If the goal is to have athletes with the best performance, why don’t they have personalized data-driven health plans? This isn’t the first article of the year that covers abuse by coaches. If you...
The body fat percentages that the athletes were told to reach, according to The Oregonian, were often dangerously low. According to the American Council on Exercise, a healthy range for female athletes’ body fat percentage is 14 to 20 percent. One woman said that when her DEXA scan showed her body fat percentage to be 16 percent, a nutritionist told her to consider lowering it to 13 percent. Another athlete was told that she would not be permitted to compete in away meets until her body fat percentage was under 12 percent. Four of the athletes interviewed said that team members who didn’t hit the body fat percentage marker required of them by coaches frequently had to do additional cross training.
If the goal is to have athletes with the best performance, why don’t they have personalized data-driven health plans? This isn’t the first article of the year that covers abuse by coaches. If you can afford to analyze each athlete’s body mass you can afford to scientifically determine which variables and goals end up with the desired performance. The article gives me the impression that athletes are given body fat targets arbitrarily. And another article posted to Tildes about the Nike track team indicated that women on the team were so starved their sprints got measurably slower. Is competitive sports some kind of skinny-women-producing racket?
Make sense. The only sport I can think of where less than 20% body fat is a requirement is bodybuilding. A runner has nothing to gain by doing that.
In a sport as physically demanding as distance running, appropriate body fat levels are critical to staying healthy and even to having enough energy to compete effectively, as well as safely.
Make sense. The only sport I can think of where less than 20% body fat is a requirement is bodybuilding. A runner has nothing to gain by doing that.
If the goal is to have athletes with the best performance, why don’t they have personalized data-driven health plans? This isn’t the first article of the year that covers abuse by coaches. If you can afford to analyze each athlete’s body mass you can afford to scientifically determine which variables and goals end up with the desired performance. The article gives me the impression that athletes are given body fat targets arbitrarily. And another article posted to Tildes about the Nike track team indicated that women on the team were so starved their sprints got measurably slower. Is competitive sports some kind of skinny-women-producing racket?
Make sense. The only sport I can think of where less than 20% body fat is a requirement is bodybuilding. A runner has nothing to gain by doing that.