March 31, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of the OGX Podcast, Krista Stoker and Laura McDonald have an honest conversation about nutrition, body image, and overall wellness for female athletes. They discuss the role of wellness questionnaires, why body weight can’t be viewed in isolation, and how irregular periods are often a sign that something deeper is off.
This episode is a must-listen for coaches, athletes, and parents who want to better understand the complex relationship between nutrition, performance, and health in the lives of young women in sports.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
OK, yeah, so the day we're reporting this is opening day,
which is why I have my birds shirt on.
Where I pretend I have nothing baseball whatsoever.
Yes, no offense baseball. Which is why.
Where I pretend to the first fewweeks that the Cardinals have
done anything to try to be a good team, and then after a
month I give up. So we're going to, you know,
(00:24):
we're living on the excitement of.
The wife of a husband who loves the Cubs.
I feel that. Yeah.
I feel that. Yeah.
Hope. Yeah, that hope, yeah.
Well, I, I would say it's as a woman who hates the Cubs, I
would say it's different. It's different because the Cubs
are just bad or they were just bad.
(00:45):
The Cardinals, we really had a run.
It feels very unfair that now wewere very good Now it's like
just you remember how we were good yeah we're not going to try
to do that anymore That was fun Well so anyways, here we are but
go birds and up the 10s that's the Cardinals yeah are going to
(01:07):
be good this year so I'm really excited about today's topic.
We're going to do kind of a 2 episode I'm going to call it
series, but the the two next twoepisodes are going to be related
to each other. This is something that actually
came up in the OGX community. So I don't know people saw that
we started this, but we're kind of rolling out a forum where
people can join and we can get alittle bit more in depth about
(01:29):
player development. So we started just a little
pilot group and this conversation around nutrition
came up and there as well. And I think this is just
something that maybe as a internal group, I don't want to
say that we we didn't know it was a thing.
I think we're all women, you know, we're a woman owned
business. We know that there's some things
(01:50):
there with weight and nutrition,but I think we weren't quite
prepared for the level maybe that it would come into play
with conversations we were having and the the nuances and
the complications around it, howoften we would be having this
conversation. And so it's definitely something
that's kind of on our brains. And so we are just going to talk
(02:14):
today a little bit about our experiences and some of the
things that have come up for us anecdotally, ways that we've
dealt with it or or talked through it.
And then on the next episode, I'm talking with nutritionists a
little bit more specifically about athletes and some of the
dynamics of female athletes and a little bit more getting into
(02:34):
that expertise. So hopefully this kind of like
two-part series, you can really dive into a lot of the nuances
of this. And I would say that's probably
not even going to scratch the surface of the things that we
could touch touch on in this topic, but we can start to to
raise this conversation. So I think maybe if it makes
sense. And then after I kind of lay
(02:54):
this out, Laura, just, you know,feedback from your standpoint,
But I, there's something like lay a little storyline out of of
our sort of realization that notthat this was important, because
I think we knew that nutrition and your body obviously is what
you're using for performance wasimportant, But how we realized
(03:16):
the difficulty and nuances and how deep that ran for female
athletes in particular, Obviously softball, I think one
important piece. It's not a sport where thin or
small or delicate, not hitting puberty.
(03:36):
You know, I'm thinking of like these sports where when you
don't hit puberty, it's positive.
That's not true in South Ball. And that's when we say that some
of these things took us back. I think that's really where it
came from, which is there's no real pressure from the sport,
you know, outside of like some things, I guess to be thin or to
stop your period or to do anything.
(03:59):
That maybe there are some thingsin sports like long distance
running or gymnastics where we sort of notoriously have had
issues and and pressures to do things like that.
But that's not true of softball.And so as these things came up,
it's really this intersection ofsport society.
You know, there's a lot of things that that sort of
overlaps. But for us, we've talked about
(04:20):
this before. We, we keep Wellness
questionnaires and we ask our athletes when they're training
to fill out Wellness questionnaires that just give us
some subjective measurements of how they're feeling.
Are they tired? Are they, you know, did they
sleep well? How do they feel?
Their nutrition generally has been that day?
Do they have any soreness? Do they have any pain and it's
just this opportunity for us to kind of flag some things that
(04:43):
could impact impact their training and their performance.
And in that conversation severalyears ago, probably like 3-4
years ago at this point at least, we started having
conversations around putting weight in there.
And this was coming from a realization that we saw in in a
few athletes where weight was fluctuating quite a bit,
(05:07):
typically down, and it was impacting performance.
And no one knew that weight was fluctuating, so fluctuating.
And so we couldn't raise it as part of the conversation of why
did my velocity go down? Why am I having soreness?
Why is my back hurting? And then when we would kind of
start to ask the athlete some questions, we would find out
(05:28):
that they had a swing in weightsthat was substantial, a
substantial percentage of their body weight.
In addition to that, a lot of the metrics that we measure body
weight really should come into play as sort of a way to
normalize the data of power and performance and things like
that. So several years ago we thought,
let's just add weight into the Wellness questionnaire and ask
(05:52):
the athletes their weight that when they fill it out, they
don't need to put us get on a scale, though in house we did
have a scale. And you know, we just asked them
to do that. And what we saw very quickly is
that the percentage of people doing their Wellness
questionnaires plummeted and we had a lot less percentage of,
you know, the the rates of doingthat went down.
(06:15):
And so we started asking, you know, why is this?
Is this related to that question?
And so we added another question, which was basically,
if you want to opt out, select here and you don't have to put
your weight. And then if you want to talk to
someone about nutrition or weights, Mark here and our rate
of participation went back up and about half of our athletes
(06:38):
and now these are athletes who range from 12 and 13, you know
through high school for the mostpart at that time.
We have college athletes obviously now a lot of them that
do that as well. And so half of our at least half
of our athletes at the time marked that they would prefer
not to put their weights. And so this became a really
interesting question for us of realizing that even athletes as
(07:02):
young as 12 and 13 were like, no, thank you.
I do not want to put my weight on here, but that this is
something that needed, you know,from the stories I just
mentioned, like needed to be talked about or was a missing
piece to be talked about in conversations.
A lot of times we were having conversations with families
where they were asking why powerwasn't going up, why velocity
(07:23):
was going up. And we could see with our
eyeballs that the athlete was pretty thin, you know, didn't
have a lot of of room to put muscle mass on.
And the conversation became a little delicate about we're
missing this piece, but how muchcan we talk about it?
And how do we broach this conversation with the athlete in
a way that's not going to make her feel bad from her body
image? And so I would just say
(07:44):
generally that's where this conversation really started
swirling for us of how do we approach this conversation in a
healthy way? How do we not ignore it?
Because ignoring it feels like we're really missing part of the
performance conversation. And, you know, we can't ignore
the nuances that are really specific to female athletes in
(08:07):
this conversation and body imageand the types of things they
feel. So that's my little back story
of how we kind of got to these conversations and we can get
into, you know, some of the the ways we have managed it
internally or where we've sort of point at people or where the
conversations have led. But did I miss anything, Laura?
Are there any other like key parts of that story that you
(08:28):
sort of saw from your perspective?
I, I you, I think you nailed it.You know, we sort of exchanged
the frequency of the Wellness questionnaires for the, I'll say
like the, the importance of the information we were asking and
it, it was very eye opening. And I think we, you know, I
think we even reflected like shoot as a, as a woman owned
(08:48):
business, like not that we missed it.
But again, as you said, I don't think we've realized the gravity
for athletes that this has on their ability to report their
Wellness and the impact that it has on them to want to give that
number. And it's, it is a, it is a
minefield of a conversation for a lot of reasons, something that
(09:10):
you said about, you know, we couldn't have that conversation
with that athlete about. And again, I will say probably
99% of the time it is low body weight.
I just want to be super clear about that.
So like. When we, when we talk about, you
know, tracking body weight, it is a often times, and I mean
often, like literally 99% of thetime, it is often a metric that
(09:31):
we ask athletes to track for their base health because it
gives us an indicator of caloricintake and whether they're able
to maintain their body weight, particularly in season with
enough caloric intake to keep, you know, muscle from breaking
down to keep just energy in their system.
You know, the, the obviously 1% of the time that we talk about
(09:52):
the other end of the spectrum, it, it often times is more of
just like it's the shape of who they are.
It's it's who they are as an athlete and often times as
athletes that have, you know, they're on the, the, you know,
sort of other end of the spectrum with a little bit of a
higher weight. I'm not going to use BMI, but a
higher body mass. It produce power, right, Because
mass is gas, as they say, right?And so often times it's this,
(10:15):
it's this underweight athlete that we're really, really trying
to track and keep an eye on because of her really
susceptibility to other issues down the road.
If that is a cycle of energy deficit that she's maintaining.
