Female Sports Science newsletter – April 29, 2018

Female Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for April 29, 2018

 

athletes


As Desiree Linden started the Boston Marathon, she knew it was ‘gonna be miserable.’ But she persevered — and won.

ESPN, Bonnie D. Ford from

“Epic” can be an overused word in sports writing, but it was exactly the right adjective for Desiree Linden’s win at the 122nd edition of the Boston Marathon last week. Start-line temperatures in the high 30s, gusting winds and heavy rain made for a race of attrition in which numerous elite athletes dropped out, unheralded and unknown runners placed in the top 10 and finishing times were the slowest in 40 years. Linden, 34, initially thought it wasn’t her day, but after helping fellow American and 2017 New York City Marathon champion Shalane Flanagan rejoin the pack after a bathroom break near the halfway point, she found another gear and fulfilled her long-sought ambition of winning a major marathon after many close calls and setbacks. Linden spoke with ESPN senior writer Bonnie D. Ford about her landmark achievement, the first by a U.S. woman in Boston since 1985.

ESPN: How did you feel the day after?

Desiree Linden: Surprisingly good. I just kept thinking that it was because we ran actually ran fairly slow, so if you didn’t totally crater — maybe that’s why I felt a little bit better. Although I think if it went poorly, it was the opposite end of the spectrum.

 

training


Why Men Quit and Women Don’t

The New York Times, Opinion, Lindsay Crouse from

… This marathon made me wonder if gender might play a role. You can find a whole range of theories on why women out-endured men in Boston — body fat composition, decision-making tendencies, pain tolerance, even childbirth — but none offers a perfect answer.

One theory is that women handle cold weather better because their bodies naturally have more fat. In general, it’s true that the essential body fat level — one you can’t medically dip beneath — hovers around 3 percent for men and 12 percent for women (when it comes to racing, breasts aren’t exactly performance-enhancing, but they’re still usually part of the deal). And the insulating subcutaneous fat layer under the skin is twice as thick in women as in men.

But at the same race in 2012, on an unusually hot 86-degree day, women also finished at higher rates than men, the only other occasion between 2012 and 2018 when they did. So are women somehow better able to withstand extreme conditions?

That answer could involve psychology. Endurance may feel objective, but your ability to keep going — even if it means slowing down — is often ultimately up to you.

 

NFL’s first female strength coach a fan of Raiders’ Kelsey Martinez

Virginian-Pilot, Mercury News, Mike Schneidman from

… Currently Martinez is the only female strength and conditioning coach listed on any of the 32 team websites, which Brandon is thrilled to see almost 30 years after she entered the league.

Brandon spoke with the Bay Area News Group on Monday about Martinez joining the Raiders, what it means to her and what she thinks the future holds for women in the NFL.

 

technology


Deakin engineers on a mission to take the bounce out of sports bras

Deakin University (AU) from

Deakin School of Engineering, in conjunction with the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, is leading an upcoming trial of breast movement in order to develop better designed sporting apparel and encourage more women to stay active.

Lead researcher PhD candidate Rory Purdie said a more thorough understanding of breast movement was vital to developing a design that could make a difference to women’s lives and their experience of exercise.

“Breast pain and discomfort can be a major inhibitor to exercise, so a better understanding of breast movement will go a long way toward designing the next generation of supportive and comfortable sports apparel,” Miss Purdie said.

 

Nike Engineered New WNBA Uniforms for Enhanced Performance on the Court

Footwear News, Nia Groce from

… “We spent some time getting insights from them, learning what they wanted in this new uniform with Nike and then from there we dove into the design and what that could be. Then, we continued to work through the development process and ultimately to where you see today living and breathing uniforms that will take place on court next month,” said Keri Lenker, Sr. Manager Identity, Outfitting and Equipment at the NBA, during a press preview.

 

sports medicine


Does Concussion Recovery and Symptom Severity Differ Between Men and Women?

Mary Ann Liebert publishers, Journal of Neurotrama from

A new study comparing male and female athletes examined whether there are clear sex-related differences in post-concussion symptom severity and length of recovery. In addition to a finding of significant differences between the male and female college varsity athletes, differences among the women depending on hormonal contraceptive use were reported in the study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website until May 19, 2018.

