Typically, this time of year we think about the NFL combine. However, every 4 years the best winter sport athletes come together and compete. Although the Dexalytics website contains several blogs on a variety of issues pertaining to DXA, as well as specific topics regarding athletes and several sports, one of my favorite winter sports is ice hockey. My laboratory has done several studies on ice hockey and several of the athletes we have studied will be in the 2026 Winter Olympics competing for their countries. If you are interested in body composition and ice hockey, I suggest you check out these blogs that I have written on ice hockey. These blogs provide a great starting point to learn a little about body composition and ice hockey.
This blog is based on a scientific paper (Czeck et al., 2022) examining the relationship between dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) determined body composition and on-ice skate performance times in 33 male and female NCAA Division I collegiate ice hockey athletes. Both male and female collegiate ice hockey athletes (forwards and defensemen) had similar on-ice skate times. The fact that total body fat percentage was correlated with on-ice skate times in both male and female collegiate hockey players, demonstrates the importance of body composition and the need for coaches, trainers, and athletes to measure body composition in this sport.
This blog is based on a scientific paper (Dengel et al., 2021) that determined body composition in 83 NCAA Division I collegiate male and female ice hockey athletes. In this blog, we examined the data on the 34 NCAA Division I female ice hockey athletes that were classified by position as goaltenders (n=6), forwards (n=18), or defensemen (n=10). All of these collegiate female ice hockey athletes had their body composition determined by dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). DXA is considered the “gold standard” for measuring body composition due to its accuracy as well as its ability to measure regional as well as total body composition. This is a great blog if you are interested in the body composition of female NCAA Division I collegiate ice hockey athletes.
This blog is a companion to the previous blog and examines the data for the 49 NCAA Division I male ice hockey athletes classified as goaltenders (n=7), forwards (n=26), and defensemen (n=16). All of these collegiate male ice hockey athletes had their body composition determined by dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). This is a great blog if you are interested in the body composition of male NCAA Division I collegiate ice hockey athletes.
References
Czeck, MA, Roelofs, EJ, Dietz, C, Bosch, TA, Dengel, DR: Body composition and on-ice skate times for National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I collegiate male and female ice hockey athletes. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 36:187-192, 2022.
Dengel DR, Roelofs EJ, Czeck MA, Bosch TA: Male and female collegiate ice hockey athletes’ body composition over competitive seasons. International Journal of Sports Medicine 42:1313-1318, 2
About the Author
Donald Dengel, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota and is a co-founder of Dexalytics. He serves as the Director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology, which provides clinical vascular, metabolic, exercise, and body composition testing for researchers across the University of Minnesota.