And I think some of the education around that has been
really powerful. I've had amazing conversations
with some of our clients and families about, you know, just
(10:38):
even with a mom who, who isn't recognizing some of the symptoms
of irregular menstrual periods, bone issues, you know, these
things that they don't think about because the, the education
has been so much about the like post menopausal women and their
risks of bone issues and bone health and menstrual challenges
and all those things. We don't think about that as a
teenage thing. And so when we have those
(11:00):
conversations, it's usually the moms that are like the, the
light bulb goes off. They're like, oh, right, all
this stuff is connected. And so, yeah, the you know, the,
the Wellness questionnaire really, I think gave us this
indicator of one, it's an important question to ask.
That's a really uncomfortable question to ask.
But the number of times that this has come up in a athletes
performance story, a health story, I mean, I've lost track
(11:22):
at this point. And I said typically it is, it
is being concerned about low body weight and then again that
cascade of events that the can come from that.
Yeah. And I think we see this in a,
you know, the, the most benign version of this is just this is
hindering your performance. You are, you do not have enough
mass to put, you know, muscle mass on to add sort of what you
(11:46):
need behind whatever you're trying to accomplish.
And so we are having performanceconversations around that.
That's the most benign case. And what we have seen is all the
way into some of the things you've alluded to.
And I'm going to get into this alittle bit more with Courtney in
the next episode. But is that, you know, we
haven't run the numbers as frequently, but about two years
(12:08):
ago when we did. And I can't imagine it has
changed. If anything, it's probably
gotten higher. About 30% of all of the athletes
that we had do assessment. So at their initial intake form,
we asked them if they have regular periods and about 30% of
our athletes, again, this is ranging from 12, you know, 10, I
guess even all the way up until and that pool is through
(12:30):
college. And so anyone that has already
had their first period, we ask them if they had regular periods
and 30% of our athletes did not.And I think that number, it
really shocked us because again,this is not a sport where we are
like don't hit puberty. You know, obviously we've talked
about puberty can have its challenges and for our sport
when you're going through it, But this isn't a sport like long
(12:53):
distance running where we've hadconversations where a 12 year
old, you know, I was laughing yesterday with you guys about my
kids do this mild run and they literally Sprint the whole thing
where a pre puberty athlete is good at running and then can
tank as being a runner, you know, as a woman when they hit
puberty or a gymnast can be really good at gymnastics
(13:14):
because of her size and can get worse as she gets breast and
body fat and all of these things.
And so in those sports, we've had these conversations around,
shoot, you know, this sports matched with being a woman
matched with society has createdthe sort of ripe grounds for
encouraging female athletes to try to stop their period.
(13:36):
And the way they do that is caloric intake, you know, and
things like that. But for supple, that's not what
the sport is asking. And so it surprised us how often
people were reporting that they were having irregular periods.
And I think what was more shocking is that when we would
then ask these athletes, you know, have you seen a doctor?
Have you spoken with someone about this?
(13:58):
And sometimes even when they were already presenting issues
with bone health as young 1314 year olds were already
experiencing stress fractures are starting to indicate that
they were having a hot spot. And they're, you know, they were
they were on the verge of a stretch fracture or something
that they were told. Yeah, we saw, you know, we
mentioned it to our doctor and he or she said it was normal.
(14:20):
And this isn't in their first year post puberty when maybe
some irregularity is normal. You know, this is outside of
that window. And what was shocking to us is
like that's it's absolutely 100%not normal.
I think that that's important. Like I said, Courtney and I are
definitely going to get more into this and the long term
ramifications of something like that, of just not having regular
(14:42):
periods, you know, are as bad asthe sort of immediate
implications can be. The long term implications of
something like that is so bad for a woman to experience.
And so that used to irritate us so much of like, OK, well, we're
not the medical professionals, you know, so we can't just be
like, that's a lie. But we often would push of like
(15:05):
maybe just push on that a littlebit more.
It's not typically normal for a woman not to have regular
cycles. And when you don't have regular
cycles, it's usually a signal ofsomething, you know, it's a
signal of something. And as you've mentioned, for the
most part for our our female athletes, it's caloric intake.
And I think that this is really layered.
(15:25):
It's not, we have seen cases obviously of, of actual eating
disorders and, and things like restrictive eating and, and
things that are a little more intentional or, or have a little
more layer to it. But in most cases that is not
the case. And what is happening is I, I
would say twofold of kind of what we see is an intense
(15:49):
schedule, a very intense schedule for all of the things
that we talk about often on this, where an athlete has very
little time to feel themselves within that schedule.
Mixed with a sort of adult woman's understanding of what a
diet should look like as a sedentary adult woman's
(16:10):
understanding of what a diet should look like.
So as a sort of like example, I coach a team for many years and
there were a few years where I would say like best breakfast
platter wins a Starbucks drink or something and they would put
it in the GroupMe or who what iseveryone eating for lunch?
(16:31):
Like most protein, whatever. We would do these incentives,
which I think we can get into a little bit of some of the ways
we we've tried to put positive spins on this.
And often I would get a picture of like an apple for breakfast
or like a salad with no meat on it for lunch.
And I think like that's at timesin my life, although I'm really
trying not to do that too what my plate looks like.
(16:54):
But as an athlete who is literally going from 7:00 AM
until 8:00 PM with many of thosehours in physical activity, that
is just simply not sufficient fuel for their body to to
replenish the things that they're breaking down in their
in their daily routine. And so, you know, I think that's
(17:16):
the more, like I said, this is not malicious.
They're not trying to do that. No one's trying to.
But that's kind of where these worlds collide of what we see
our athletes kind of dealing with.
And so, yeah, maybe if you want to just talk through, Laura,
some of the ways that we've likeinternal conversations that
we've had, some of the ways we've tried to respond to this
(17:40):
or, or instill a slightly different culture for our
athletes and, and what that has looked like.
Yeah, I'll say we've gone back to tracking body weight.
We we're very intentional about this though.
So when we do our power updates,meaning you know, typically
every six weeks we'll collect some new rounds of our our power
measurements and our power monitoring.
We take the athletes body weight, but with a lot of
(18:01):
intentionality. The device that we use, the
scale that we use, the the the display of the actual body
weight is not visible to the athletes.
So the coach can see it in orderto enter that data.
And the coach can have that justin the context of essentially
like where her power snapshot isright now.
Because again, as you mentioned,the, you know, the loss of body
weight is going to lead to a loss of power.
(18:22):
It's just a sort of a basic physics.
And so we've just got to keep aneye in the context of power.
And that I think has become so critical that we are attaching
this metric. And that's all it is, is a
metric. You know, honestly, I get it as
a woman, The number on that scale is not an easy number to
see. It's not an easy number to see
(18:42):
go up if you don't want it to goup or go down if you don't want
it to go down. It's it's a difficult
relationship. But to put that number in the
context of performance and attaching that specifically to
underlying power and strength and conditioning, I, I feel has
opened up a different conversation with our athletes.
And I think, you know, James does a, a great job, our coaches
in general, but James specifically as our director of
(19:03):
strength and conditioning, he does a great job of I think
really being intentional by opening up conversations about
food. What did you have to eat today?
It's kind of similar to what yousaid with your team.
What would you have to eat today, right?
And so there are suggestions for, you know, here's maybe
something you can add. We talked about the sandwich
plan. I think Natalie termed the panda
plan, right, to get protein in them.
(19:25):
And I think these ways of of kind of coming at the athletes
with some, I'll say, like kind of gentle education, you know,
while they're while they're on the strength floor, while
they're in that environment, as opposed to this really formal,
let's sit down and review a dietplan.
And that it seems so silly, but that is, I think, you know, I
probably just like blew up James's psychological approach
to our athletes. But I feel like that's helped so
(19:46):
much that that our athletes are so much more comfortable talking
about food, bragging about food that they eat, the amount, the
breakfast, the quality of it. And like, that's I think very
similar to how we've opened up the conversation within our own
athletes about periods and, and performance changes within your
cycle around your cycle. They have to be more comfortable
talking about it and not talkingabout it in a space where
(20:08):
they're going to be chastised right on either end.
You know, above. Of an ideal body weight or
below. And so I think, you know, James
did a great job of opening that conversation on the strength
floor and our coaches are very encouraging of, you know, let's
just talk about getting more calories in.
It's not I'm and I mentioned in our coaches community, I think,
you know, there's probably a good number of of our athletes
that could, you know, tolerate aBig Mac or two, meaning quality
(20:31):
isn't always the goal. Sometimes, sometimes the base
plan is just like just take in more calories of whatever you
choose, whatever you want, you know, giving them the freedom.
You know, we have had athletes with, you know, I'll say some
like restrictive eating challenges, usually rooted
somewhere in the, you know, the century challenges or just being
picky eaters, which I label I don't love, but just athletes
(20:53):
that have challenges with the kinds of food, the types of
protein they're willing to tolerate.
And, you know, we can give obviously some basic general
here's, you know, here's the stuff to kind of hit.
But then we got to cross into that like dietitian realm.
That's where I think like Courtney is so helpful in being
able to give, you know, really concrete strategies.
But we've, we've opened up that conversation, I think again and
(21:16):
in a little bit more of a performance context, because
that metric is important. And I, I, the metric is
important not just for their base health, but we start
getting into things like they'rebio mechanics.
