Need honest help: How to tell female collegiate runner to drop 5 - 10lbs

Never tell anyone what to do. Especially a female about her weight.

Create/establish a culture of improvement. "Today our plan for the day is to improve our _______________. The practice schedule includes this to work on ________________." Slowly develop goals for the team and goals for the individuals. Speak to all team members individually about their goals. During these conversations DO NOT tell any athlete what their goals should be, UNLESS they are really ready to listen (most aren't, so if you tell them, then they won't listen).

As team members develop their goals do two things:

- genuinely be interested in any goals the team members present that they think can help the team,

- ask each team member to tell you more about their goals. That is, why they think their goal is important, how they are going to achieve, what they can do, and also what you can do to help them achieve the goal. Always write down their goals and informations and say, "Interesting. Good. Can you tell me more?"

If the girl who could stand to drop 5 pounds is truly motivated to succeed as a runner she knows what she needs to do to be the best runner. Your responsibility as a coach is to develop a strong coach-athlete relationship such that the athlete naturally desires to excel.

Goodluck.

What I am saying is both incredibly easy and excessively difficult. Be prepared for zero results and yet expect the spectacular.

You asked for positive outcomes....unfortunately, I can only give you the opposite. It might still help you...

I was a male runner at a decent program. Over the first three of my college career, I watched over 10 of my close female friends develop eating disorders that wreaked havoc on their running careers, personal lives, and mental well-being. This only started to turn around when the coach was fired over this situation.

Some things to keep in mind:

1) Do the women eat together?

2) Is "nutrition" some thing that is core to the culture of the team?

If these two things are true (maybe just one), I would definitely wait to say something. If the team eats together, she is definitely going to feel pressure from her teammates to eat better. It may be direct or indirect pressure -- I for one, felt as though every meal I ever brought to the table was thoroughly dissected & critiqued by the girls...and I was a guy. Hopefully they do this is a healthy way...and she just gets more motivated / educated about her diet.

I understand that our situation was particularly bad. It was taken to an extreme at my school...the ladies had mandatory reading before their freshman year about eating. The coach talked wayyy more about eating than about running. It was a bad environment.

HERE'S THE DANGER:

Losing weight works. It makes you faster -- at least for a season or two. It also sets you up for injury.

I watched three classes worth of young women join our program and all lose 10 pounds very quickly. The distribution of outcomes was as follows:

- 50% got injured within their first season

- 30% ran really well for a season or two and then got injured

- 10% progressed "normally" and had normal careers

- 10% became studs

Of the women who joined the program, I would say only about 20% made it all four years. Everyone else would get caught in an injury cycle and never break out.

I certainly believe eating disorders were the greatest contributor to the extremely high injury rate (albeit, our school was in an area where you had to run on pavement...which didn't help).

MY ADVICE:

Don't do anything for the time being, and see if she loses weight on her own. She probably will. She'll probably see her teammates and learn from them...or feel pressure from them.

I know it is tempting -- especially on the women's side -- to try to get the most out of the freshman. For the girls, they may be the best they'll ever be as freshman. Unfortunately though, the girls can't score you any points while they're in a boot.

A girl with those dimensions is probably not going to be someone who can immediately be her best as a freshman. So, see if she can lose weight on her own. If she doesn't lose the weight, and manages to stay uninjured this year, you can bring up the weight issue heading into the summer.

Just keep playing this song over and over and over again, in the locker room, at practice, on the team bus, etc. etc. In fact, make them memorize the lyrics and then sing along!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qDgCmzh5ao

I don't see the good in keeping your mouth shut about this sort of thing with everyone, as seems to be the going advice around here.

How about this little tidbit, the girl knows she's heavier than optimal already. Either that or she's retarded and will never make it through college anyway. Of course people notice the common characteristic of the very fastest runners. They are ALL very lean. Most are also very skinny, but ALL of them are abnormally lean.

Talk about why they are running. What it means to them. Discuss how different people have different setpoints for body fat percentage, some girls might be healthy at 11% while others lose their health under 16%. That 5% loss may account for running a 10K 1 minute faster. That's the truth and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. If their goal is to run 1 minute faster then it's your job as a coach to help them do so. At 5'5" 140 she obviously shouldn't be thinking about dropping to 105, but 130 seems like a reasonable goal.

This is college we are talking about. Legal adults. Yes, very young adults, but at some point you can't keep coddling them. They know the truth about the sport they are in: extremely lean skinny people win.

Challenge her to lose 3% of her body weight over the next 6 weeks. That's just over 4 pounds. Then ask her to maintain that weight for 6 weeks.

Call her Fatty McFat Fat.

