Body Composition Assessment for Sports Performance and Athlete Health
A special issue of Sports (ISSN 2075-4663).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 7331
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
You are invited to submit manuscripts for inclusion in the Special Issue of Sports titled, “Body Composition Assessment for Sports Performance and Athlete Health”. Body composition is an important consideration for an athlete’s health and success in many sports. At the elite level, there are clear anthropometric profiles that are advantageous for certain sports (e.g., height for basketball players, small stature for horse jockeys). Furthermore, the composition of some athletes changes in response to years of sport-specific training (e.g., dominant arm of tennis players has greater muscle mass and bone mass than non-dominant arm). Finally, many different methodologies exist to assess various components of human body composition (e.g., bioimpedance for body water and cell integrity, dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry for bone mineral, skinfold calipers and ultrasound for subcutaneous adipose tissue thickness, hydrodensitometry and air displacement plethysmography for body volume, and 3D body scanning for anthropometric profiling).
The aim of this Special Issue is to present novel body composition studies of athletic populations. In keeping with the scope of the journal, the study population should consist of athletes at any level of sport (but not the general population), and the focus should be on body composition as it relates to or influences sport performance or the health of the athlete. Body composition is not limited to body fat percentage; this Special Issue takes a holistic view of body composition assessment, so manuscripts with outcome measures such as fat-free mass, hydration status, bone mineral density, and phase angle, etc., are encouraged. This collection of submissions could focus on a variety of topics, such as the following:
- Anthropometric and body composition profiles and normative reference data for athletes at various competitive levels of sport;
- Changes in the body composition of athletes over time, such as the span of a competitive season;
- How an athlete’s body composition or a change in composition relates to or influences sport performance or their health;
- The accuracy and precision of an assessment method for tracking athletes’ composition, or strategies to improve the physique assessment process.
In this Special Issue, the following article types are welcome: original research, reviews, and research notes.
Prof. Dr. Dale R. Wagner
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sports is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- anthropometry
- athlete
- bioimpedance
- body composition
- bone mineral density
- densitometry
- fat-free mass
- hydration status
- phase angle
- subcutaneous adipose tissue
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