And we're talking about the bio mechanics of rotation, how our
body mass is distributed, whether it goes up, down,
whether it's more in our limbs, in our trunk.
(21:36):
It's like puberty is such a bear.
It matters, right? So when I'll give 2 examples,
obviously you know, your, your biological puberty change where
our limbs are changing, they're getting heavier.
I kind of call that puberty one point O.
Then we sometimes have athletes where, you know, they go through
high school, they're three sportathletes.
They're they're sort of chronically over trained, under
(21:57):
fueled. You know, they may not be at
this sort of like body mass potential that they could be
just simply because of that mismatch.
They go to college and they get into a lifting program for the
first time. And I call that puberty 2 point
O because all of a sudden she's her body weight's going up and
it's going up for a very positive reason.
It is solid lean muscle mass. It is adding muscle mass.
(22:18):
You know, it is matching this nutritional intake because of
the workload she's no longer experiencing in high school.
And so that change is, well, even if the scale is going in
the quote UN quote, wrong direction.
However you want to view that that change has an impact then
on how she organizes herself as a pitcher, as a hitter, as a
player in general. And we often talk about, you
(22:40):
know, speed, slowing things down, I'm sorry, body mass going
up, slowing things down. But sometimes that that needs to
be leveraged. And that's an important part of
the conversation. If we don't talk about that, we
see in pictures their patterns alter because they've all of a
sudden got into a strength and conditioning program.
Usually it's ours and they are putting on masks.
Their pants don't fit anymore. We're seeing this, this awesome
(23:02):
just build of strength and theirpatterns to grade and, and it's
typical their body has to renegotiate just like it did in
puberty. So we don't have that
conversation. We missed this really key
important piece to talk about itin relation to your performance.
And, and in my personal view, that's that's how we should be
talking about body weight specific to what are your
performance challenges? Where could getting that
(23:25):
particular metric in the right frame for you, whether it's up,
whether it's down, whether it's doesn't matter, how does that
support your performance? The the body image side is a
whole other conversation that it's complicated.
I don't have to say it. It's just complicated for young
girls, especially with, you know, the saturation of social
(23:45):
media and all those things. That's difficult.
But I think centering this weight, mass conversation,
nutrition, all these things around performance opens up a
much more healthy conversation of why does it matter?
Why do we track it? It's not to wag our finger at
you that you are, you know, you're losing mass or gaining
mass. It is simply to understand who
you are in the context of that moment in your performance.
(24:07):
It's in my mind, it's no different than any other metric,
but it comes with a whole host of other psychological
challenges for athletes that we have to consider.
That's the human side of that particular data point.
And that's, I think really important, keep in mind.
Yeah, I was thinking about a fewyears ago on my team leading up
to the season would be like leading up to the summer season
(24:28):
would be like it's, you know, gotta gotta get a lift in.
It's almost SIM suit season. And I would I would be like, how
about softball season? Like, you know, and there's an
element of like, there's just the things that we are fed
constantly that our athletes are, you know, they hear and,
and they take on and gosh, we'vetalked about the, you know,
(24:49):
adultification of sport. And I think, you know, we, we do
this with a lot of the diets andthe way that we approach it.
And sometimes like the mom puts on her kids plate what she's
eating. And you know, as I said, most of
us as adults are pretty sedentary.
And so it's like, you know, that, you know, 12 hundred 1500
(25:11):
calorie intake in a day, probably not great, maybe don't
be so sedentary and go, you know, lift and do all the things
that women need to do as we get into this perimenopause and
menopause fun for for bone health.
But if you, but generally as youare maybe in a more sedentary
lifestyle, that might be fine for you to maintain your body
(25:33):
weight, but that is just simply not remotely reflective of what
the athletes are doing. Like we, we lay out their
schedule and you know, and thereare a lot of challenges and
things. I think Courtney and I can
specifically, and we, we did another sort of webinar that we
let people join with Courtney where we talked about this.
But there are challenges of sometimes our athletes have
(25:54):
lunch of 10 and they don't, you know, they don't work out until
they don't get off until 3. And so they have to plan ahead
to, you know, pack snacks, and then they have to make sure that
their teachers allow them to eatthe snacks.
And there's a lot of things that, you know, there are
challenges to what it looks like, but we're talking about
like a 3000, we're more sometimes calorie intake for
(26:17):
these athletes to be able to replenish their bodies.
And that's, that's a lot of eating based on, you know, what
we're what we're used to as a service society and especially
in our culture now where we're just running constantly,
everything's on the go. We maybe don't sit down and eat
dinner and things like that the way that we used to.
And so it, it, it does require some intentionality.
(26:39):
And, and in order for there to be intentionality, there has to
be conversation. And without being able to
approach it in a way that, you know, that doesn't sort of like
challenge some female athlete dynamics, it can be a, a
challenging conversation to overcome.
And so I think you're right, thebiggest thing we've done, you
(26:59):
know, we sort of removed some ofthe conversation around period
regularity. Like we, we point that out to
them and, and that's really up for them to kind of bring to the
doctor. And obviously, if we're seeing
any sort of like reoccurring flare ups, we'll just keep
saying like, hey, this is probably not something we should
ignore, but it's not really our like area of expertise and
things that we can manage fully for them.
(27:21):
And so we've moved away a littlebit from that.
We've used weight, as you've mentioned, to normalize some of
these conversations around powerand velocity and things like
that. And then also, I think the
biggest thing for us has just been to continue to create this
sort of like open community of talking about food.
You know, we've we've talked a lot about how we talk about
(27:42):
periods, talking about things that impact our athletes in the
sort of non judgmental open. Hey, we're all trying to perform
the best we can. What'd you eat before you got on
the strength floor? Did you bring something today so
they could take a break? Like you're going to be training
a long time, you know, having these sort of like non charged
(28:03):
conversations around it in a space where athletes are like
minded. They all want to perform their
best and that has removed some of the charge around it in a way
that's really healthy. But it exists, you know, it's
still underlying. And I was thinking as we were
talking like the most common injury we see in our young
(28:24):
athletes with stress fractures. And so I think like, you know,
this idea of missing periods during that time period and sort
of not having the clerk intake you need at a time where we know
bone injuries happen, it's just really challenging.
And so I think we we have to be mindful of that in addition to
(28:46):
and probably more that we'll getinto in the next episode, in
addition to the implications that something like that then
has on you long term. So obviously as 13 through 22
year olds, we're kind of focusedon the me and tomorrow and not
necessarily, you know, me as a 30-40 year old.
But that does have implications.Missing your period, having
(29:09):
irregular periods, what that does to your body does have
implications on things like fertility, on things like, you
know, there are implications forthat that we don't want to
ignore. And so I think we have to have a
level of intentionality around this.
It goes all the way back to the culture of female athletes has
to be fine talking about periods.
It has to be fine talking about the society demands we have on,
(29:34):
on body image. It just has to be fine
normalizing those conversations because otherwise we just ignore
it and then we never sort of take steps forward.
And I I just think that can be so detrimental for our athletes
and scary to not have those conversations.
When you talked about some of like, you know, how the long
term effects the the the thing that I have been really a broken
(29:54):
record about with any you know, family client, whoever I've
talked to about this is one it this has to be, you know, the
parent supporting the athlete's life skills in figuring out how
do I pack for snacks? How do I make sure that I like
have what I need my fuel? What do I enjoy eating?
(30:15):
It is it it has to be something that that parent is supporting
that young athlete in developingthese habits of OK, I practice
at three. I have to snack with me and like
that planning to me as someone who did not have that
experience, being that an adult and the hardest decision, I
think I joke on this all the time.
The hardest decision you have tomake all day is like, what do I
eat right three times a day, sometimes more.
(30:37):
What do I eat? It's such a challenging question
and I think the more you can give these young athletes the
opportunities to one, explore foods that they do enjoy eating
and can maybe put a, you know, amore protein spin on or a more
caloric density on not going to stay healthier because it's a
relative term. But for what they need, if it's
(30:58):
more protein or more calories ormore carb, whatever it is that
they can change that to a version that just does that
without, you know, taking away their enjoyment of it.
We've won something there, right?
That's a huge win. And so I think this often times
I'm navigating this sort of parent athlete relationship of,
you know, the parent recognizes the nutritional need and
recognizes obviously like gotta get her to eat, gotta get her to
(31:19):
eat, But and the athlete needs to take also an active role in
that. And I think that's sometimes the
piece think it's missed is like my plea to our, you know, our
athletes and any athletes who's listening parent of an athlete
is like this is ultimately goingto be your responsibility as an
adult. So now is the time to learn how
do I prepare my body for competition, for practice, for
(31:42):
my day to to treat food as energy and to fuel those things.
And, you know, coming and meeting your parent in the
middle of, of asking for the foods that you want to eat and
trying to negotiate those things, It's a tall task.
I'm not saying like that's goingto happen tomorrow, but it's
such a life skill. And it's such a skill that,
again, I can speak from the other side, you'll be very
(32:02):
grateful that you have when you get into adulthood and you're on
your own and you're trying to navigate those challenges, you
know, just as a busy adult schedule.
