Relative total body fat and skinfold patterning in Filipino national combat sport athletes

The purpose of this study was to assess relative total body fat and skinfold patterning in Filipino national karate and pencak silat athletes. Participants were members of the Philippine men's and women's national teams in karate ( 12 males, 5 females) and pencak silat ( 17 males and 5 females). In addition to age, the following anthropometric measurements were taken: height, body mass, triceps, subscapular, supraspinale, umbilical, anterior thigh and medial calf skinfolds. Relative total body fat was expressed as sum of six skinfolds. Sum of skinfolds and each individual skinfold were also expressed relative to Phantom height. A two-way (Sport*Gender) ANOVA was used to determine the differences between men and women in total body fat and skinfold patterning. A Bonferroni-adjusted alpha. was employed for all analyses. The women had a higher proportional sum of skinfols (80.19 +/- 25.31 mm vs. 51.77 +/- 21.13 mm, p = 0.001, eta(2) = 0.275). The men had a lower proportional triceps skinfolds (-1.72 +/- 0.71 versus 0.35 +/- 0.75, p < 0.001). Collapsed over gender, the karate athletes (-2.18 +/- 0.66) had a lower proportional anterior thigh skinfold than their pencak silat colleagues (-1.71 +/- 0.74, p = 0.001). Differences in competition requirements between sports may account for some of the disparity in anthropometric measurements.