Toots, don't get bent out of shape when someone speaks the truth. The same may happen for males to a certain extent. Its difficult for women when their bodies tell them to find a mate and they want to test recipes in the kitchen.
Toots, don't get bent out of shape when someone speaks the truth. The same may happen for males to a certain extent. Its difficult for women when their bodies tell them to find a mate and they want to test recipes in the kitchen.
assitis
I would kind of consider myself to be a female who showed potential at an early age, had a few rough years, but stuck with it and finished up college running faster than before. I was never a superstar in high school, but I was decent (sub 10:50 3200, right around 5:00 1600). I never had an eating disorder, but I was very aware of my weight and tried hard to keep the body that I had at age 15 for fear of getting slower. I ran pretty well my first year of college, but then I got injured repeatedly and slowly packed on some pounds during this time. I ran some absolutely horrible races, and was much slower than I was even my freshman year of high school when I hardly trained. I was discouraged, but eventually decided to stop worrying about my weight and just run based on feel, and eat intuitively. I actually probably lost a little weight doing this rather than obsessing over it because I wouldn't end up overdoing it because I was so hungry and couldn't take it anymore. Once I stopped worrying about it, stopped weighing myself, stopped counting calories, and simply enjoyed myself, I started to improve again! I am probably heavier now than I was in high school (I don't know though, haven't weighed myself in forever). I ended up running sub 16:50 for 5k and sub 35:30 for 10k my last year.
So, my advice is to just encourage your athlete to have fun and focus on doing the right things to improve (eating healthily, but not limiting calories. Listening to your body, etc.) It will come back if you give it time.
i think there is something to the idea that on the whole, the women are generally less ambitious/competitive when it comes to athletics. as a former athlete at a large university, i know a lot of women who were very competitive for their entire collegiate career. but the fact is that despite Title IX and newspaper advertisements to get mroe walk-ons for womens XC & crew they still had trouble getting more people. and these are programs that won big10 titles within 4 years of those advertisements, so it's not like they were trying to attract people to a culture of losing. the coaches rarely received any un-solicited requests from women to walk-on, but on the men's side they would get requests all the time. this shows how much more that men in general value competitive athletics involvement than most women, who would probably join the team for a scholarship but not for free as a walk-on.
Only the ones with the extra bone in their foot improve after 16. Also Regina Jacobs. Not mutually exclusive.
Al Campanis wrote:
Only the ones with the extra bone in their foot improve after 16.
WTF?
Explain?