And it's, it's tricky, but I think it's, it's something that
both, you know, that parent child relationship, that
athletes got to be active and that they've got to be, you
know, driving the bus, so to speak, on packing for snacks,
preparing foods, obviously with parental support and probably
(32:26):
the person who's purchasing saidfood, but that's got to be a,
it's got to be a team effort. Yeah, yeah.
I was thinking, you know, one ofthe stories I've kind of talked
about is I have a a much youngerbrother and so I got to
experience some of his like sport journey and, you know, he
was a baseball player and a soccer player and he played a
(32:47):
lot of sports. But he it was so interesting to
me having experienced that almost in, you know, not in a
mom role, but I was so far removed from his age that I was
very aware almost as a a mom figure of of his experience.
And the way that they talked about weight was like you have
to be an ex body weight if you want to throw.
(33:08):
You are whatever 145, you need to be 185 for you to throw this
velocity like it was just so black and white.
And now this is not to minimize because there are plenty of
athletes in general, there is going to be some like body
dysmorphia, body issues because our body becomes this like
vessel for performance. And so that is true for men too.
(33:30):
This isn't like and then they'refine.
You know, there's plenty of men and boys I've seen have have
body issues as well, but it became this like very clear
thing. And it was just specifically
about performance. You know, like this is your, you
know, body that you weights thatyou need to have to get X
(33:50):
performance. And you could talk about it in
that level of dynamics. And so that was such a sort of
like juxtaposition for me cominginto coaching and being like,
Oh, yeah, like, we can't do thathere.
Like females will be like, excuse me, Like what?
You know, like that just doesn'tfeel the same.
(34:13):
I've also given the reference and this is so interesting.
At some point I'll, I will post this online or something because
it is really interesting to me that when I reflect on myself as
a high school athlete, I remember, you know, we did a lot
of like running for my volleyball team.
It was very like corporal punishment type and in high
(34:34):
school. And so I was always preparing
for that season. But like I'm so I just remember
always perpetually thinking like, I'm so out of shape.
I need to lose weight in order to be more in shape.
Like it became, and I would do these runs, I would go to the
gym in the morning, like I did all these things.
And so in my brain, I remember having this moment where this
(34:55):
stuff was coming up and I thought like, yeah, I always had
to be losing weight in high school.
Like I was like a a slightly heavier kid and whatever.
And I went back and saw this picture of me pitching and I am.
Frail like Brail like it's not funny, it's not.
One of our athletes, if we saw one of our athletes that, you
know, this would be a conversation of like Chris,
(35:16):
though, you want to know why you're stuck at 55, which is
probably what it fits at the time.
Like you need to eat a sandwich,you know, like you're too frail.
And in my brain, even as an adult, I was like, Oh yeah.
I was always like had to lose weight so I could be in shape.
And it became, you know, that starts from this lack of
understanding. Like I said, it's it's A at the
time, it was just a lack of education around those things
(35:39):
probably. And that has increased a little
bit of like, how do you get in shape?
How do you get faster has changed.
But it, it comes, you know, to me, you have people leading
woman's health from a very like adult woman body image version
(35:59):
of it. And then it starts to trickle
all the way into sport and we just lose this idea of what
we're trying to accomplish. And, and really it's so
interesting for me because I played volleyball and softball 2
sports where like power and quickness and explosiveness are
so important and being tiny is not.
This definitely doesn't equate to those things.
(36:19):
And this idea that I was like running distances to be small in
sports where what I really needed to probably break the
threshold that I was up against at the time was power.
And if someone had taught me to like eat and then train power, I
probably would have being able to accomplish more.
I think it's such just like thatis what we are up against so
(36:41):
often is this concept of like how you're going to do that,
especially as a woman, because we are just, you know, told and
fed things that just aren't. Or not fed.
Aren't Yeah, or, you know, that just aren't reality.
I think. Like, look at even Caitlin
Clark. You know, it's just like even
her transition from college, it's the WNBA.
(37:02):
She's like, I got to put mass on.
I'm getting. Lit.
Up here, you know, and so she did, she went in the offseason
and you can see she puts a ton of masks on.
And I think that's great. So hopefully as that stuff
becomes more visible to women ofexamples of women who are doing
that, I think conversations around even breaking down these
(37:24):
truths that we've held, you know, we've, we've kind of
referenced it, but that us as women even now should be doing
cardio. We should be going into all
these things to stay small and we're starting to see the
impacts of that. You know, we've referenced it
and this is definitely a different topic and not for our
audience, but we've seen the issues of that of in
perimenopause, in menopause of women whose bone health is at
(37:46):
risk, who aren't lifting and, and sort of doing the things
that they they could be doing to, to be healthy in that time
period of their life. And all of that, you know, it's
so layered and it's so complicated.
You even reference like our parents generation, I think at
the time were like fast food andprocessed food and quick became,
(38:06):
you know, really important. And so then our generation, I'm
probably right on the cusp of it, but we had we got passed
down the sort of inability to what do I put on the plate?
How do I cook food? How do I, you know, what does
this look like? You know, not just to grab these
like processed fast, empty things that we were being fed.
Like there was a time, this is really going on tangent, but
(38:29):
there was a time as a teenager where I did Adkins with my mom.
I went into college and my, my freshman year of college, I put
on masks because that's what youfreaking do.
Like I'm sure if I looked back now, I looked great, but in my
brain I was like, this is bad. I got to lose this weight.
And so I went to on Friday mornings during college, me and
(38:51):
a teammate would go to Weight Watchers meetings.
Like, I mean, like that was the generation that we grew up in.
So all of this is, it's so layered and complicated.
So all I would say to our audience is like, just know it's
complicated and start to encourage this conversation.
It's not shame. It's not like we don't ask this,
(39:12):
like, what did you eat? You know, like it's how do you
start to encourage this conversation?
How are how can you as the parent that's who's listening,
be just a healthy example, like forget making your kids feel
shame. Can you start, you know,
advocating for yourself and, andwhat you're eating and what that
looks like? And can you start to think about
when is my athlete going to eat during this whole day?
(39:34):
Like we got all of these things.Do I need to have some food in
the car ready? I have to do all the time with
my kids. And it is hard.
It's when I look at the night, I'm like, Oh my God, the only
time they're going to eat is like, I got to bring food in the
car, you know, and I have to have it prepared and ready.
And it's, it is challenging. So it's not to minimize the, the
challenge of how busy we all areand what that looks like.
(39:56):
But I think that's it is that this is layered and it matters
for their performance. And even more important, it
matters for their health. And it, it is not a small
challenge that we face on a daily basis.
This is a, we're saying 30% of our athletes are missing
periods. So I mean, we are saying then
that probably 75% of them aren'thaving the caloric intake that
(40:20):
they should be having. I mean, that's making some
jumps, but I, I think it's probably a pretty safe jump to
make. And so this is a, a really big
issue. I think, I guess I'd say issue
might be a strong word, but a challenge that these athletes
are facing. It is a huge performance
indicator. So as you are just like banging
(40:41):
your head around like how hard they're working and are they
performing and they're doing allof these things.
And a lot of times it just comesdown to like, are they fueling
enough to to ask their body to do the things you're asking them
to do, you know, so frequently? Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump
over to the college level for just a second and I'm gonna talk
about the pro level cuz this, this trend that I see is, you
(41:03):
know, the structure we have, we have this incredible influx
right now, you know, about at the top level of our game and
the college level where, you know, strength and conditioning
and nutritional intake. These things are so managed that
teams are just they're locking in because every little
performance bump matters, right,Especially at, you know, that
(41:23):
end of season and how are we keeping ourselves healthy?
And what I often see is when I see, you know, these these high
profile college players, when I see them post college, the first
thing that jumps out of me, and this is not a criticism, it's
just simply an observation is wow, they got small, right?
Wow, they lost that body mass. And so if you are, I mean, this
is again, a plea. If you are go if you're seeking
(41:46):
to play professional softball, any level Olympics doesn't
matter the demand to those organizations to those
structures that you have appropriate strength and
conditioning and nutritional support, whether that means
enough salary support in order to feed yourself, but also
access to a nutritionist at you know, access to people that can
help you to do that. Because I, part of me and sort
(42:07):
of my cynical nature is I, I feel like that's a lot of the
reason why some of our professional softball attempts
have not done well is because those athletes have, these
athletes have lost that structure, that power, and
they're, they're just trying to get it back for themselves with
minimal support. And I think like that's, that's
got to be a connection. If we want that pro level to
(42:29):
thrive, we want those players tobe healthy.
We want the, that pro level gameto be as exciting as the college
level, as competitive as the college level.
That's the sustainability reallyunder the pro level, in my
opinion is like this is just an extended conversation of making
sure that you as an athlete are fueled and training
appropriately under your sport, whether you're a high school
(42:50):
athlete or a professional athlete that spans the entire,
you know, gamut of that. Yeah, well, I was just going to
say, I mean, look at Major League Baseball and and what
happened with the minors, which is basically like you had a
bunch of guys making pennies, you know, trying to perform at
the highest level and move up and MLB and and one of the
biggest things they would say isI am eating peanut butter
(43:13):
sandwiches on the floor of someone's random apartment.
