Relationship between body mass, lean body mass, cross sectional area and 1 RM in women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to correlate body mass, lean body mass and cross-sectional muscle area (CSA) with maximal dynamic strength in women, creating a coefficient for weight prescription from the studied variables. Seven trained women with mean age of 33.86 ± 7.36 yrs participated in this study. No correlation was found among the studied variables, with exception of the correlation between upper-arm CSA and 1 RM in the bench press (r=0.912 and p=0.004). Therefore, the coefficient table was created only for prescribing bench press training from the upper-arm CSA. The results allowed concluding that, among the women in the sample, upperarm CSA represents a good predictor of maximal dynamic strength in the bench press.