How Much Muscle Mass is Ideal for You, and How Can You Measure It?

Are you looking for effective ways to maintain a healthy muscle mass percentage? Calculating body fat percentage, measuring certain areas of your body, and using some medical equipment can help you calculate your muscle mass percentage. Several health benefits are associated with maintaining a good muscle mass. Calculating your muscle mass percentage can help you reduce the risk of age-related muscle loss as well.  You can try the ways discussed in the article to maintain a healthy muscle mass and estimate your muscle mass percentage.

In this article, you will learn what muscle mass percentage is, how to calculate it, and why it is useful to know about your muscle mass percentage.

What is Your Muscle Mass?

The amount of soft muscle tissues in your body, including skeletal and smooth muscles, is known as Muscle Mass. Bones, fat, and water are other major components of your body. Muscles are a well-renowned machinery of your body that is responsible for moving and maintaining your body’s posture. It also provides support to various bodily functions. Your body has three basic forms of muscles, known as:

Skeletal muscles: These muscles are found everywhere in your body and cause movements.

Smooth Muscles: These are organ-forming muscles and are found in your internal organs.

Cardiac Muscles: These muscles work involuntarily and are found in your heart. 

So it is concluded from the above discussion that your body’s collective muscle tissue count composes your muscle mass. However, in medical language, muscle mass is called skeletal muscle count because these are the only muscles in your body that can be controlled voluntarily. 

In addition, skeletal muscles also play an important role in movement. All body muscle movements are performed by skeletal muscles. For example, the bending of your arm contraction and relaxation in your bicep and triceps muscles. This means contractions and relaxations in your skeletal muscles are responsible for different types of movements in your body. You can increase your body’s strength, balance, and mobility by doing exercise. Exercises are also important to maintain good health of your skeletal muscles as well. It is important to keep your skeletal in good health because they help you more in your daily functioning.in older adults, this practice is more important.

Muscle Mass Percentage Chart

Measuring muscle mass is not an easy task. Many factors affect the measurement of muscle mass, such as your fitness level, your height, and ethnicity. You cannot find much credible information about muscle mass percentage. Thus the one authentic source to gather data about calculating muscle mass percentage is some studies and research which were made to discover the authentic ways to calculate your muscle mass percentage precisely. Experts work keenly and devise charts to measure the muscle mass percentage. Such studies involve men and women of all ages. However, more research is needed to gather more authentic data to measure muscle mass percentage in different age groups.

Average Measurements of  Muscle Mass Percentage in Men

Age Muscle Mass Percentage

20-40 35-45

40-60 32-40

60-80 30-35

80-90 Below 30

 

Average Measurements of Muscle Mass Percentage in Women

Age Muscle Mass Percentage

20-40 30-35

40-60 25-29

60-80 24-28

80-90 Below 24

How to Calculate Muscle Mass

You can calculate how much muscle, fat, or other components are found in your body. Involving expensive medical equipment for calculations is the most accurate and authentic way. You can calculate muscle mass percentage with the help of an MRI scan. This is the easiest method. However, you can also try to measure your muscle mass percentage at home by ordinary means. Several online calculators and apps are also available that can help you for this purpose. But there is no surety if these tools or apps are accurate. 

The most common way to calculate muscle mass percentage is by measuring body fat percentage and subtracting it from 100. You can get the percentage of lean body mass through this formula. Lean body mass includes the mass of your all body muscles, bones, and other components of your body. 

While trying to measure your muscle mass percentage at home, you can use a body fat scale, which calculates the amount of fat by sending an electric current beam through your body. Other than this method, many other recommended methods are also used. These methods involve measuring the circumference of your different body parts. However, you may add up to certain values and different values to measure various body fat percentages accurately.

Although these methods help you in measuring, studies claim that these measurements may have some uncertainties. Therefore, using expensive technologies is the most accurate way to determine the exact muscle mass percentage. These technologies are scales, calculations, and formulas that claim to calculate muscle mass accurately. But a group of experts do not support these technologies and they said these are not proven to measure accurate calculations. So, what to do now? Don’t worry, here is what you can do to learn how muscle mass percentage can be calculated accurately: 

Taking Regular Measurements

Using measuring tape to measure the circumference around your different body parts, such as the upper thigh, chest, or thick bicep, is an easy method to calculate your muscle mass percentage. But you should have to take such measurements once per month and in the same places. This activity will help you see changes in those parts of your body’s thickness.

Taking regular body measurements is challenging because regular body measurements do not account for your bones and body fat. This means you may not get authentic measurements and may not be sure how much muscle mass you have under your bones. To have precise measurements, you should have to use related metrics.

Check Skin-fold Thickness 

You can use skin-fold calipers to measure your body fat. These instruments are usually used by gym trainers. Knowing how much body fat you have will make it easier to calculate your muscle mass percentage. Just subtract the body fat amount from your total body weight, this will be your lean body mass, which includes your muscles, organs, skin, and bones.

