Confusing Athletic Performance With Body Fat Assessment
The dangerous trend that is affecting athlete physical and mental health.
Being overweight is often bringing unfair criticism to young athletes which affects participant mental and physical health. Body shaming is real and its consequences are nasty. In edition 180 of The Physical Movement we dive in and suggest some ways to remove it from our sport culture.
Coaches have been found to often crossing the line in using body fat and appearance as tools in criticizing athletes.
The practice is not confined to coaches, and because we live in a “criticism culture”, many have taken the liberty of criticizing participants for their appearance in athletic situation.
Even the best athletes in the world are subject to unfair criticism for not having the “ideal body type”.
Toronto Blue Jay and league all-star Alejandro Kirk was criticized in September by Matthew Ross, a Montreal-based radio personality who called Kirk’s base-running “embarrassing” for baseball.
“It’s cute and all, but also embarrassing for the sport,” Ross said in a now-deleted tweet. “Giving guys like this prominence feeds negative stereotypes.”
Kirk is approximately 5 ft 7 and over 200 lbs. When he runs, he jiggles.
Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Alek Manoah came to the defense of teammate:
On NBA player,21 year old Zion Williamson in a recent Washington Post article:
The fitness experts and dietitians scattered about Capital One Arena, who came to watch an NBA game Monday evening, noticed a prospective client sitting near the end of the New Orleans Pelicans’ sideline. They desperately wanted his attention.
“Zion!” a man in Section 120 screamed during a quiet moment in the third quarter. “Stand up; get some exercise!”
The man laughed at his own joke, then, satisfied, took a swig from his plastic cup filled with a dark-colored drink.
Then, just before the start of the final quarter, a group of young adult males choreographed their own version of a weight-loss intervention for the 2019 No. 1 draft pick. The three or four men stood up and chanted in unison over and over: “ZI-ON’S CHUN-KY!”
They sat down giggling.
A recent NY Times article documents the pressure female college athletes are under to cut body fat.
In Australia, many of the same issues are present across multiple sports as documented here.
Female and male athletes across Australia, from surf iron champions to top-tier football players, are suffering a wave of crushing body image issues leading to chronic “under-fuelling”, experts and elite sportspeople have revealed.
World ironwoman champion and exercise physiologist, Harriet Brown, told the Gold Coast Elite Sports Conference on Thursday that the pressure was so great that athletes were turning to “restricted eating” to deal with constant comparisons with other athletes and social media body ideals.
Even the highest profile and most successful athletes were being affected by the body image stress that was piled on from all angles including from coaches, parents and teammates, she said.
“In our sport, we are racing on TV in swimwear. It sometimes can feel overwhelming,” Brown said
“Many athletes are simply not giving their bodies the fuel that they require to endure the training load that they have and then to compete. There’s constant under-fuelling that athletes expose their bodies and brains to,” Miles said.
“This is not just a female issue. While eating disorders are more prevalent amongst females, there are eating disorders prevalent in the male population and with male athletes as well.
“There’s really big issues with under-fuelling and how they perceive their bodies, as well as how others perceive their bodies in a high-performance environment.”
Professional surf athlete Lizzie Welborn, 21, said she had turned to restricted eating because she was scared her body was changing.
There has to be a difference between an athlete being challenged for their fitness and being embarrassed for being overweight and being body shamed.
The question arises when does banter becomes abuse? When does a joke become a line crossed?
If we think this practice is only in the professional and elite ranks of sport, then our head is in the sand.
Youth athletes are categorized and evaluated from an early age based on appearance rather than performance.
Being overweight is not necessarily an impediment to elite performance. But being abused for having a body that doesn’t please your eye is a fat nonsense.
How to stop the trend of letting appearance impact how athletes are treated.
1. Education
An extra few pounds will not prevent an athlete form performing well, but a semi starved athlete will not perform well.
Organizations must put forth simple education on how to help athletes get stronger, fuel up properly, and move well.
The stigma of ideal body weight = ideal performance must be dismissed.
In fact, participation in sport maybe the ticket to support healthy body composition. It becomes a by product of participation in lieu of less and less activities in other aspects of life. There is less play time outside, there is a less physical education in the schools. There is more time in front of screens. If the kids don’t play something or move, how can body weight or ideal health be achieved?
2. Remove body assessment measures.
Years ago elite sports would weigh athletes and suggest they hit ideal, target body weight. Today, there are performance tests. How an athlete can move is a more accurate predictor of performance and likelihood of injury.
From the NY Times article:
Body composition data often overemphasize the correlation between body fat percentage and athletic performance, while understating other key factors like sleep and hydration, said Dr. Paula Quatromoni, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Boston University and an expert on sports nutrition and eating disorders.
Dr. Quatromoni said schools should not use body composition tests to measure body fat.
“This practice is steeped in weight stigma, stereotypes and misinformation,” Dr. Quatromoni wrote in an email. “It is not based on sport science, and rarely is the practice managed or monitored closely by qualified health professionals to have any positive outcome. Instead, it can have devastating consequences for the athlete and will sabotage the very goals that athletes and coaches pursue.”
3. Let’s help with the uniforms
This especially applies to girls but affects boys as well. In volleyball, track, gymnastics and other sports why are we saddling young girls with tight skimpy uniforms?
Why does young overweight Jimmy have to squeeze into the too small baseball pants?
This only makes the issue come into higher focus with emphasis always on how the athletes fits into the uniform or looks while playing.
The environment we create opens the door to problems or solves them out of the gate. While many may have not thought this through, perhaps it is time to do so.