Like how could I possibly be performing at a high level?
And so one of the biggest, you know, we we talk about player
development, we talk about tech,we talk about, you know, all of
these like bio mechanics labs and all of these things that MLB
is investing in. But one of the biggest changes
over the last three years has been that MLB programs have
(43:36):
hired massive amounts of nutritionists that can go to all
of these minor league camps and help support the nutritional
intake of these athletes to be able to perform at the high
level. That is one of the like the
untapped things that we don't really talk about, but that has
been happening very frequently over the past few years.
And I think, you know, it's it'sit is important.
(43:58):
It is a key is your body. You're asking your body to do
things. And So what you are fueling your
body obviously matters. And so I think to kind of end
this and then please listen nextweek as we get into it more with
Courtney. But I think The thing is, is
that it matters. It can't not be a part of the
conversation. And so if there's something
(44:20):
holding it back from being a part of the conversation, as
we've said, which is some uncomfortableness we have around
body image, If it's because, youknow, we are being told sort of
like it's lack of education because we're being told these
things don't matter or it doesn't play a part, or we're
being fed the wrong information about those things.
(44:41):
We as a community, those are thethings we have to start to face
and have conversations around. How can we build education up
for our athletes? How can we start to to lower
that body image restriction thatwe're facing?
How can we start to have the right support in place for our
athletes? And so I think that's the
conversation that we, we need tokeep having to push, you know,
(45:03):
forward for our athletes and to make sure that one, they're able
to reach their peak performance.And as I said, that's like the
smallest thing that we're tryingto do here.
But like, it would be an amazing, you know, benefit of
all of this. But then also so that we're not
putting as athletes at risk of things that's and then ignoring
(45:23):
the risk that we're putting themat by sort of, you know, some
things like missing periods and bone health and, and the sort of
like takedown of things that youcan go when nutrition is not
addressed. And then we're asking their body
to to do all the things that we're asking it to do.
So we'll kind of leave it at that.
I, like I said, this is I'm surewe'll come back to this topic a
(45:44):
few times. There's a lot of different ways
that we can go with this. And so this is more of just the
general way that we've seen it and bridge that conversation.
And, and next week we get into with Courtney, some of the
really nailed down some of theseconversations around Reds or
what's called now getting to theconversation around like some
(46:05):
helpful take home actionable steps that you can use for for
things that you can fuel with. And, and hopefully we can really
dive into that next week. So until then, thanks for
listening And sure, we'll get lots of topics on this one.
There are lots of comments. So we'll get the get the
conversation going, like and subscribe the OGX podcast
anywhere you listen to your podcast.
(46:27):
It helps us and we appreciate it.
OK, yeah, so the day we're reporting this is opening day,
which is why I have my birds shirt on.
Where I pretend I have nothing baseball whatsoever.
Yes, no offense baseball. Which is why.
Where I pretend to the first fewweeks that the Cardinals have
done anything to try to be a good team, and then after a
month I give up. So we're going to, you know,
(00:24):
we're living on the excitement of.
The wife of a husband who loves the Cubs.
I feel that. Yeah.
I feel that. Yeah.
Hope. Yeah, that hope, yeah.
Well, I, I would say it's as a woman who hates the Cubs, I
would say it's different. It's different because the Cubs
are just bad or they were just bad.
(00:45):
The Cardinals, we really had a run.
It feels very unfair that now wewere very good Now it's like
just you remember how we were good yeah we're not going to try
to do that anymore That was fun Well so anyways, here we are but
go birds and up the 10s that's the Cardinals yeah are going to
(01:07):
be good this year so I'm really excited about today's topic.
We're going to do kind of a 2 episode I'm going to call it
series, but the the two next twoepisodes are going to be related
to each other. This is something that actually
came up in the OGX community. So I don't know people saw that
we started this, but we're kind of rolling out a forum where
people can join and we can get alittle bit more in depth about
(01:29):
player development. So we started just a little
pilot group and this conversation around nutrition
came up and there as well. And I think this is just
something that maybe as a internal group, I don't want to
say that we we didn't know it was a thing.
I think we're all women, you know, we're a woman owned
business. We know that there's some things
(01:50):
there with weight and nutrition,but I think we weren't quite
prepared for the level maybe that it would come into play
with conversations we were having and the the nuances and
the complications around it, howoften we would be having this
conversation. And so it's definitely something
that's kind of on our brains. And so we are just going to talk
(02:14):
today a little bit about our experiences and some of the
things that have come up for us anecdotally, ways that we've
dealt with it or or talked through it.
And then on the next episode, I'm talking with nutritionists a
little bit more specifically about athletes and some of the
dynamics of female athletes and a little bit more getting into
(02:34):
that expertise. So hopefully this kind of like
two-part series, you can really dive into a lot of the nuances
of this. And I would say that's probably
not even going to scratch the surface of the things that we
could touch touch on in this topic, but we can start to to
raise this conversation. So I think maybe if it makes
sense. And then after I kind of lay
(02:54):
this out, Laura, just, you know,feedback from your standpoint,
But I, there's something like lay a little storyline out of of
our sort of realization that notthat this was important, because
I think we knew that nutrition and your body obviously is what
you're using for performance wasimportant, But how we realized
(03:16):
the difficulty and nuances and how deep that ran for female
athletes in particular, Obviously softball, I think one
important piece. It's not a sport where thin or
small or delicate, not hitting puberty.
(03:36):
You know, I'm thinking of like these sports where when you
don't hit puberty, it's positive.
That's not true in South Ball. And that's when we say that some
of these things took us back. I think that's really where it
came from, which is there's no real pressure from the sport,
you know, outside of like some things, I guess to be thin or to
stop your period or to do anything.
(03:59):
That maybe there are some thingsin sports like long distance
running or gymnastics where we sort of notoriously have had
issues and and pressures to do things like that.
But that's not true of softball.And so as these things came up,
it's really this intersection ofsport society.
You know, there's a lot of things that that sort of
overlaps. But for us, we've talked about
(04:20):
this before. We, we keep Wellness
questionnaires and we ask our athletes when they're training
to fill out Wellness questionnaires that just give us
some subjective measurements of how they're feeling.
Are they tired? Are they, you know, did they
sleep well? How do they feel?
Their nutrition generally has been that day?
Do they have any soreness? Do they have any pain and it's
just this opportunity for us to kind of flag some things that
(04:43):
could impact impact their training and their performance.
And in that conversation severalyears ago, probably like 3-4
years ago at this point at least, we started having
conversations around putting weight in there.
And this was coming from a realization that we saw in in a
few athletes where weight was fluctuating quite a bit,
(05:07):
typically down, and it was impacting performance.
And no one knew that weight was fluctuating, so fluctuating.
And so we couldn't raise it as part of the conversation of why
did my velocity go down? Why am I having soreness?
Why is my back hurting? And then when we would kind of
start to ask the athlete some questions, we would find out
(05:28):
that they had a swing in weightsthat was substantial, a
substantial percentage of their body weight.
In addition to that, a lot of the metrics that we measure body
weight really should come into play as sort of a way to
normalize the data of power and performance and things like
that. So several years ago we thought,
let's just add weight into the Wellness questionnaire and ask
(05:52):
the athletes their weight that when they fill it out, they
don't need to put us get on a scale, though in house we did
have a scale. And you know, we just asked them
to do that. And what we saw very quickly is
that the percentage of people doing their Wellness
questionnaires plummeted and we had a lot less percentage of,
you know, the the rates of doingthat went down.
(06:15):
And so we started asking, you know, why is this?
Is this related to that question?
And so we added another question, which was basically,
if you want to opt out, select here and you don't have to put
your weight. And then if you want to talk to
someone about nutrition or weights, Mark here and our rate
of participation went back up and about half of our athletes
(06:38):
and now these are athletes who range from 12 and 13, you know
through high school for the mostpart at that time.
We have college athletes obviously now a lot of them that
do that as well. And so half of our at least half
of our athletes at the time marked that they would prefer
not to put their weights. And so this became a really
interesting question for us of realizing that even athletes as
(07:02):
young as 12 and 13 were like, no, thank you.
I do not want to put my weight on here, but that this is
something that needed, you know,from the stories I just
mentioned, like needed to be talked about or was a missing
piece to be talked about in conversations.
A lot of times we were having conversations with families
where they were asking why powerwasn't going up, why velocity
(07:23):
was going up. And we could see with our
eyeballs that the athlete was pretty thin, you know, didn't
have a lot of of room to put muscle mass on.
And the conversation became a little delicate about we're
missing this piece, but how muchcan we talk about it?
And how do we broach this conversation with the athlete in
a way that's not going to make her feel bad from her body
image? And so I would just say
(07:44):
generally that's where this conversation really started
swirling for us of how do we approach this conversation in a
healthy way? How do we not ignore it?
