know, could happen later in your sports career. So and then you can kind of see the things collect a little bit and the wheels turn like, okay, yeah, I guess you're right. Like this is important to prioritize. and make sure we're doing. And then the fun part of it, you know, too, we try to do some challenges and say like, oh, look, how much you've improved compared to where you were last time or, you know,

now you can do eight pull-ups instead of four pull-ups like we were doing last fall or last summer, so like that. So just kind of showing them the progress that they're making along the way as well. And me being a sport science nerd, I'll graph out their progress. We'll show like, hey, your vertical jumps gone up, you know, 40%. and I'll have a little figure that I can kind of highlight and just, again, show them that feedback part of it. Just get them to understand that this is important.

It's making me better. And then just kind of trust dad a little bit. That's a brilliant thing. That's exactly the same thing. We have a vertex down in our basement as well. And they absolutely love, that's their favorite thing to do, just try and jump and touch a little bit higher. And so, and like, they see it as play.

And I'm like, you know, to me, and they're jumping and it's an explosive and so whatever you want to call it call it play but like to me it's like awesome yeah it's the whole goal i want them to so think of this as a fun time together like i i you know i've i've worked very hard at this whole time of never making any of them and so i'm like i'm going down if everyone wants to join me join me and so at first it was just rock then it was rocking bear and then finally now it's been rock band and my daughter magnolia is you know she's in first great. It's like they all get along and like they encourage each other. There's like rules. You can't be, you can't be joking around or you get sued. You know, that's a, you're getting

trouble because you get someone hurt, you know, not because I'm being a, you know, not because I'm being a dictator because you're going to get somebody hurt. So yeah, we're going to have a good time. So it's been a great family time. It's my favorite, of course. Yep. And then all, the other thing I think that helps a little bit is just even last night, I was taking my 10 year old, we were getting started and I could just tell. she wasn't into it. I don't know if she's tired or whatever. And I was like, how about we just go inside? We'll just call today. And she's like, okay. Like I could just, I felt like it was going to be kind of a worthless workout. And it's like, let's just scrap it. That's fine. Like we can miss days or skip

them if you need a break. And I think that piece helps a little bit too where I'm not dragging them through it every time. I'm upset. Forcing it. And the other thing that we're fortunate to have with our school district in our area is they hired a sports performance company that comes into the, high school weight rooms over the summers and they run free strength conditioning programming all summer long for the kids in the district and so that way it's a nice break from me telling them what to do all the time that way they can go listen to another strength coach for a bit and just see how other people do it and again listen to a different voice i think it's just sometimes nice when it's not mom or dad constantly telling them what to do so that works well where come summertime they're

going and learning from someone else and then i kind of pick it up during the school school year and then they work out with me at home in our garage gym. What about like, I mean like with nutrition or like I have one, you know, Bear is a definite mesomorph and like right now he's at that stage where he's like I definitely would consider him overweight but like he's thicker than the other two and it's starting to buy. I can tell like it's bother him a little bit. So how would you approach like that like if you had a kid who probably needed to work at like which course we're the ones who buy the food and so I'm trying to make better choices there

but he's also got to be able to be willing to make certain sources but how do you how would you go about that yeah usually we we try to be even when I'm working with older athletes I always try to focus on things that you can add in instead of always taking away or calling foods bad or like off limits and so like let's get all the good things in first you know just your typical whole foods you know, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and kind of the typical healthy foods that people would mostly think of. And so we always try to prioritize those in our household with meals and things like that. But then I still allow for junk food or desserts, you know, here and there. It's just they kind of know by now that those are meant to be, you know, prioritize less or just not

necessarily staples. And I feel like they have a pretty good relationship with food and kind of understand that, hey, it's okay to have dessert a couple times a week or whatever, but we're not having a box of donuts every day in our house. Like we know that just not the best way to eat or things like that. But that piece of the weight part is hard for me just because of the girls in the house. Like that's such a slippery slope of body image and them just all of a sudden going down a whole different path of their restricting food. They don't want to get big. They already battle that to some degree because as Mike said, I'm a bigger guy.

so my girls are big and so they're head and shoulders above all of their friends in school. And I know it makes them feel uncomfortable at times because they're the big kid and they don't want to stand out. And then especially around some of these growth spur times where you can just kind of see that kid that puts on a little extra weight because they're ready to just shoot right upwards. And so I kind of try to be patient during those times as well, knowing that it's just kind of their body storing energy and getting ready to just hit that girl spurt. That's what I told me. Shoot up. I was the same. I was the same mesomorph.