Studies showed that the body fat scale is the best tool to estimate the amount of fat in your body. This tool uses bio-electrical impedance to do this. It passes an electrical current through your body. Since fat is an insulator and less electricity can pass through fat than muscles, current may help measure how much body fat you have. This scale works accurately if you enter exact information about your age, height, gender, and weight. This data is used by the scale, along with passing current through your body, to calculate your body fat percentage. 

Subtracting this number from 100 will give you your lean body mass. The most important thing is to keep in mind that muscle mass is just one part of your lean body mass. In addition, body fat scales may not always be accurate, always. The percentages are just estimates.

Get an MRI

This is the most reliable and accurate way to calculate muscle mass percentage. In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), strong magnets are used to take a clear image of your muscles. In this procedure, first, you are placed in an MRI machine. There is a strong magnetic field in this machine that rearranges the hydrogen atoms found in your body. This activity helps release energy which is used by the machine to calculate your muscle mass. This is a gold standard technique for determining muscle mass percentage but is very costly. 

Finding your 1 RM

One rep max 1 RM is a weight training term, which is a measure of weight you can lift for one repetition on any given day. 1 RM is a reliable way to know how strong you are. This shows your muscle strength. Using 1 RM helps you determine the strength you gain by testing it regularly. Keep in mind that beginners for weight lifting should wait until they have mastered the movement before testing their 1 RM.

Challenge Yourself

Challenging your muscles can help increase your muscle strength. Without challenging yourself, it is impossible to change from no change. That’s why you need a progressive training routine for building strength and muscles.

Similarly, your muscle strength works as an indicator of your muscle mass percentage. An increase in the amount of weight you are lifting, will show an increase in your muscle mass that may result in increased muscle mass percentage. Thus challenging yourself with a progressive workout routine is also a good tool to measure muscle mass percentage.

Why is Muscle Mass Percentage Useful?

Muscle mass percentage is the most authentic source of finding your health status. Since muscle mass gradually decreases, over time, the reduction causes difficulty in daily routine activities like climbing stairs or walking and talking. Your muscle mass depends on various factors, including gender, fitness level, and body size. It also varies from person to person due to the variations in their body weight, size, and gender.

Researchers still are trying to find the specific guidelines for what a normal or healthy muscle mass percentage should be. However, it is confirmed by the research that body fat percentage can be the most reliable indicator of your overall body composition and health condition.

Benefits and Side Effects of Having Higher-than-Average Muscle Mass

Having a muscle mass percentage higher than average is associated with some benefits and risks as well.

Benefits

A higher percentage of muscle mass has positive effects on your overall health. For example, with progressing age, you tend to lose your muscle mass. This is called age-related muscle loss which usually begins at the age of 35 or more. At this stage, people usually start to lose 4 to 5 percent of muscle mass every decade, which ultimately impacts their physical function and increases the injury risks. However, if you have greater muscle mass, you may have to control the loss of muscle and protect your physical efficiency.

In this regard, your skeletal muscles help you a lot. These muscles help promote your overall metabolism. They also burn more calories when at rest, as compared to fat.

In addition, higher muscle mass percentage is linked with longevity. Studies show that older people with greater muscle mass percentage live longer than those having less.

Risks

Having more muscle mass than average can make some things harder for you. For example, you may not find clothes that fit you well. You always feel more hungry and eat more calories to feel full, which is inconvenient and costly somehow. Studies also suggest that greater muscle mass causes a reduction in the flexibility of your body.

Benefits and Side Effects of Having Lower-than-Average Muscle Mass

Lower-than-average muscle mass refers to less muscle than you should have according to your gender, weight, and age.

Benefits

No benefit is associated with a lower muscle mass percentage. However, some experimental studies concluded that having more fat than muscles is linked with several survival advantages because excess fat helps gain energy in stressed conditions. However, more research is needed to verify the authenticity of this benefit.

Risks

A lower percentage of muscle mass causes rapid age-related muscle loss and impacts your physical flexibility adversely. This increases the risk of injury and disability as well. Less muscle mass causes the following:

• Poor chronic disease outcome.
• Osteoporosis.
• Difficulty in doing routine activities.
• Hospital readmission.
• Diabetes.
• Early death.
• Metabolic syndrome.
• Complications after surgery.

Conclusion

Your body’s muscle tissues collectively are called muscle mass. But this term usually refers to skeletal muscle only. You can monitor your health by calculating your muscle mass percentage. Maintaining your muscle strength and muscle mass becomes more important when you get older. However, calculating muscle mass percentage precisely is difficult without special equipment and tools. These equipment are not only expensive but there isn’t a lot of reliable proof to confirm their authenticity. The easiest way is to measure your body fat percentage and then subtract that from 100.