Because ignoring it feels like we're really missing part of the
performance conversation. And, you know, we can't ignore
the nuances that are really specific to female athletes in
(08:07):
this conversation and body imageand the types of things they
feel. So that's my little back story
of how we kind of got to these conversations and we can get
into, you know, some of the the ways we have managed it
internally or where we've sort of point at people or where the
conversations have led. But did I miss anything, Laura?
Are there any other like key parts of that story that you
(08:28):
sort of saw from your perspective?
I, I you, I think you nailed it.You know, we sort of exchanged
the frequency of the Wellness questionnaires for the, I'll say
like the, the importance of the information we were asking and
it, it was very eye opening. And I think we, you know, I
think we even reflected like shoot as a, as a woman owned
(08:48):
business, like not that we missed it.
But again, as you said, I don't think we've realized the gravity
for athletes that this has on their ability to report their
Wellness and the impact that it has on them to want to give that
number. And it's, it is a, it is a
minefield of a conversation for a lot of reasons, something that
(09:10):
you said about, you know, we couldn't have that conversation
with that athlete about. And again, I will say probably
99% of the time it is low body weight.
I just want to be super clear about that.
So like. When we, when we talk about, you
know, tracking body weight, it is a often times, and I mean
often, like literally 99% of thetime, it is often a metric that
(09:31):
we ask athletes to track for their base health because it
gives us an indicator of caloricintake and whether they're able
to maintain their body weight, particularly in season with
enough caloric intake to keep, you know, muscle from breaking
down to keep just energy in their system.
You know, the, the obviously 1% of the time that we talk about
(09:52):
the other end of the spectrum, it, it often times is more of
just like it's the shape of who they are.
It's it's who they are as an athlete and often times as
athletes that have, you know, they're on the, the, you know,
sort of other end of the spectrum with a little bit of a
higher weight. I'm not going to use BMI, but a
higher body mass. It produce power, right, Because
mass is gas, as they say, right?And so often times it's this,
(10:15):
it's this underweight athlete that we're really, really trying
to track and keep an eye on because of her really
susceptibility to other issues down the road.
If that is a cycle of energy deficit that she's maintaining.
And I think some of the education around that has been
really powerful. I've had amazing conversations
with some of our clients and families about, you know, just
(10:38):
even with a mom who, who isn't recognizing some of the symptoms
of irregular menstrual periods, bone issues, you know, these
things that they don't think about because the, the education
has been so much about the like post menopausal women and their
risks of bone issues and bone health and menstrual challenges
and all those things. We don't think about that as a
teenage thing. And so when we have those
(11:00):
conversations, it's usually the moms that are like the, the
light bulb goes off. They're like, oh, right, all
this stuff is connected. And so, yeah, the you know, the,
the Wellness questionnaire really, I think gave us this
indicator of one, it's an important question to ask.
That's a really uncomfortable question to ask.
But the number of times that this has come up in a athletes
performance story, a health story, I mean, I've lost track
(11:22):
at this point. And I said typically it is, it
is being concerned about low body weight and then again that
cascade of events that the can come from that.
Yeah. And I think we see this in a,
you know, the, the most benign version of this is just this is
hindering your performance. You are, you do not have enough
mass to put, you know, muscle mass on to add sort of what you
(11:46):
need behind whatever you're trying to accomplish.
And so we are having performanceconversations around that.
That's the most benign case. And what we have seen is all the
way into some of the things you've alluded to.
And I'm going to get into this alittle bit more with Courtney in
the next episode. But is that, you know, we
haven't run the numbers as frequently, but about two years
(12:08):
ago when we did. And I can't imagine it has
changed. If anything, it's probably
gotten higher. About 30% of all of the athletes
that we had do assessment. So at their initial intake form,
we asked them if they have regular periods and about 30% of
our athletes, again, this is ranging from 12, you know, 10, I
guess even all the way up until and that pool is through
(12:30):
college. And so anyone that has already
had their first period, we ask them if they had regular periods
and 30% of our athletes did not.And I think that number, it
really shocked us because again,this is not a sport where we are
like don't hit puberty. You know, obviously we've talked
about puberty can have its challenges and for our sport
when you're going through it, But this isn't a sport like long
(12:53):
distance running where we've hadconversations where a 12 year
old, you know, I was laughing yesterday with you guys about my
kids do this mild run and they literally Sprint the whole thing
where a pre puberty athlete is good at running and then can
tank as being a runner, you know, as a woman when they hit
puberty or a gymnast can be really good at gymnastics
(13:14):
because of her size and can get worse as she gets breast and
body fat and all of these things.
And so in those sports, we've had these conversations around,
shoot, you know, this sports matched with being a woman
matched with society has createdthe sort of ripe grounds for
encouraging female athletes to try to stop their period.
(13:36):
And the way they do that is caloric intake, you know, and
things like that. But for supple, that's not what
the sport is asking. And so it surprised us how often
people were reporting that they were having irregular periods.
And I think what was more shocking is that when we would
then ask these athletes, you know, have you seen a doctor?
Have you spoken with someone about this?
(13:58):
And sometimes even when they were already presenting issues
with bone health as young 1314 year olds were already
experiencing stress fractures are starting to indicate that
they were having a hot spot. And they're, you know, they were
they were on the verge of a stretch fracture or something
that they were told. Yeah, we saw, you know, we
mentioned it to our doctor and he or she said it was normal.
(14:20):
And this isn't in their first year post puberty when maybe
some irregularity is normal. You know, this is outside of
that window. And what was shocking to us is
like that's it's absolutely 100%not normal.
I think that that's important. Like I said, Courtney and I are
definitely going to get more into this and the long term
ramifications of something like that, of just not having regular
(14:42):
periods, you know, are as bad asthe sort of immediate
implications can be. The long term implications of
something like that is so bad for a woman to experience.
And so that used to irritate us so much of like, OK, well, we're
not the medical professionals, you know, so we can't just be
like, that's a lie. But we often would push of like
(15:05):
maybe just push on that a littlebit more.
It's not typically normal for a woman not to have regular
cycles. And when you don't have regular
cycles, it's usually a signal ofsomething, you know, it's a
signal of something. And as you've mentioned, for the
most part for our our female athletes, it's caloric intake.
And I think that this is really layered.
(15:25):
It's not, we have seen cases obviously of, of actual eating
disorders and, and things like restrictive eating and, and
things that are a little more intentional or, or have a little
more layer to it. But in most cases that is not
the case. And what is happening is I, I
would say twofold of kind of what we see is an intense
(15:49):
schedule, a very intense schedule for all of the things
that we talk about often on this, where an athlete has very
little time to feel themselves within that schedule.
Mixed with a sort of adult woman's understanding of what a
diet should look like as a sedentary adult woman's
(16:10):
understanding of what a diet should look like.
So as a sort of like example, I coach a team for many years and
there were a few years where I would say like best breakfast
platter wins a Starbucks drink or something and they would put
it in the GroupMe or who what iseveryone eating for lunch?
(16:31):
Like most protein, whatever. We would do these incentives,
which I think we can get into a little bit of some of the ways
we we've tried to put positive spins on this.
And often I would get a picture of like an apple for breakfast
or like a salad with no meat on it for lunch.
And I think like that's at timesin my life, although I'm really
trying not to do that too what my plate looks like.
(16:54):
But as an athlete who is literally going from 7:00 AM
until 8:00 PM with many of thosehours in physical activity, that
is just simply not sufficient fuel for their body to to
replenish the things that they're breaking down in their
in their daily routine. And so, you know, I think that's
(17:16):
the more, like I said, this is not malicious.
They're not trying to do that. No one's trying to.
But that's kind of where these worlds collide of what we see
our athletes kind of dealing with.
And so, yeah, maybe if you want to just talk through, Laura,
some of the ways that we've likeinternal conversations that
we've had, some of the ways we've tried to respond to this
(17:40):
or, or instill a slightly different culture for our
athletes and, and what that has looked like.
Yeah, I'll say we've gone back to tracking body weight.
We we're very intentional about this though.
So when we do our power updates,meaning you know, typically
every six weeks we'll collect some new rounds of our our power
measurements and our power monitoring.
We take the athletes body weight, but with a lot of
(18:01):
intentionality. The device that we use, the
scale that we use, the the the display of the actual body
weight is not visible to the athletes.
So the coach can see it in orderto enter that data.
And the coach can have that justin the context of essentially
like where her power snapshot isright now.
Because again, as you mentioned,the, you know, the loss of body
weight is going to lead to a loss of power.
(18:22):
It's just a sort of a basic physics.
And so we've just got to keep aneye in the context of power.
And that I think has become so critical that we are attaching
this metric. And that's all it is, is a
metric. You know, honestly, I get it as
a woman, The number on that scale is not an easy number to
see. It's not an easy number to see
(18:42):
go up if you don't want it to goup or go down if you don't want
it to go down. It's it's a difficult
relationship. But to put that number in the
context of performance and attaching that specifically to
underlying power and strength and conditioning, I, I feel has
opened up a different conversation with our athletes.