You know, at his very age, I was thick. And then, you know, a couple years later, then I was the skinny, you know,

well, I was never skinny kid, but like, but it totally shifted, you know, you know, just use, my body used the energy to grow.

And then it was like, I became the muscular shorter kid. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I've never said to them is, hey, we need to cut out calories or like, we got to start,

oh, yeah. Like, I'm very careful to never use that language around my girls. And I hope a lot of parents follow that rule, too, especially we've got young daughters. I will never use it with Magnolia for sure. You know, it's just like, is this is bare asking me? And I'm like, how do I answer him? And like, even for a boy, you know, you can cause it issues.

And I'm like, I'm just been dancing around it. So I thought I was going to ask a few of my friends some advice and try to get a good way to approach it. But it's interesting. a big difference in the social pressure between being a big guy growing up and being a big girl growing up totally and then that kind of lends itself into i know your area of research that i'm both really interested in which is that whole fat free mass so like how do you you approach that subject of like hey you know it turns out you have muscle and because you have muscle your weight's always going to be higher because you're just dense or what's how do you approach

that or how do you kind of yeah that's that's kind of the explanation that i'll give to them too and even with some of the strength training parts, it's okay to be a little bit bigger. And then I'll literally say, like, being stronger means you're going to be able to jump higher, run faster, start, stop, change directions. Like, I guarantee you it'll translate better to overall athleticism and performance. So they, I think, are at a point now where they understand that part of it. But then back to your point with, like, fat pre-mass and fat-free mass index,

that's literally why I started studying that was to kind of better address. that issue when I would do a body comp test with this is more so for like collegiate athletes but I was very cognizant of the female collegiate athletes we were assessing from a body composition standpoint I didn't want to harp on body fat percent because that just seems to carry such a negative connotation of your too fat you have too much body fat or your body fat percent puts you in this overweight or fat category you know according to some of these charts that we have so I was like how can I still get the value

of a body comp assessment and tracking it without a lot of that negative connotation. And so that's where fat-free mass, I think, is a better alternative because then you can focus it and say, this is a good weight. This is the weight you want to have. You want to actually increase it because it will help you, you know, with X, Y, Z and your sports. And then the question usually would come is, well, is that amount of fat-free mass good? You know, like, you get a little Dexter report or your bod-pod and it gives you fat-free mass. And then the first question, when I always got was, is this high, is this low? And then I was like, I don't really have a good answer for that.

And then at the same time, Trexler, you know, published one of those early fat pre-mass index papers. And then I was like, well, this is a great idea. And so I think that was when I was at Lyndon with Chad Kirkson. And so we quickly published some of the old data that we had on athletes and body composition just to get some more descriptive values out there for fat-free mass index. And then all of a sudden it was like it kind of solved that problem for me of now I have more of a positive parameter that I could point to when doing body composition assessments

with athletes. And then now that we have a lot more normative data out there for fat-free mass index, we can kind of better contextualize what those values mean when we're interpreting it and working with athletes. And we could say, yeah, you could easily put on 20 more pounds of fat-free mass per your frame or maybe at the lower end, like a female cross-country athlete, like, hey, you're kind down on the lower end of this, we got to be careful of female athlete triad, relative energy deficiency in sport, you know, some of these conditions that put you at higher risk for injury

or all kinds of, you know, health complications that can come from it. So I think it's a pretty versatile metric to be able to use. And then for me, it just, especially with female athletes, I like being able to point to that and say, let's increase this as in fat-free mass or fat-free mass index instead of the body fat percent and say oh we got we got to cut calories we got to lose weight you're too fat and then it's just like you could see them mentally really having a hard time hearing some of that and then kind of knowing what to do next yeah certainly a lot of people are likely familiar with their their body fat percentage but for those that have never had their they've never gotten a measurement around fat free mass index and they don't they don't even know what it means what

