Somatic, body composition and anthropometric characteristics of college level men students

In the recent decade, a decline in physical activity and beginning of a sedentary lifestyle among college students has been observed. Sedentary lifestyle and overweight issues are major public health, clinical, and economical problems in modern societies. The purpose of the study was to find out anthropometric measurements, body composition variables and somatotype differences in college level physical education and non-physical education students. For this purpose 500 (250 physical education students and 250 non-physical education students) Indian college men students whose age range 18-25 years were selected as subject. All subjects were assessed height, weight, five muscle girths (upper arm, fore arm, chest, thigh and calf), four bone diameters (humerus, bistyloid, femur and bimalleolus), and eight skinfolds thickness (triceps, sub-scapular, suprailiac, pectoral, axilla, abdominal, thigh and calf). Body composition and somatotype of the subject were evaluated by standard procedure. The independent sample t-test revealed that physical education students had significantly higher BMI (p< 0.01), lean body mass (p< 0.01), % skeletal muscle mass (p< 0.01), and body surface area (p< 0.01) than the non-physical education students. Non-physical education students acquired extensively more amount of % body fat (p< 0.01) than the physical education students. The mean somatotype of the physical education and non-physical education students was endomorphic mesomorph (3.85-4.67-2.86) and mesomorphic endomorph (4.37-4.14-3.34) respectively. It may be concluded that in most of the parameter there were significant differences between physical education and nonphysical education students and physical education students were showed better somatotype and body composition variables than the non-physical education students.