THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PERCENTAGE OF BODY FAT AND JUDGING IN GERMAN WHEEL GYMNASTICS

In some sports which focus on aesthetic aspects, such as figure skating, gymnastics and dancing, there is a strong demand for athletes to be and look lean. This demand could lead to pressure on the athletes and cause health problems. It must be clarified whether this is also the case in wheel gymnastics. For this purpose, the percentage of body fat and competitive results of 203 wheel gymnasts (183 female, 20 male, age 21.2 ± 11.9 and 16.8 ± 4.9 respectively; body fat percentage 14.5 ± 3.4 and 8.0 ± 3.7 respectively) were assessed cross-sectionally and tested for correlation between the percentage of body fat and competitive results. Furthermore, their body fat percentage was compared to that of athletes from other aesthetic sports, and it was investigated whether judges might be influenced by percentage of body fat. For this purpose, technical difficulties in training and competition were compared for gymnasts with different percentages of body fat, at the same time taking into account the rating of judges` performance as perceived the gymnasts and their satisfaction with their results. The difference between the technical difficulty during training and competition correlates positively with the body fat percentage (p ≤ .010, r = .268). Gymnasts who are a) not content with judges’ ratings; b) content with their own performance, and c) have a higher percentage of body fat, significantly differed from gymnasts where fewer than three of these parameters were true regarding deductions for technical difficulty (p ≤ .000, η 2 = .323).