are kind of the standard values? How is it calculated? If someone was to get it tested, how would they get it tested? Like, what's all the logistics around it? Sometimes, like, the simplest explanation I'll give is most people have heard of body mass index. This is calculated the same way, except you're just working with good weight as kind of what I'll explain it. Like, you're just focusing on fat-free mass, which, especially with athletic populations, BMI oftentimes misclassifies you as being overweight or obese because it doesn't account. for fat-free mass, which this parameter now does. And so in order to calculate this, it is a little bit more complicated than just body mass index

because that you just need to know height and weight. So for fat-free mass, you have to have some body composition technology available to get kind of an estimate of what that fat-free mass is. It could be DEXA, underwater weighing, some impedance technology can give you that. Skinfolds, you know, there are all kinds of different measures. techniques that you could utilize, but ultimately you've got to get that fat-free mass value, which represents bone, muscle, connective tissue. There's a lot of things to get kind of wrapped into that bucket. But again, I'll just sometimes simplify as like, this is good weight that you

as an athlete want to maintain or, if anything, increase as you develop. But by taking that fat-free mass index value, we would just divide it by an athlete's height in meter squared, and then we get the resulting value from that. And so I would say on the lower end for like a male athlete, if they're around 16, 17, that's where I would kind of put up that red flag and say, you're kind of on the low end of the spectrum. Or if they're, again, if it's a male athlete and their fat-free mass index is 24, 25, I'd say you're getting, you know, pretty close to your natural upper limit.

I don't know if you need to spend a whole lot more time focusing on muscle hypertrophy. maybe now we can shift your training priorities to focus more on strength or power or some other physical attribute because you're kind of maxing out how much fat-free mass you can probably hold for your frame. And then for female athletes, it just kind of shifted down a little bit. So 15, 14 is probably the lower end of the cutoff. And then maybe 20, 21 is kind of the typical range that you would maybe see for females. And then I guess going on the high end for a female athlete, probably 24.

25 would kind of be the upper end of the naturally attainable limit on the high end. That measures. Well, if you have had your body fat measured, there's probably easy calculators. You can just Google fat-free mass index calculator, and this will all just pull up. You just plug in your numbers, and it'll spit it out for easy. Yep, exactly. The biggest thing is just make sure you get the units, right? Like sometimes that's where people will trip up and then they get a ridiculous number.

So if they're using pounds instead of kilograms or things like that, the little details always matter with those calculations. Yeah. Sorry, Mike. Go ahead, dude. Oh, no. The idea of an athlete with an ffmI of 24 as a female athlete, that is a, that is an intimidatingly muscular human being. Yeah, it's mostly the rugby and the throwers is where we see all values. Immediately came to mind was like, that is a shot putter. That's just sending it. Yep. And so yeah, I mean, that's where it's interesting because, you know, I'm, oh, by the way, I am going to coach, quote you out of context since you said five and nine is tall. And I really needed that today. But, you know, we're. Oh, for a girl. Yeah. Mike, you can set out of context, out of context. You could be gender neutral. You could be the starting center of our girls' sixth grade basketball team. That's good. Yeah, you could be. They'd still probably find a way to be like it is what it is. But yeah, we're, you know, because MASH obviously, you're. competing as a 220 power lifter at five we're going to say five seven yeah five seven at the

wind's blowing up we're gonna be real nice tall shoes and so like you still figure like his fat ring mass it'd be like 26 27 and that's where you're always going to have your lack of better term freaks you're always going to have your outliers but I think that's a great way because it's like hey I think for if I mean athletic would be awesome if your daughters end up having your frame you know being like a six three like that girl's getting a d1 scholarship or something but the simple reality is like you'd look sickly at 190 pounds you know and then so like realistically with the amount of muscle mass you have you're probably walking around like 230 at least yeah 240 probably right now heck yeah six three is like perfect you know it's like it's winter up here so i got to

stay warm like i got to have the extra winter pounds hey trust me you will never have any fighting my body's been still saving that energy for the height it's just it's yet to invest that I think these growth plates are fused. But what would you say with the athletes you work with when you do find them in that like, hey, you're in the red zone, we would increase that fat-framed mass index. What's the time horizon?

