Body comp testing. Worth it?

When I work with clients on specific body composition goals, I never utilize body comp testing. It can be wildly inaccurate and is often heavily dependent upon the skill of the person administering the test.  Focus instead on getting sufficient nutrition & progressing in the gym.

Body comp tests can be fun but, as with everything data oriented in fitness, they can also be detrimental. I can’t tell you the amount of ppl who’ve come to me freaking out about how they’ve lost muscle and gained fat over the course of 6 months of hard training and proper nutrition. They’re upset by the results of an InBody done at their gym.Yet we look at pictures and see what appears to be more muscle and less fat. And they’ve consistently been setting PRs in the gym. Bodyweight has progressed according to plan. Yet they’re ready to give up because a test told them the opposite of what we can visually see.Sleep tracking, exercise readiness and exercise tracking are similar. Fine for basic estimates but when we start to base our behaviors around the (lagging) indicators of such tests we end up making decisions on faulty data and creating greater neuroticism around things we are trying to improve.So take all of these tools w/ a grain of salt. They aren’t accurate, they aren’t predictive of future performance, and they don’t really matter. What matters is “are you seeing progress?”

💥 Have you used body comp testing and seen results that don’t match your expectations? For better or worse?