Sports Science Is Changing How Female Olympians Train It Could Help You скачать в хорошем качестве

Sports Science Is Changing How Female Olympians Train It Could Help You

Until a few years ago, elite Colorado track and field athlete Annie Kunz used to feel fatigued — even during her warmups. And then there was the constant hunger: Sometimes her stomach would growl in the middle of practice. She felt like she was always thinking about food, always restricting what she ate, avoiding whole categories — like carbohydrates — completely, because she thought they were unhealthy. Add to that awful, debilitating cramps when she got her period. Kunz, who is representing the U. S. Olympic team in the women's heptathlon this week in Tokyo, just didn't feel like she was performing at her best much of the time. Any of the above could be signals of an underlying health problem and could also affect her performance. But Kunz says she rarely, if ever, discussed these issues with her coaches. They've almost always been men, Kunz says, many of whom just weren't used to broaching topics like weight, hormones, and menstrual cycles with their female athletes. Kunz moved to California after graduating from college in 2016 to focus on preparing for the Olympic heptathlon — a competition with 7 events that requires strength, speed and a heaping amount of all-around athleticism. She sought out advice to improve her health and performance and learned that recent research on females in sports has yielded insights that could help. In 2018 she worked with someone well-versed in that research who helped her focus on getting enough calories as opposed to restricting what she ate and encouraged her to track her menstrual cycle, along with its impact on her performance, mood, and energy level. As Kunz gained more knowledge about what works best for female athletes, she also made sure to be more open about her cycle with her current coach. She and her coach have also shifted Kunz's physical focus — from getting leaner to getting stronger."It's literally just been a world of difference," 28-year-old Kunz said before she left for Tokyo, and her first Olympic games. "I never have those days anymore where I'm just dragging to warm up. I come with energy."At the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., in June, Kunz not only won the heptathlon, but posted the fifth-best heptathlon performance of all time — a far cry from her 8th place finish during the 2016 trials. Building her training regimen around recent findings from sex-specific sports medicine research has made a difference in her performance, she says. When Dr. Kate Ackerman was in medical school 20 years ago, she'd heard of the term "female athlete triad." Coined in 1997 by the American College of Sport Medicine, it described the constellation of three disorders — amenorrhea (a lack of menstrual periods), bone-thinning osteoporosis and disordered eating — that is sometimes seen among women athletes. It's triggered by extreme exercise and low body weight. But other than that descriptive term, Ackerman says, not much sports science research had been published about female athletes. All data is taken from the source: http://npr.org Article Link: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-s... #kunz #newslatest #newstodaylocal #newstodayheadlines #newsworldtoday #newstodaymsnbc #