You're typically like, hey, if you can move up one full unit in blank, you've had a really productive off-season year, whatever. Just that time frame, I think, is probably one that's pretty appropriate. It's like an off-season.

So if we take a football player, like a lot linebacker. Maybe they're coming in their freshman year. We do that Pap Freemass Index calculation. And they're 17 or something. It's like, hey, we got to get you up a little bit if you're going to be a competitive linebacker in college. And so I think it's reasonable over the course of like a four month off season like hypertrophy focused football training program that they could probably go up from 17 to 18, maybe 18 and a half kind of within that type of a time frame. and then you just kind of build upon that so that maybe by their junior, senior year, like they're in the 20s

and kind of more in a, like a competitive range, I guess, for what we would typically want to see from like a collegiate linebacker. And so the one challenge, though, with fat-free mass index,

is it may not be the best measure of progress because it does take a pretty good increase in fat-free mass to literally move from like 17 to 18. Like if you kind of work backwards through the math, you're going to have to put on three to six kilos maybe to be going up, you know, from 18 to 19. So it isn't the best to track longitudinal changes, at least within like months to a year. I use it more as like a screening tool.

And then maybe on a once a year basis, we could kind of check in, redo that calculation, and see are we moving from a 17 to 18 and kind of upwards from there? otherwise you're probably better off using just raw fat-free mass values and saying, hey, you know, great job you put on three kilos of fat-free mass here. That's a X percent increase and that's a great change to make, like, nice work kind of thing. So that's kind of how I would use fat-free mass index in that context. So you've done research on fat-free mass index. Is that right? Yep.

So with a lot of the testing that I do with collegiate athletes, we kind of just, just have a ever-growing database of body comp data. So a lot of the research I've done is just kind of retrospectively going back and analyzing all the different testing profiles that we've done. And then mostly just publishing it as kind of descriptive papers within different levels of competition. So we have some at D3, D2, D1. Some are males and females. Some are more kind of mixed cohorts.

So that's kind of most of the work that I've done on fat-free mass. And then we put, I guess probably two years ago now, we compiled all of the available literature on that into kind of a review paper to try to, again, kind of create more of a robust guide for collegiate athletes to help them better interpret. If my value's 18, what does that mean in relation to other sports? Or if I'm a D3 athlete, how does that compare to a D1 athlete? And then we kind of propose some cutoffs in that paper, too, to say, this is the lower end. This is where we would start to get concerned or here's some proposed kind of natural upper limits of just kind of contextualizing those ranges to just kind of help people use that metric in more practice or strength conditioning type situations. Do you feel like you did everything you kind of set out to do there? Or is there a next domino to fall here?

What's the next phase of fat-free mass index? I think I think there's more work to be done, especially on the lower end of it, to try to. kind of align it with some of the health metrics or even like bone type data. So I think one big question I would like to answer is like if a female cross country runner has a fat-free medicine X value of 17, what does their bone metal density value look like? Are they the one that's starting to check a lot of those boxes of the female athlete triad condition? You know, do they have irregular menstrual cycles of that range?

Estudial levels are off or something like that. So I think we still need some more complementary. data to help kind of better interpret maybe the risks that we would see on the lower end of fat-free mass index. So I think that's kind of where the future research could focus on the most, just bringing in more complementary data to that analysis and just kind of try to make more sense out of what does that low value mean. Is it truly problematic?