Hire a sports nutritionist to talk to the team on the importance of diet on performance. They can emphasize getting processed foods out of the diet

(anything in a box), problems with high fructose corn syrup, balance of protein, fat, and carbs. Butter and fats from meat are actually perfectly fine, its the vegetable oils are the problem. Hydration is important. Lemon+water+sugar+salt+pinch of baking soda(optional)=electrolyte drink, basically lemonade with slight salt zing. I would stash electrolyte drinks halfway through long runs or carry it with me on trails on slow & easy days. If the girls get interested and it clicks with them then they'll take care of that so you can focus on training and issues that a coach needs to focus on.

As someone who has been there (slightly bigger D1 female runner at the time) absolutely, positively DO NOT bring up weight or food with her ever. It'll only make matters worse.

As a female collegiate distance runner, she's well aware where she stands with her body weight and doesn't need someone bringing it to her attention. I'm sure she already hears others around her talk about food or their own weight, so bringing it up will only exacerbate food and weight obsession surrounding elite collegiate distance running.

Usually women even out as their bodies adjust and become most optimal for training. Leave her alone. If she's happy on the team she'll likely train into shape over time.

As someone who has been there (slightly bigger D1 female runner at the time) absolutely, positively DO NOT bring up weight or food with her ever. It'll only make matters worse.

As a female collegiate distance runner, she's well aware where she stands with her body weight and doesn't need someone bringing it to her attention. I'm sure she already hears others around her talk about food or their own weight, so bringing it up will only exacerbate food and weight obsession surrounding elite collegiate distance running.

Usually women even out as their bodies adjust and become most optimal for training. Leave her alone. If she's happy on the team she'll likely train into shape over time.

Lace her food with some sort of moderate to severe but not fatal gastrointestinal bacteria. She'll lose a lot of weight in about a week, and she will fully recover in two.

Pics?

Does anyone actually think she doesn't already knows/feels overweight and that she's heavy for a runner (and would be faster if she lost weight)j? Trust me, she knows. Telling her what she already knows is not going to help. I'd only approach her if she suddenly lost a lot of weight and then express concern. Otherwise, let her figure it out - hopefully in a positive supportive environment.

Please change your name to "I write in irony.".

dfdfhdfh wrote:

Don't do it.

I don't care how much you want your team to be good, don't do it.

No. Emphasise healthy eating for the team, but that's it.

If her parents are bigger, than she is naturally big, and at the normal body weight for her.

Leave her alone.

If her parents are bigger and she isn't muscular, then it's clear that her nutrition is probably flawed, because she's probably eating the same stuff her parents did.

Say nothing it's not your place and young women have enough body image issues.

Let her decide if she needs to lose weight.

Skinny doesn't equate to faster if it did why don't 75 lbs girls win?

You don't coach at some school for the retarded right? If this girl needs to lose weight, she can look in the mirror or at the scale and figure it out for herself. Sometimes as a coach it sucks. You'd have a star athlete if only A would run on her own outside of practice, if only B would train during the summer, if only C would stop partying every weekend if only D would lose some weight. Part of being a coach is finding athletes that not only respond to training, but live the competitive athlete lifestyle. The most you should do is increase her mileage 20 a week or so.

Someone may have addressed this, but the answer is you don't tell her to lose weight and just emphasize proper nutrition across the board for the team.

Think about it, you already control her training so you can figure out the calories she's burning, you can do the math and figure out how much people should be eating.

You just try to adviser her toward a healthy eating path and let the results happen at whatever pace they do. And you never have to bring up weight.

You seem to be assuming that she doesn't know she would be faster if she were lighter ... you sound like a mansplainer frankly ... don't say anything

It's interesting that the above coach was brutally honest with his athletes about the benefits of lighter weight and I've never read about a problem with anorexia and those he coached.

You might want to read some Horwill's stuff. He even advocated fasting one day per week.

It's a strange era; 30% of the US population is overweight to a morbid level but we are most frightened about inducing anorexia which is still strikingly rare in the population. I believe it was identified centuries ago and is most often thought to be rooted in personal issues other than athletic performance.

[quote]MomnDad wrote:

KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT ABOUT FOOD, WEIGHT, BMI ETC...[/quote

This is right. Winning isn't everything. that conversation is too fraught and you really could lose your job.

College teammate of mine --male -- was 5'7", maybe 165. Had a sizable belly. Ran for the camaraderie but always talked like XC was important to him. Coach told him to lose some weight and the kid was angry for weeks. Coach was completely right. It's just the topic is too sensitive to discuss rationally with people.

I'd say you have a 5% chance of encouraging her to lose weight to a healthy level and thanking you for it, and the remaining possibilities are all bad for you and her.