ArticleJournal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition2024
Collegiate women's wrestling body fat percentage and minimum wrestling weight values: time for revisiting minimal body fat percent?
Article in Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Eating disorders and disordered eating on wrestling sport: a systematic review.BMC nutrition · 2025Pooled it
- Weight Loss Trends in Women's Wrestling and Potential Implications of Menstrual Cycle: A Narrative Review.Nutrients · 2026Review
- The effects of different exercise types on insulin resistance and inflammatory markers in overweight female wrestlers.Journal of exercise rehabilitation · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe estimation of body fat percentage (BF%) in wrestling is used to determine the minimum wrestling weight (MWW) and lowest allowable weight class (MWC) in which wrestlers are eligible to compete. A 12% minimum threshold is currently used for women wrestlers, yet a potential increase for safety has been discussed. Because of the novelty of collegiate women's wrestling, there is a paucity of literature available on the body composition norms of this population. The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptive summary of BF% and MWW values of female wrestlers and how MWW values would change with the use of different BF% thresholds.
methodsData from the 2022-2023 collegiate season were retrospectively analyzed resulting in a sample of 1,683 collegiate women wrestlers from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA,
resultsThere was a positively skewed (0.94) and platykurtic (1.86) distribution of MWW values. The median ± interquartile range BF% for all wrestlers was 27.4 ± 10.22%, with 17% BF representing the 5th percentile. Only 354 out of 1,579 (22.4%) wrestlers competed in their lowest allowable weight class, based on the 12MWW. Of these 354 wrestlers, the mean BF% was 21.3 ± 5.2% at weight certification with only
conclusionsNearly all BF% values were well above the 12% threshold used to determine MWW. Increasing the minimum BF% threshold from 12% to 17% would affect a small percentage of wrestlers, likely reduce the need for excessive weight cutting, and minimize the deleterious health effects of an athlete at such a low BF%.
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