Mark Ottobre demonstrates how to measure the quadriceps skinfold by locating the midpoint between the knee and hip, positioning the leg at 90 degrees, and using calipers on the pinched fat. The key is consistent hand placement and pulling fat away from muscle for an accurate reading.
Okay, so now we are at site 11, which is the quad. Now to do the quad, again, we can certainly pull out a tape measure for this one and measure exactly half her quad. And the way we do that is just find the top of her quad, the insertion point of the quad, which is just here, and the essentially top of her knee, which is just there, and we want to find the halfway point. So the halfway point, again, I use my hands and see how my thumbs have overlapped. So the halfway point of where they cross is just under my top of my thumbnail or the bottom of my thumbnail. It's exactly there. Now that's the halfway point of her quad. If we want to make sure that we're not too, you know, we don't want to be too in towards her leg, we don't want to be too much towards the vastus medialis, or we want to be exactly dead on, so we can do that. We go from the top of her knee and that's where it is there, exactly halfway of her quad. So this is where we're taking the measurement. The quad for the most point is a relatively easy site to take, getting a broad contact with the quad. I'm going to get Jade to extend her leg. What this does is it flexes out the muscle. Now as she comes down, it separates fat from muscle and I take my grab. Let's do that one more time, because my hands did move on that one, and then we're pulling it all together and taking the grab there. So relatively easy. I'm going to show you that real quick if we were to use a tape measure. So again, if we wanted to be more analytical and find it exactly using a tape measure, we find the top of Jade's calf and we find the bottom of her knee. And again, oops, we don't want to break that one. Just bring your leg at to 90 degrees for me, Jade. Thank you, fantastic. So she's at 15, so 7.5 inches exactly here. Again, putting my thumb or the— my points, just going to mark her ever so slightly. There it is. So she's not all marked up with pen. So I found that. Now we want to find the halfway point. So I find halfway of her knee, driving that up. That's where it is there. So I'm pointing. Now I've got the sight and I point the calipers there. So always with this, it goes under the premise of find the sight, so aim before you fire. So find the sight. Now I'm aiming. Now this is taking the measurement. So my hand is where the, exactly the measurement was. She's got her leg up, I'm pulling in, pulling the base of the fat away. And now I've got the calipers in and taking the measurement exactly where the marker is. So that's how to do the quad.