And I think, you know, James does a, a great job, our coaches
in general, but James specifically as our director of
(19:03):
strength and conditioning, he does a great job of I think
really being intentional by opening up conversations about
food. What did you have to eat today?
It's kind of similar to what yousaid with your team.
What would you have to eat today, right?
And so there are suggestions for, you know, here's maybe
something you can add. We talked about the sandwich
plan. I think Natalie termed the panda
plan, right, to get protein in them.
(19:25):
And I think these ways of of kind of coming at the athletes
with some, I'll say, like kind of gentle education, you know,
while they're while they're on the strength floor, while
they're in that environment, as opposed to this really formal,
let's sit down and review a dietplan.
And that it seems so silly, but that is, I think, you know, I
probably just like blew up James's psychological approach
to our athletes. But I feel like that's helped so
(19:46):
much that that our athletes are so much more comfortable talking
about food, bragging about food that they eat, the amount, the
breakfast, the quality of it. And like, that's I think very
similar to how we've opened up the conversation within our own
athletes about periods and, and performance changes within your
cycle around your cycle. They have to be more comfortable
talking about it and not talkingabout it in a space where
(20:08):
they're going to be chastised right on either end.
You know, above. Of an ideal body weight or
below. And so I think, you know, James
did a great job of opening that conversation on the strength
floor and our coaches are very encouraging of, you know, let's
just talk about getting more calories in.
It's not I'm and I mentioned in our coaches community, I think,
you know, there's probably a good number of of our athletes
that could, you know, tolerate aBig Mac or two, meaning quality
(20:31):
isn't always the goal. Sometimes, sometimes the base
plan is just like just take in more calories of whatever you
choose, whatever you want, you know, giving them the freedom.
You know, we have had athletes with, you know, I'll say some
like restrictive eating challenges, usually rooted
somewhere in the, you know, the century challenges or just being
picky eaters, which I label I don't love, but just athletes
(20:53):
that have challenges with the kinds of food, the types of
protein they're willing to tolerate.
And, you know, we can give obviously some basic general
here's, you know, here's the stuff to kind of hit.
But then we got to cross into that like dietitian realm.
That's where I think like Courtney is so helpful in being
able to give, you know, really concrete strategies.
But we've, we've opened up that conversation, I think again and
(21:16):
in a little bit more of a performance context, because
that metric is important. And I, I, the metric is
important not just for their base health, but we start
getting into things like they'rebio mechanics.
And we're talking about the bio mechanics of rotation, how our
body mass is distributed, whether it goes up, down,
whether it's more in our limbs, in our trunk.
(21:36):
It's like puberty is such a bear.
It matters, right? So when I'll give 2 examples,
obviously you know, your, your biological puberty change where
our limbs are changing, they're getting heavier.
I kind of call that puberty one point O.
Then we sometimes have athletes where, you know, they go through
high school, they're three sportathletes.
They're they're sort of chronically over trained, under
(21:57):
fueled. You know, they may not be at
this sort of like body mass potential that they could be
just simply because of that mismatch.
They go to college and they get into a lifting program for the
first time. And I call that puberty 2 point
O because all of a sudden she's her body weight's going up and
it's going up for a very positive reason.
It is solid lean muscle mass. It is adding muscle mass.
(22:18):
You know, it is matching this nutritional intake because of
the workload she's no longer experiencing in high school.
And so that change is, well, even if the scale is going in
the quote UN quote, wrong direction.
However you want to view that that change has an impact then
on how she organizes herself as a pitcher, as a hitter, as a
player in general. And we often talk about, you
(22:40):
know, speed, slowing things down, I'm sorry, body mass going
up, slowing things down. But sometimes that that needs to
be leveraged. And that's an important part of
the conversation. If we don't talk about that, we
see in pictures their patterns alter because they've all of a
sudden got into a strength and conditioning program.
Usually it's ours and they are putting on masks.
Their pants don't fit anymore. We're seeing this, this awesome
(23:02):
just build of strength and theirpatterns to grade and, and it's
typical their body has to renegotiate just like it did in
puberty. So we don't have that
conversation. We missed this really key
important piece to talk about itin relation to your performance.
And, and in my personal view, that's that's how we should be
talking about body weight specific to what are your
performance challenges? Where could getting that
(23:25):
particular metric in the right frame for you, whether it's up,
whether it's down, whether it's doesn't matter, how does that
support your performance? The the body image side is a
whole other conversation that it's complicated.
I don't have to say it. It's just complicated for young
girls, especially with, you know, the saturation of social
(23:45):
media and all those things. That's difficult.
But I think centering this weight, mass conversation,
nutrition, all these things around performance opens up a
much more healthy conversation of why does it matter?
Why do we track it? It's not to wag our finger at
you that you are, you know, you're losing mass or gaining
mass. It is simply to understand who
you are in the context of that moment in your performance.
(24:07):
It's in my mind, it's no different than any other metric,
but it comes with a whole host of other psychological
challenges for athletes that we have to consider.
That's the human side of that particular data point.
And that's, I think really important, keep in mind.
Yeah, I was thinking about a fewyears ago on my team leading up
to the season would be like leading up to the summer season
(24:28):
would be like it's, you know, gotta gotta get a lift in.
It's almost SIM suit season. And I would I would be like, how
about softball season? Like, you know, and there's an
element of like, there's just the things that we are fed
constantly that our athletes are, you know, they hear and,
and they take on and gosh, we'vetalked about the, you know,
(24:49):
adultification of sport. And I think, you know, we, we do
this with a lot of the diets andthe way that we approach it.
And sometimes like the mom puts on her kids plate what she's
eating. And you know, as I said, most of
us as adults are pretty sedentary.
And so it's like, you know, that, you know, 12 hundred 1500
(25:11):
calorie intake in a day, probably not great, maybe don't
be so sedentary and go, you know, lift and do all the things
that women need to do as we get into this perimenopause and
menopause fun for for bone health.
But if you, but generally as youare maybe in a more sedentary
lifestyle, that might be fine for you to maintain your body
(25:33):
weight, but that is just simply not remotely reflective of what
the athletes are doing. Like we, we lay out their
schedule and you know, and thereare a lot of challenges and
things. I think Courtney and I can
specifically, and we, we did another sort of webinar that we
let people join with Courtney where we talked about this.
But there are challenges of sometimes our athletes have
(25:54):
lunch of 10 and they don't, you know, they don't work out until
they don't get off until 3. And so they have to plan ahead
to, you know, pack snacks, and then they have to make sure that
their teachers allow them to eatthe snacks.
And there's a lot of things that, you know, there are
challenges to what it looks like, but we're talking about
like a 3000, we're more sometimes calorie intake for
(26:17):
these athletes to be able to replenish their bodies.
And that's, that's a lot of eating based on, you know, what
we're what we're used to as a service society and especially
in our culture now where we're just running constantly,
everything's on the go. We maybe don't sit down and eat
dinner and things like that the way that we used to.
And so it, it, it does require some intentionality.
(26:39):
And, and in order for there to be intentionality, there has to
be conversation. And without being able to
approach it in a way that, you know, that doesn't sort of like
challenge some female athlete dynamics, it can be a, a
challenging conversation to overcome.
And so I think you're right, thebiggest thing we've done, you
(26:59):
know, we sort of removed some ofthe conversation around period
regularity. Like we, we point that out to
them and, and that's really up for them to kind of bring to the
doctor. And obviously, if we're seeing
any sort of like reoccurring flare ups, we'll just keep
saying like, hey, this is probably not something we should
ignore, but it's not really our like area of expertise and
things that we can manage fully for them.
(27:21):
And so we've moved away a littlebit from that.
We've used weight, as you've mentioned, to normalize some of
these conversations around powerand velocity and things like
that. And then also, I think the
biggest thing for us has just been to continue to create this
sort of like open community of talking about food.
You know, we've we've talked a lot about how we talk about
(27:42):
periods, talking about things that impact our athletes in the
sort of non judgmental open. Hey, we're all trying to perform
the best we can. What'd you eat before you got on
the strength floor? Did you bring something today so
they could take a break? Like you're going to be training
a long time, you know, having these sort of like non charged
(28:03):
conversations around it in a space where athletes are like
minded. They all want to perform their
best and that has removed some of the charge around it in a way
that's really healthy. But it exists, you know, it's
still underlying. And I was thinking as we were
talking like the most common injury we see in our young
(28:24):
athletes with stress fractures. And so I think like, you know,
this idea of missing periods during that time period and sort
of not having the clerk intake you need at a time where we know
bone injuries happen, it's just really challenging.
And so I think we we have to be mindful of that in addition to
(28:46):
and probably more that we'll getinto in the next episode, in
addition to the implications that something like that then
has on you long term. So obviously as 13 through 22
year olds, we're kind of focusedon the me and tomorrow and not
necessarily, you know, me as a 30-40 year old.
