It is in many situations that a female can improve up to 20 seconds a mile by losing 10 pounds but a Coach is not allowed to share this information with the athlete. WHY?
Please don’t cry about disordered eating. The facts are the facts and if a coach can’t tell you then who can?
Weight matters
Cool story, bro.
Imagine arguing against gravity oof lol
#science
#marycain
Beaten to death, boring.
You’re right, facts are facts. It is also facts that discussing weight with a teenage girl causes eating disorders.
Anyways, at my college there was one girl who put on extra weight and they had the sports psychologists in the program (who was also a female) discuss dieting tips with her to eat a balanced and healthy diet. I suspect a sports psychologist can handle that type of situation way better than anyone else. Especially random male coaches.
I assume that discussing proper diet and exercise and weight with a teenage girl would help her to be healthier. Acting like it is taboo is what causes eating disorders.
Go away rainy day wrote:
I assume that discussing proper diet and exercise and weight with a teenage girl would help her to be healthier. Acting like it is taboo is what causes eating disorders.
This is so very wrong.
Females at that age are already too weight conscious especially athletes. The don’t need their adult coaches pointing it out to them.
Discussing the dietary needs of the sport is important and useful. At least once a year we partner with a local university and have a nutritional expert do a presentation for the team geared toward the demands of distance running and specifically for women.
Despite being a male coach of young female athletes sometimes I feel that it might be for the greater good that men are not coaching female athletes at the high school level.
We have the kids bring donuts to practice, have ice cream in the summer, popsicle runs, etc. and we still occasionally have athletes with eating disorders. Their friends feel comfortable enough to let us know and I can get in front of it with the parents before it is a big issue. They would not feel comfortable telling me if we were not supportive.
Even having the kids write down what they are eating each day sends a negative message out.
If it is only winning you are worried about this is not the way either. Our team seldom loses.
Losing weight is a high risk activity for a highly active teenage girl. Teenage girls don’t have the same hormonal and metabolic profiles as women in their 20s and the mid teen years are the peak of bone density development for most girls. Messing with diets and weight loss in that window of development can have huge long term consequences for bone health and fertility, even if the teen has a healthy relationship with food.
High school coaches are rarely experts in nutrition and most teens don’t have full control over their diets anyways as they are still heavily reliant on their parents. Most high school girls are so undertrained that there are many ways they can improve without taking such a risk to their help. It’s important to remember that most professionals that are trying to reach an ideal competition weight do not maintain that weight year round, have nutritionists helping make sure they are getting all the fuel they need, and get regular blood work done to check for deficiencies before things spiral. These are not resources that most HS’ers have.
I’m constantly amazed about the stories I hear from alumni running collegiately about how they’ve been treated in college or what their college teammates were exposed to in HS. This sport has a long way to go in coaching girls.
hs girls coach wrote:
Losing weight is a high risk activity for a highly active teenage girl. Teenage girls don’t have the same hormonal and metabolic profiles as women in their 20s and the mid teen years are the peak of bone density development for most girls. Messing with diets and weight loss in that window of development can have huge long term consequences for bone health and fertility, even if the teen has a healthy relationship with food.
High school coaches are rarely experts in nutrition and most teens don’t have full control over their diets anyways as they are still heavily reliant on their parents. Most high school girls are so undertrained that there are many ways they can improve without taking such a risk to their help. It’s important to remember that most professionals that are trying to reach an ideal competition weight do not maintain that weight year round, have nutritionists helping make sure they are getting all the fuel they need, and get regular blood work done to check for deficiencies before things spiral. These are not resources that most HS’ers have.
I’m constantly amazed about the stories I hear from alumni running collegiately about how they’ve been treated in college or what their college teammates were exposed to in HS. This sport has a long way to go in coaching girls.
Agreed. It's nice to read some sanity on these boards.
America is the fastest country in the world and we're not allowed to talk about it. Gotcha.
runnER/DR wrote:
America is the fastest country in the world and we're not allowed to talk about it. Gotcha.
There are numerous things that are completely wrong with this post even if it was written properly. Way to bring let’s run back to normalcy.
It is taboo in American culture to comment on female athletes weight mainly because they are mentally/psychologically weak. They do not know how to process the information and end up hurting themselves. It's a very sad situation.
The promblem is not only the struggle of coaches to address this issue in a tactful matter but even more so to inciate weight loss in a matter conductive to running. Achieving the body composition that enables optimal performance requires more precision than most people realize. Not only does weight have a significant impact on performance, but the matter by which one reaches optimal running weight also heavily influences performance. Many athetes run into trouble with undergoing aggressive caloric deficits, in effort to reach "race weight" faster perhaps along with nutrient deficiencies from cutting back so much. The issue is however, the athete now doesn't have enough energy and nutrients to optimally recover and absorb the training stimulus. Immune, endocrine and metabolic function also may become compromised, thereby leading to increased frequency of illness, injury and other health issues. These issues in turn can drastically impair the athete's ability to train and improve as a runner.
Anouther mistake that some people make is focusing on a set weight rather than body composition. In the example you provided, in running a fast mile, it's way more important to be lean than at a stick thin weight. Strength to weight ratio matters a ton in this event. For that reason, this is why runners aiming to lose weight should be regularly partaking in resistance training.
Being the weaker sex they are hyper sensitive psychologically, just the way it is. Just look for a female outlier who can handle the truth, not many around, but the ones who can handle it tend to be successful athletes.
You can always talk about weight to someone, but there right ways and then there are letsrun ways.
Think, why should i discuss it, are there other ways to get to same point, maybe i am the problem and not her etc.... you know, read a book and lear something.
Stating facts is now considered sexual misconduct.
Many many MANY women are unable to maintain the body type that is "ideal" for distance running. Their pelvis (bones) is too wide, legs (femurs) are too short, they hold their last body fat in the wrong places instead of disbursing it perfectly evenly as would be preferable to competitive running.
They very often cannot sustainably duplicate the body type of (just as an example) Molly Huddle, Jenny Simpson, or Jordan Hasay. They try, but they get stress fractures, metabolism problems, and are mysteriously permainjured.
The bodies of women will more often be less similar to pro women than men are to pro men. They will have physical disadvantages. That is a fact of life we all deal with. It is infinitely more helpful to focus on training effectively.
otter wrote:
Go away rainy day wrote:
I assume that discussing proper diet and exercise and weight with a teenage girl would help her to be healthier. Acting like it is taboo is what causes eating disorders.
This is so very wrong.
Females at that age are already too weight conscious especially athletes. The don’t need their adult coaches pointing it out to them.
Discussing the dietary needs of the sport is important and useful. At least once a year we partner with a local university and have a nutritional expert do a presentation for the team geared toward the demands of distance running and specifically for women.
Despite being a male coach of young female athletes sometimes I feel that it might be for the greater good that men are not coaching female athletes at the high school level.
We have the kids bring donuts to practice, have ice cream in the summer, popsicle runs, etc. and we still occasionally have athletes with eating disorders. Their friends feel comfortable enough to let us know and I can get in front of it with the parents before it is a big issue. They would not feel comfortable telling me if we were not supportive.
Even having the kids write down what they are eating each day sends a negative message out.
If it is only winning you are worried about this is not the way either. Our team seldom loses.
This sounds like such a thoughtful approach, thank you for sharing.
Fake news.
What happened to physiology being a social construct? What happened to women being the same as women?
because liberals are anti science.