

Note the measurement on the little scale to the right of the arrows.Press on the serrated thumb pad next to the word "press" until the two arrows line up.Place the calipers about 1 cm to the side of your fingers.Once you feel like you have a good pinch, perform these steps:

When taking a skinfold, the basic idea is to "pinch and pull." Attempt to separate the fat tissue from the surrounding tissue with a good pinch, then pull it away from the body just slightly.

Past the point of 10% body fat, the mid-stomach measurement (that at the navel, which the equation uses) will change very little as the person gets leaner because most of the fat is coming off from the lower abs and back at this point. Excess fat comes off of the stomach/torso generally from the top down.Two important things to point out in regards to this: Notice that the reading is heavily determined by the measurement at the navel. The US Navy body fat calculator wins out on convenience and cost, this is what I’d recommend for most people. Things To Watch Out For When Measuring Body Fat It would be much better to track body measurements and scale weight. Remember, the accuracy of this Navy body fat calculator is ~3–4%, so while it’s a good way of gauging roughly where you’re at, I don’t recommend you try to track your progress in this way. Measure three times for each and average the three.Neck – Keep your head straight, look forward.Have a relaxed stomach, exhaled but, don’t forcefully push it out! Height – Get someone else to do it for you if possible.MEASUREMENT GUIDELINES For The Calculator Take a look and then we’ll get into some practical recommendations. Here’s that US Navy body fat calculator formula. This is the difference between being useless and helpful. If you use the US Navy body fat calculator and get a reading of 20%, your actual body fat could be anywhere from 17-23%. So, if you use a BIA machine and get a reading of 20%, your actual body fat could be anywhere from 12–28%. These have the highest degree of inaccuracies. Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) machine accuracy.Body-fat caliper measurement accuracy. - Skilled practitioner, ~3%.BodPod / Underwater weighing - Up to 6% ( Expensive, inconvenient.).The US Navy Body Fat Calculator accuracy - ~3–4% (Convenient, free.).The numbers given are the individual error rates that have been observed: Here’s a rundown of the methods we typically have available to us for measuring body fat, from most to least accurate. The Issues Of ESTIMATING BODY-FAT PERCENTAGE This guide US Navy body fat calculator combined with my new visual guide to body fat percentage fills that void. On the other hand, I use body-fat percentages in my guide to helping people decide when to cut and bulk. On the one hand, I recommend that people do not try to track their body-fat percentage because of the errors of all the devices we have available to estimate it. The lack of a guide on this site to help you find this has been something that has bugged me for some time. They’re all marketed as being really accurate of course, but that’s just because people are after your dollars. The methods that we generally have available to measure it range from being ‘acceptably accurate’ to ‘very poor,’ and they are nearly all useless for tracking changes over time. Finding your body-fat percentage is an imprecise endeavor.
