Czeck lead author of article on collegiate football players’ body composition changes related to COVID-19 restrictions

Madeline Czeck smiling in portrait
Madeline Czeck, MS

Madeline Czeck, MS and doctoral student in the School of Kinesiology is the lead author of an article entitled, “No Changes in Body Composition in NCAA Division I Collegiate Football Players because of COVID-19 Restrictions”, which was recently published in Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) restrictions on body composition (i.e., percent body fat, lean muscle mass, fat mass and bone mineral density) assessed by dual x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), between the 2020 postseason (pre–COVID-19 restrictions) and the 2021 postseason (post–COVID-19 restrictions) in collegiate football players. In addition, a subset of athletes was used to explore changes in these same body composition variables across 4 postseason time points (2018–2021). No significant differences were found between the postseason 2020 and the postseason 2021 for all measures of body composition. Similarly, in the subset of athletes, who had measures of body composition there were also no significant changes in body composition over the 4-year period. In conclusion, this study observed no differences in body composition in NCAA Division I collegiate football players over 1 year during the COVID-19 pandemic. This indicates the impact of the disruption in the training and competitive seasons resulted in no change in body composition. Thus, although athletes’ body composition did not worsen (i.e., increased fat mass), it also did not improve (i.e., increased lean mass) over 1 year, which may be expected during non–COVID-19 years.

Don Dengel, PhD, a professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology (LIHP), along with current doctoral students in the School of Kinesiology, Erica Roelofs, MS, and Nick Evanoff, MS, were co-authors on this article.