Are we going to start seeing other issues arise, or is that not as bad of a problem as we thought? Maybe it's just a natural byproduct of being a lean cross-country runner. And if anything, it might be advantageous for that sport. You know, like, obviously you don't want to be too big as a runner. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Like if you're obese, there's going to be certain things that show up in your blood work

that are like very indicative of the fact that you are obese. If you're radically under muscle, I don't know exactly what that does your blood work, but there's got to be easy correlations between someone who's radically undermuscled and what shows up in their blood work. Yeah. I think it's probably more of like a byproduct of if you're under muscle, that probably means you're also under fueling. So you're probably not getting enough calories in. You might not be getting enough of the right micronutrients in. And so maybe then we start to see disruptions to normal

hormone levels or again, we see reductions in bone mineral density. So it's kind of creating more of a comprehensive health picture of everything that is off just because you're under muscle. So it's like under muscle is just kind of an easy screening tool. All right, let's get under the hood and see what kind of led to this under-muscled condition and what other health issues might we find when we start checking. Okay, I might be about to go tinfoil hat here, so just everybody, hold on, and I'm sorry. But one of my big conjectures with amenorrhea and women is, is it a function of total fat mass, or is it a function of percent body fat?

And so hence, if you've got a female athlete who has a robust fat-free mass index, and so, you know, she's a buck 50, 12% body fat, but then, you know, that equates to 18 pounds of fat, does she have a normal cycle? But if you give me a 100-pound female, that is, you know, she's 8, you know, she's 15% or 16% body fat, but because she has such lower lean mass, she also has lower fat mass. And that's the major driving mechanism of you just literally don't have the tissue to do her and support the hormonal function. And like there's no ethical way to do that easily,

but obviously you get a big enough end size and you can start to, based upon your database, is like, do we see, is it a cut off with fat-free mass index or is it a fat mass index? Is it a certain point where it's just like the percent raw weight? You just, you can't run the car that efficiently without having some type of negative

situation. Okay, tinfoil hat off. Well, I was just going to say that, not that exact question, but that kind of concept is definitely being discussed right now in the women's wrestling world because they're trying to kind of figure that out too of where should we allow wrestlers to get in terms of leanness or kind of minimal weight before it really does start to be problematic.

So they're trying to figure out is that a is that a weight? Is that a body fat percent? What specific parameters should we use to kind of guide those policies on, you know, how restrictive we're going to let these wrestlers get when they're cutting weight and trying to get as light or as lean as they can. So that's definitely on their radar as well as that sport continues to just blow up across the U.S. as we see girls and women's wrestling just growing like crazy right now. We don't have the historical data to help answer some of these questions. So again, we're kind of trying to study that aspect of it too of, you know, how do we develop those thresholds,

whether it is a body fat percent-based one or a weight-based one to decide what's a healthy weight or body fat to kind of allow them to be at. Mm-hmm. We have a little tyrant. They have a girl that's doing the wrestling here at, well, she does it with the local high school, but we also have a club, you know, it's combat, sport, combat fitness, sorry.

And this little girl is just like, she's just killing everybody and she beat a top boy, like, you know, and she's in middle school now. So, but one of the top boys is like, at the time was undefeated and she pinned it and just like absolutely destroyed this poor kids like his and his dad was you know they've got their own like Instagram and you know he's the killer and this girl just like straight pinned him like in quick in quick fashion too and it was just like this you can see the poor dad and the kid you know like middle school

you know they're still about the same you know until you hit that now level of you know adolescence but yeah so belker I'm not winning the 100 meter final in women's or men's like there's just no shot yeah this little girl that's a beast she could just she's so good at even weightlifting she could do anything a little girl like anything but she loves wrestling yeah the poor boys around here just I would just go take my forfeit well it's nice that now again as a winter sport there is kind of a strength-based sport for some of the female athletes to compete in because historically they didn't really have that kind of option during the

winter months. So like even our local high school, we have one of the biggest girls wrestling teams in the state right now in Wisconsin. And so they're one of the leaders like they're, I think they just qualified almost all of their team to individual state coming up here in a week or two. So they're getting after it and they have a really good feeder program. So they have a club that starts like kindergarten and get some of these little girls into the sport and just kind of teaching and it's it's paying off at the high school level as they have a nice feeder system in place. Yeah, I'm saying, you know, he's got these little kindergartners out to get in at it too, man, just getting at it. Yeah. You know, two little brothers I saw wrestling the other day