 

Looking beyond football: Research, regulations are changing our views about concussions

Pamplin Media Group, InvestigateWest, Lee van der Voo from

… The focus on football, however, skews concussion discussions. Girls, for example, are at higher risk than boys, suffering concussions 68 percent more often when assuming the same risks, according to research by Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Those researchers found girls were three times as likely to have suffered concussions than boys in a separate study that zeroed in on basketball. Preliminary data gathered for this project, Rattled: Oregon’s Concussion Discussion, shows girls in Oregon with higher rates of concussions than boys in soccer. Doctors attribute the injury gender gap to the difference in the musculature of girls’ necks.

 

Study: Female soccer players at higher risk for additional work on ACL after revision surgery

USA TODAY High School Sports, Brendan C. Hall from

Are female soccer players more likely to need to go under the knife again after a revision on an ACL surgery?

A recent study by Robert Brophy, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at Washington University School of Medicine, suggests so. The MARS (multicenter ACL revision) study looked to evaluate outcomes for male and female soccer players requiring revision ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) surgery.

The study found many similarities between men and women soccer players following surgery. For instance, male and female soccer players are both likely to return to soccer – 62 percent, in fact, will continue to play after recovery. The length of the recovery is also similar with both men and women, requiring on average nearly 10 months to heal.

 

analysis


Some Boston Marathon Numbers

Katherine Evans, CausalKathy blog from

On the surface it feels like the article is going to have math to back up the claim that “men quit and women don’t.” It has *some:* … The metrics used are ill-defined. There is mention of how the midrace dropout rate was up 50 percent overall from last year, but no split by gender. As quoted above, the finishing rates varied significantly by gender, but no numbers are given. Only the overall dropout rates are reported. What does overall dropout rate mean? I assume it is a combination of runners who dropped before the race began plus those who dropped midrace. And then the overall dropout rates are 3.8% for women and 5% for men. But the splashy number is that men dropped out 80% more than last year whereas women only dropped out 12% more. Is… is that right? I’ve already gone cross-eyed. The whole thing reeks of hacking and obscures the meaning.

 

Where will MLB’s first woman GM come from?

espnW, Christina Kahrl from

… When it comes to getting women in the game, not only does baseball’s track record need to improve, baseball already knows it. A year ago, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport in handed MLB a C for its gender hiring with a grade of 70. That improved this year to a 71, an incremental gain reflecting a difficult challenge. You can open up front-office career paths in areas with crossover skills like finance, legal or media relations. But in sport-specific operations departments, where people help decide who’s on the field, who gets drafted and who’s on the team, the ranks of women become more scarce.

For baseball, that means more than creating equal opportunities, or advertising them. It has meant finding the women who are ready, and preparing those who could be. In short, it’s asking baseball people to solve a baseball problem: finding baseball talent who happen to be women.

MLB has made some progress so far. Since January 2016, when the league started its Diversity Pipeline Program aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities working within the game, 51 women have been hired to work in baseball operations departments across the industry — an increase of almost 40 percent. Twenty-four women are now working in on-field roles, including a dozen as athletic trainers. Ten women are working in baseball analytics and research and development, seven of whom have been hired in the past two years.

 

A shift in the WNBA season? Show me the money

espnW, Katie Barnes from

Would having the WNBA’s season run during the fall and winter help improve the league’s profitability? That’s a question NBA commissioner Adam Silver says he contemplates, according to an interview Friday on ESPN’s “Get Up.”

“It’s been harder to get people to come to the games,” Silver said. “It may be because the games are in the summer. One of the things we’ve talked about is do we need to shift to the so-called more natural basketball season sort of in the fall and winter?”

 

fairness


Wickenheiser recruited to working group on gender equity in sport

Sportsnet.ca, Canadian Press from

Hayley Wickenheiser believes sport is a microcosm of life, and how women are treated in sport is a barometer of the health of a society.

The four-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s hockey was among a dozen people named Tuesday to Canadian Sport Minister Kirsty Duncan’s working group on gender equity in sport.

The federal government announced in this year’s budget the goal of achieving gender equity in sport “at every level by 2035” and committed an initial $30 million over the next three years to it.

 

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