… CM: How hard was it to decide this was it for you?
DHN: Honestly, it wasn’t that hard for me. I’ve always known from the time I was a child I wanted to be an Olympic champion, a wife, and a mom. I never wanted track to run my life so much that at some age I realize there’s a world around me. I’ve had a great career. Me and my husband talk about it, and I’m personally ready to have some babies. I want to come to these events with my kids and say “mama did that.” It’s still bittersweet because I’m having fun with it, but it’s time. I find myself having a pull to do something else. I’m blessed that I can make the decision, and it’s not an injury or not being able to get a lane that forces me out of the sport.
… “I think they’ve done a lot of really good things this summer. I think it’s been good for them. It’s almost easier them being in different positions and being surrounded by guys who have done this before. Like when you see them in individuals or in workouts they have more older guys than newer guys. Last year was kind of a big group of (freshmen). So just the two of them have made a lot of progress because they have more individual time and our focus is more on each one of them. They have their struggles coming into workouts — it’s always tiring, it’s always hard that first initial shock of being at actual college workouts, but they’ve held their own. And each week they’ve gotten better every day.”
… With everything that’s happened in the past year, Biles hasn’t thought too much about her unforgettable sweep (five medals, four golds) at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She’s been too busy to think about the past. And now that she’s in the gym again, she likes to keep looking forward, though it is hard to maintain a “what’s next, what’s next?” mindset with a packed schedule.
“I almost had a mental breakdown but I had to reschedule it,” she wrote in a telling pinned tweet, posted in mid-April, nearly six months after she began training for her return to competition at the U.S. Classic championships at the end of July in her birthplace, Columbus, Ohio. That day in April, she remembers, she was working on her bar routine — the uneven bars were her weakest event in an overall stellar appearance in Rio — for basically the first time. “Bar routines always give me like a mini panic attack,” she tells us during her midday break from her every-day-except-Sunday training schedule. “So I was like, “Umm umm — I’m going to pass out.”
… For all of her success on the LPGA Tour — including earnings of nearly $13 million, two major championships, two player-of-the-year honors, two Vare Trophies (for low scoring average), four appearances on the U.S. Solheim Cup team, a tie for fourth at the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2014 LPGA top money winner honors — Lewis arrived at this week’s event with a far greater role than solely as one of the 156 players in the field.
The former iron-willed little girl who wore a back brace to correct her spinal scoliosis for almost eight years had slowly morphed into a savvy professional athlete who has effectively expanded the paradigms of corporate CEOs.
In fact, it was Lewis who connected with KPMG, and it was Lewis who discussed the possibility of creating a major championship under its umbrella, of bringing more women athletes on board as player ambassadors, of offering professional development opportunities, and of thinking about what corporate sponsorships should look like during maternity leave.
BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation from
Background
It has previously been suggested that heat exposure and hypohydration have negative effects on cognitive performance, which may impact upon sporting performance. The aim of the present study was to examine the independent effects of heat stress and hypohydration on cognitive performance in elite female field hockey players. Methods
Eight unacclimatised elite field hockey players (age: 22 ± 3 y; height: 1.68 ± 0.05 m; body mass: 63.1 ± 6.0 kg) completed a cognitive test battery before and after 50 min of field hockey specific exercise on a treadmill in four experimental trials; two in hot conditions (33.3 ± 0.1 °C), and two in moderate (16.0 ± 3.0 °C), both with and without ad libitum water intake. Results
On the visual search test, participants were faster overall in the heat (1941 vs. 2104 ms, p = 0.001). Response times were quicker in the heat on the Sternberg paradigm (463 vs. 473 ms, p = 0.024) and accuracy was improved (by 1.9%, p = 0.004). There was no effect of hydration status on any of the markers of cognitive function. Conclusions
Overall, the findings suggest that in elite field hockey players exposure to heat enhances response times and/or accuracy on a battery of cognitive function tests. However, hypohydration does not appear to affect cognitive performance in elite field hockey players. [full text]
The purpose of this study was to classify runners in sex-specific groups as either competitive or recreational based on center of mass (CoM) accelerations. Forty-one runners participated in the study (25 male and 16 female), and were labeled as competitive or recreational based on age, sex, and race performance. Three-dimensional acceleration data were collected during a 5-minute treadmill run, and 24 features were extracted. Support vector machine classification models were used to examine the utility of the features in discriminating between competitive and recreational runners within each sex-specific subgroup. Competitive and recreational runners could be classified with 82.63 % and 80.4 % in the male and female models, respectively. Dominant features in both models were related to regularity and variability, with competitive runners exhibiting more consistent running gait patterns, but the specific features were slightly different in each sex-specific model. Therefore, it is important to separate runners into sex-specific competitive and recreational subgroups for future running biomechanical studies. In conclusion, we have demonstrated the ability to analyze running biomechanics in competitive and recreational runners using only CoM acceleration patterns. A runner, clinician, or coach may use this information to monitor how running patterns change as a result of training.
Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon was promoted to the front of the bench to fill the vacancy of James Borrego, who left to become the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, the team announced.
The promotion moves her to the front row of coaches’ seats on the sidelines. Hammon previously sat in the row behind the bench during games.
Manchester United are discussing plans to expand their Carrington training base to allow all of their teams to train there, according to the club’s new women’s manager, Casey Stoney.
United have been using the multi-million pound facility since leaving The Cliff in 2000 but the buildings are now at full capacity meaning Manchester United’s Women’s team will be using The Cliff as a base.
The club announced it would be launching their first women’s team next season and they have been accepted into the second tier of the Women’s Super Leauge. A further announcement confirmed they would be based at United’s old training ground the Cliff.
An app to help players tailor their training and nutrition during their menstrual cycle could provide that ‘1%’ critical difference that top Ladies Football stars are now chasing in their bid to win an All-Ireland.
That was the reaction from some of the country’s top stars when their governing body, the LGFA, formed a partnership yesterday (Wednesday) with the app developers Orreco, which will give all their players free access to the groundbreaking FitrWoman app.
I spent an hour double and triple checking data that demonstrated clearly that several years ago, both I and another female colleague were being paid $20,000 less per year than our male peers (i.e., colleagues with pretty much identical credentials, years since degree, experience, etc). I do not know what the status is today, because salaries are a huge secret at my current institution; a practice that allows this kind of thing to happen.
Talked with a junior woman about a complicated situation.
Read a thoughtful blog post by someone I believe is well-meaning, attributing the lack of gender diversity to “women just don’t want to do CS.” (This is admittedly a gross over-simplification of his argument, but I’ll come back to this later.)
Read a wonderful response to said blog post.
In response to my forwarding of items 3 and 4, read this post about gender and board gaming (who knew?).
Continued my slog through the 350-page National Academies report on sexual harassment in Science, Engineering, and Medicine in Academia.
Agreed to write a letter of recommendation for a woman Ph.D., who has been working in industry at a research lab for six years, has been promoted twice, and still hasn’t been given a green card.
Wrote a letter of recommendation for a female colleague, being nominated for an award by another female colleague. Why is it that men virtually never get ask me to write award letters for women? Think about that: under 20% of my colleagues are women, but it is almost always the women who think to nominate women for awards.
A team of researchers at the University of Victoria has developed a new tool to measure how repeated mild concussions affect adolescents and the role gender plays in head injuries.
The research showed that young males experience more acute symptoms of concussion while young women are more likely to experience long-term negative effects.
Brains are still developing until around age 25, making the group below this age most at risk for concussions.
Several meta-analyses have been published on the effectiveness of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury prevention training programs to reduce ACL injury risk, with various degrees of risk reduction reported. The purpose of this research was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of overlapping meta-analyses evaluating the effectiveness of ACL injury prevention training programs so as to summarize the amount of reduction in risk for all ACL and non-contact ACL injuries into a single source, and determine if there were sex differences in the relative efficacy of ACL injury prevention training programs. Five databases (Medline, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane) were searched to identify meta-analyses that evaluated the effectiveness of ACL injury prevention training programs on ACL injury risk. ACL injury data were extracted and the results from each meta-analysis were combined using a summary meta-analysis based on odds ratios (OR). Eight meta-analyses met eligibility criteria. Six of the eight only included data for female athletes. Summary meta-analysis showed an overall 50% reduction (OR = 0.5 [0.41-0.59]; I2 = 15%) in the risk of all ACL injuries in all athletes and a 67% reduction (OR = 0.33 [0.27-0.41]; I2 = 15%) for non-contact ACL injuries in females. This paper combines all previous meta-analyses into a single source and shows conclusive evidence that ACL injury prevention programs reduce the risk of all ACL injuries by half in all athletes and non-contact ACL injuries by two-thirds in female athletes. There is insufficient data to make conclusions as to the effectiveness of ACL injury prevention programs in male athletes.
Sports Medicine Research: In the Lab & In the Field, Jane McDevitt from
Take Home Message: Athletes that do not return to a cutting/landing sport reported lower scores on patient-reported outcome measures; however, performed similarly on functional measures compared with athletes that returned to sport post anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Hence, physical performance alone may be less than ideal for returning an athlete to play post surgery.