that turned into the basic slug fest. I'm sure. I'm all for the whole thing. Like, I do jihitsu and have done so for, you know, a couple decades now and wrestle before that. You know, Jiu-Jitsu for females is also very popular. And there's many men out there that have gone up against smaller females and got their asses fucking handed to them because they're really good Jiu-Situ. And a lot of the best Jiu-Jitsu guys came from, you know, college wrestling. And then they get into Jiu-Suzzi and they just take to it, you know, insanely easily. And now that women's wrestling is also getting more popular,

it's just going to feed the Jiu-Jitsu and a bunch of female wrestlers that also no Jiu-Ti and also no boxing. it's just going to like elevate the whole mMA scene which i think it's fucking awesome yeah absolutely and because i've even talked to a couple of international people that have reached out with some of the wrestling things that we've published because it's interesting to see how different the u.s does it in wrestling versus the rest of the world because we have a weight certification program and we have minimal wrestling weight determination so we do kind of cap the floor as to how low these wrestlers can get from like a weight cutting standpoint those policies aren't in place in or for some of those other combat sports.

And so like you take the University of Women's Iowa's wrestling team, half their team is our Olympic team. And so they will cut like 30 pounds when they're going to compete on the international scale. But when they come back to NCAA rules, they got to gain weight to get back up to the weight class that they're kind of technically supposed to be at. So it's really interesting to again see a lot of our combat sport or I guess specifically wrestling here.

if you're in the U.S., it's a whole different world if you get outside of the U.S. Because you're going to have people just cutting significantly more weight to get down as light or as lean as they can. Or even same thing when they watch MMA, you know, you're watching UFC on TV and they have, you know, weigh in the 24 hours prior, fighters cutting 20% of their weight in a week, whereas wrestling, you're capped at 1.5% a week. So just a completely different ballgame when you get into the weight cycling and weight management part of it. depending on what country or what specific sport that you're competing in. I mean, do you think there's any advantage of doing that? Like, you know, when you're going to the Olympics and you're cutting 30 pounds,

like is that the wise thing to do or would they be better off? I never think so, but I'm biased from like a sport nutrition perspective because it's like you're still depleted, you know, like you're dehydrated, your electrolytes are imbalanced. You probably have zero glycogen in the tank because you haven't eaten your carb-restricted. And so it's like all the logic tells us that's an insane strategy to utilize when you're going into an intense physical competition. But there's some things about that sport I just don't know and I don't get. And so maybe it's a matchup thing.

You know, sometimes I just never know. But from purely a physiological perspective, no, it's a terrible strategy to do it that way. It just saves terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like Travis of all the guys competing in powerlifting all the world champions they all do this one thing and all everyone else is like ah this doesn't seem like a very good idea but everybody who

who sets world records does it's like there's something going on there that that's a good idea i mean i look at like how much we cut a lot like i would cut you know 10 kilos like 20 22 pounds and i'm like was that a good idea like even me i can't i mean i i i broke a world record but when i've broken it had i stayed a little bit you know closer like i don't know like Yeah. I mean, those guys have success without doing it, too. So there's, there's, there's, those anecdotes exist as well. Yeah. And I think, I think it's even a different conversation if we're talking like a middle school or high school or, they're still growing, developing. Oh, yeah. They should be going up in weight classes as they're getting older. But if you're a collegiate or Olympic wrestler,

it's like, do what you got to do, man. Like, you're fully grown, you're developed. If you think there's an advantage of cutting down a weight class, I think going to work. Yeah, I'm not as concerned with that athlete but yeah sophomore in high school who's still going through puberty or still getting stronger it's like i don't i don't want you restricting and and cutting down we we got to get you up up to the next weight class of anything and come in as strong as possible yeah a lot of it yeah do you have 24 do you have two hours do you have like how many hours you have to weigh in like see like when it was the wPO you had 48 and so like i mean so we would weigh in and they go straight to the IVs, you know.

Yeah. And that's, yeah. I think that is more doable. Like I still wouldn't want to tell people to go do that. But you can rehydrate, you can refuel in that kind of time frame. Like you're going to get back fairly close to kind of normal. But if you only have an hour or two, like if we look at high school collegiate wrestling, that is not enough time to get fluids and food back in.

Guaranteed going to be sacrificing some performance. You just can't, you can't sell me on that, not be in the case. especially just read dr you know any galvin's work like two percent anything about two percent you're sacrificing you know yeah dude like you other tournaments you weigh in and then step on the mat like you weigh in right then jiu jit to tournaments you weigh in on the mat's like right then so like if i do jihitsu tournaments where i don't really compete anymore but like if i do jihitsu tournaments i'm not i'm barely cutting at all and then back when back when i used to buy m m mc and we had we had 30 hours 30 hours is a lot

the time dude I cut a lot of weight like I compete in weightlifting in 94 kilo which is 207 and then I compete in in MMA as a welterweight at 170 and I would just bounce back and forth between the two of those and do the can do massive cuts and and be a fucking mess the day before and then and then in the fight you know I'm have you know I was only fighting amateur at a time so I wasn't doing like a 25 minute match that might that might change things a little bit but you know we only doing three three minute rounds which is fairly short but but with no energy issues at all during the fight you could fight three hard

and three three-minute rounds, no problem with a big cut. Because you got 30 hours to rehydrate and re-glycogen repletes and everything else. Like it was not an issue at all. Well, now that explains everything with the last you do. I've only been to one judici tournament. And like everybody is jacked to the like that explains everything. Like at this one, there was no drug testing. And it looked like I felt like I was at home back at powerlifting.

Everybody walking around purple with huge straps. I'm like, I know what you're doing. They're not dead. They're all in the ball. Do what you guys. The last card is to keep the zits from popping. Yeah, dude. It looks. I was like, if I had the WPO, we're so vulnerable.

The other thing to keep in mind is just the frequency. Like, if you're just doing three MMA fights a year, yeah, is it great to do that to yourself three times a year? Not, but if you're high school wrestling, you've got a three-month-long season, and you're doing that to yourself every week, twice a week. Yeah. Yeah. Aside from the growth part, that's just a lot of dehydration time.

That's a lot of putting the systems through the paces. And the other hard part for a lot of the high school rosters is a lot of them also play football, which football season wraps up in like November, and then you've got to come in and do your weight certs in almost November, December time. So it's like you see a lot of these high school wrestlers rapidly trying to cut 20, 30 pounds sometimes to get from their football body type to the wrestling body type. And it's just like, that's not a great. model or environment that I like to see happen either, but it's just kind of the reality of the sport sometimes.

Yeah, not at all. We're right on. We got to shut it down here. Dr. Andrew Jaggham, I appreciate it coming on the show. Where can people find more about you, website, social media, anywhere that people can reach out? Yeah, I'd say Instagram and LinkedIn are probably the two best places to check out some of the research that we got going on. Or more recently on Instagram, I've been a little bit more active on just trying to post a lot of these infographics to help fellow youth sports parents out there to just kind of get them some more resources on a lot of things we even talked about today of lifting fueling practices and stuff like that so I definitely recommend recommend people kind of checking those out and follow along yeah you got a lot of very cool infographics on your Instagram I wish I could take credit for it but it's all the AI stuff just making the robot do the work for us nowadays sir that's the intelligent thing to do I like it uh Dr Mike Lane yep so

find me on Instagram at Mike Lane, PhD, but Andrew, I believe you have a book that also people can have for a reference. Yeah, thanks for that reminder. So I did publish it. It's a self-published book on Amazon. So if you just kind of Google Andrew Jaggum's Sports Nutrition Handbook, you should be able to find out of Amazon. But same thing, it's kind of meant to be more of an athlete-focused guide to highlight

how much food you should eat, when to eat, what kinds of foods and things like that. So a very athlete-friendly kind of resource and guide for sport nutrition-type strategies. right on very cool dr mike oh i already did mine just playing me on instagram got it right on charles mash matchillet dot com very cool i'm doug larson i'm douglas e larson on instagram we are barbell shrug you can go to barbell underscore shrug if you want to work with dr mike lane travis mash and dr andy galpin on the whole team at rapid health optimization you can go to rtae lab dot com that's a r e t-a-l-b dot com friends see you guys next week