British Association of Sport & Exercise Medicine, Dr Nicky Keay from
… How? To enable your hormones to do the best job they can for your health and sport performance, you need to find a balance between what, how much and when you train, eat and sleep. In the diagram below, this represents staying on the healthy green plateau. Too much, or too little of any of these choices can lead to imbalances and tipping off the green plateau into the red, less healthy peripheries.
What? Imbalances between training load, nutrition and recovery can cause problems in the Endocrine system: the whole network of hormone interactions throughout your body. The bottom line is that if insufficient energy is provided through nutrition to cover both your training demands and the “housekeeping” activities within the body to keep you alive, then your body goes into energy saving mode. This situation is called relative energy deficiency in sports (RED-S) and has the potential to adversely impact one or more of the important systems in your body vital for optimal health and performance.
Despite major participation in exercise and sports, female athletes generally face sports nutrition products designed for men—or, at best, for the broad population—and based on research conducted mainly on men. However, women are not just small men, and brands that just make smaller versions of existing products and slap a pink label on them are doing the growing female athlete market a huge disservice.
“Females are greater than 50 percent of the participants in all sports activities,” said Susan Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., owner of High Performance Nutrition LLC and nutritionist for many elite sports teams including the Seattle Storm (basketball) and Seattle Reign FC (soccer/football). “In studies that investigate injuries and performance, the two most important topics for athletes, only 2 to 3 percent of the subjects are female.”
As a woman who has been running for (gasp!) three decades, and who plans to continue for the next three decades and beyond, I often think about the keys to longevity in running. And as a sports dietitian, I am constantly looking for nutrition angles. Combining those two, I land on the importance of building and maintaining muscle, which means both taking in adequate protein and doing resistance-training exercise.
Quick: Name a few of your all-time favorite authors. Shakespeare. Dickens. Emily Dickinson. Jane Austen.
Notice anything odd about that list? The women are referred to by their full name, while the men are identified by their surname only.
New research finds that habit also applies to women in the sciences, politics, and other high-profile fields. And there’s evidence it undermines their status, lowering the odds they’ll be perceived as a top-tier talent.
With Wimbledon a little more than a week away, we look at the trends in first slams for the WTA and the top prospects for the next first-slam winner at SW19.
The past few years have been a period of some of the highest-level of competition the women’s tour has ever seen. One sign of the depth of the WTA can be seen in the number of new names among major winners.
… One 2011 study at Wake Forest found that men’s soccer matches average 11.26 injuries per match with only 7.2 percent of them being actual injuries. The women’s percentage of real injuries was 13.7 percent.
Beyond that, there’s less whining in the women’s game, less fake outrage at referees, less dramatics. Yet there’s just as much effort and playmaking. It’s refreshing. The players mostly just play.
Elizabeth Cambage — the star center for the Dallas Wings — recently made this observation on Twitter about pay in the WNBA:
“today I learnt NBA refs make more than a WNBA player and the 12th man on a NBA team makes more than a WHOLE WNBA team.”
It’s not entirely clear what NBA referees make, but Yahoo.com reported a few years ago that salaries range from $150,000 to $550,000. Meanwhile, High Post Hoops reports that the highest paid player in the WNBA — Chiney Ogwumike of the Connecticut Sun — is paid $117,500 this year. So yes, it appears NBA referees do make more than a WNBA player.
Some of those responding on Twitter to Cambage’s comment noted that the NBA brings in far more revenue than the WNBA. Although that’s true, there’s still a substantial gender wage gap in professional basketball, even after you adjust for the revenue difference.
Do women become ill more often than men? And they affected by other types of diseases? Do we research women’s health as much as men’s?
Kilden gender research has just launched the report Hva vet vi om kvinners helse? (‘What do we know about women’s health?’) in collaboration with Norwegian Women’s Public Health Association.
The report is the result of the pilot project Kvinnehelseportalen.no (‘Women’s health portal’), and sheds light on some of these questions.
“The aim of the report is to create a foundation for an online portal that documents and communicates Norwegian research on women’s health and health-related gender differences,” says Anne Winsnes Rødland, adviser at Kilden genderresearch.no and the author behind the report.
port should focus on having more women leaders, in order to bring about cultural change within the sector, according to equality charity Women in Sport.
The call comes after the charity published its Beyond 30% – Workplace Culture in Sport report, which suggests there is still a “serious gender discrimination problem” within sport.
Based on a survey of more than 1,000 people working within sport, the report shows that women feel less valued, experience gender discrimination and believe they are paid less for doing the same role as men. Many also face more challenges to progress and feel “unfairly judged”.
38 per cent of the women surveyed said they had experienced “active discrimination” due to their gender, compared to 21 per cent of men.