But that does have implications.Missing your period, having
(29:09):
irregular periods, what that does to your body does have
implications on things like fertility, on things like, you
know, there are implications forthat that we don't want to
ignore. And so I think we have to have a
level of intentionality around this.
It goes all the way back to the culture of female athletes has
to be fine talking about periods.
It has to be fine talking about the society demands we have on,
(29:34):
on body image. It just has to be fine
normalizing those conversations because otherwise we just ignore
it and then we never sort of take steps forward.
And I I just think that can be so detrimental for our athletes
and scary to not have those conversations.
When you talked about some of like, you know, how the long
term effects the the the thing that I have been really a broken
(29:54):
record about with any you know, family client, whoever I've
talked to about this is one it this has to be, you know, the
parent supporting the athlete's life skills in figuring out how
do I pack for snacks? How do I make sure that I like
have what I need my fuel? What do I enjoy eating?
(30:15):
It is it it has to be something that that parent is supporting
that young athlete in developingthese habits of OK, I practice
at three. I have to snack with me and like
that planning to me as someone who did not have that
experience, being that an adult and the hardest decision, I
think I joke on this all the time.
The hardest decision you have tomake all day is like, what do I
eat right three times a day, sometimes more.
(30:37):
What do I eat? It's such a challenging question
and I think the more you can give these young athletes the
opportunities to one, explore foods that they do enjoy eating
and can maybe put a, you know, amore protein spin on or a more
caloric density on not going to stay healthier because it's a
relative term. But for what they need, if it's
(30:58):
more protein or more calories ormore carb, whatever it is that
they can change that to a version that just does that
without, you know, taking away their enjoyment of it.
We've won something there, right?
That's a huge win. And so I think this often times
I'm navigating this sort of parent athlete relationship of,
you know, the parent recognizes the nutritional need and
recognizes obviously like gotta get her to eat, gotta get her to
(31:19):
eat, But and the athlete needs to take also an active role in
that. And I think that's sometimes the
piece think it's missed is like my plea to our, you know, our
athletes and any athletes who's listening parent of an athlete
is like this is ultimately goingto be your responsibility as an
adult. So now is the time to learn how
do I prepare my body for competition, for practice, for
(31:42):
my day to to treat food as energy and to fuel those things.
And, you know, coming and meeting your parent in the
middle of, of asking for the foods that you want to eat and
trying to negotiate those things, It's a tall task.
I'm not saying like that's goingto happen tomorrow, but it's
such a life skill. And it's such a skill that,
again, I can speak from the other side, you'll be very
(32:02):
grateful that you have when you get into adulthood and you're on
your own and you're trying to navigate those challenges, you
know, just as a busy adult schedule.
And it's, it's tricky, but I think it's, it's something that
both, you know, that parent child relationship, that
athletes got to be active and that they've got to be, you
know, driving the bus, so to speak, on packing for snacks,
preparing foods, obviously with parental support and probably
(32:26):
the person who's purchasing saidfood, but that's got to be a,
it's got to be a team effort. Yeah, yeah.
I was thinking, you know, one ofthe stories I've kind of talked
about is I have a a much youngerbrother and so I got to
experience some of his like sport journey and, you know, he
was a baseball player and a soccer player and he played a
(32:47):
lot of sports. But he it was so interesting to
me having experienced that almost in, you know, not in a
mom role, but I was so far removed from his age that I was
very aware almost as a a mom figure of of his experience.
And the way that they talked about weight was like you have
to be an ex body weight if you want to throw.
(33:08):
You are whatever 145, you need to be 185 for you to throw this
velocity like it was just so black and white.
And now this is not to minimize because there are plenty of
athletes in general, there is going to be some like body
dysmorphia, body issues because our body becomes this like
vessel for performance. And so that is true for men too.
(33:30):
This isn't like and then they'refine.
You know, there's plenty of men and boys I've seen have have
body issues as well, but it became this like very clear
thing. And it was just specifically
about performance. You know, like this is your, you
know, body that you weights thatyou need to have to get X
(33:50):
performance. And you could talk about it in
that level of dynamics. And so that was such a sort of
like juxtaposition for me cominginto coaching and being like,
Oh, yeah, like, we can't do thathere.
Like females will be like, excuse me, Like what?
You know, like that just doesn'tfeel the same.
(34:13):
I've also given the reference and this is so interesting.
At some point I'll, I will post this online or something because
it is really interesting to me that when I reflect on myself as
a high school athlete, I remember, you know, we did a lot
of like running for my volleyball team.
It was very like corporal punishment type and in high
(34:34):
school. And so I was always preparing
for that season. But like I'm so I just remember
always perpetually thinking like, I'm so out of shape.
I need to lose weight in order to be more in shape.
Like it became, and I would do these runs, I would go to the
gym in the morning, like I did all these things.
And so in my brain, I remember having this moment where this
(34:55):
stuff was coming up and I thought like, yeah, I always had
to be losing weight in high school.
Like I was like a a slightly heavier kid and whatever.
And I went back and saw this picture of me pitching and I am.
Frail like Brail like it's not funny, it's not.
One of our athletes, if we saw one of our athletes that, you
know, this would be a conversation of like Chris,
(35:16):
though, you want to know why you're stuck at 55, which is
probably what it fits at the time.
Like you need to eat a sandwich,you know, like you're too frail.
And in my brain, even as an adult, I was like, Oh yeah.
I was always like had to lose weight so I could be in shape.
And it became, you know, that starts from this lack of
understanding. Like I said, it's it's A at the
time, it was just a lack of education around those things
(35:39):
probably. And that has increased a little
bit of like, how do you get in shape?
How do you get faster has changed.
But it, it comes, you know, to me, you have people leading
woman's health from a very like adult woman body image version
(35:59):
of it. And then it starts to trickle
all the way into sport and we just lose this idea of what
we're trying to accomplish. And, and really it's so
interesting for me because I played volleyball and softball 2
sports where like power and quickness and explosiveness are
so important and being tiny is not.
This definitely doesn't equate to those things.
(36:19):
And this idea that I was like running distances to be small in
sports where what I really needed to probably break the
threshold that I was up against at the time was power.
And if someone had taught me to like eat and then train power, I
probably would have being able to accomplish more.
I think it's such just like thatis what we are up against so
(36:41):
often is this concept of like how you're going to do that,
especially as a woman, because we are just, you know, told and
fed things that just aren't. Or not fed.
Aren't Yeah, or, you know, that just aren't reality.
I think. Like, look at even Caitlin
Clark. You know, it's just like even
her transition from college, it's the WNBA.
(37:02):
She's like, I got to put mass on.
I'm getting. Lit.
Up here, you know, and so she did, she went in the offseason
and you can see she puts a ton of masks on.
And I think that's great. So hopefully as that stuff
becomes more visible to women ofexamples of women who are doing
that, I think conversations around even breaking down these
(37:24):
truths that we've held, you know, we've, we've kind of
referenced it, but that us as women even now should be doing
cardio. We should be going into all
these things to stay small and we're starting to see the
impacts of that. You know, we've referenced it
and this is definitely a different topic and not for our
audience, but we've seen the issues of that of in
perimenopause, in menopause of women whose bone health is at
(37:46):
risk, who aren't lifting and, and sort of doing the things
that they they could be doing to, to be healthy in that time
period of their life. And all of that, you know, it's
so layered and it's so complicated.
You even reference like our parents generation, I think at
the time were like fast food andprocessed food and quick became,
(38:06):
you know, really important. And so then our generation, I'm
probably right on the cusp of it, but we had we got passed
down the sort of inability to what do I put on the plate?
How do I cook food? How do I, you know, what does
this look like? You know, not just to grab these
like processed fast, empty things that we were being fed.
Like there was a time, this is really going on tangent, but
(38:29):
there was a time as a teenager where I did Adkins with my mom.
I went into college and my, my freshman year of college, I put
on masks because that's what youfreaking do.
Like I'm sure if I looked back now, I looked great, but in my
brain I was like, this is bad. I got to lose this weight.
And so I went to on Friday mornings during college, me and
(38:51):
a teammate would go to Weight Watchers meetings.
Like, I mean, like that was the generation that we grew up in.
So all of this is, it's so layered and complicated.
So all I would say to our audience is like, just know it's
complicated and start to encourage this conversation.
It's not shame. It's not like we don't ask this,
(39:12):
like, what did you eat? You know, like it's how do you
start to encourage this conversation?
How are how can you as the parent that's who's listening,
be just a healthy example, like forget making your kids feel
shame. Can you start, you know,
advocating for yourself and, andwhat you're eating and what that
looks like? And can you start to think about
when is my athlete going to eat during this whole day?
(39:34):
Like we got all of these things.Do I need to have some food in
the car ready? I have to do all the time with
my kids. And it is hard.
It's when I look at the night, I'm like, Oh my God, the only
time they're going to eat is like, I got to bring food in the
car, you know, and I have to have it prepared and ready.
And it's, it is challenging. So it's not to minimize the, the
challenge of how busy we all areand what that looks like.
(39:56):
But I think that's it is that this is layered and it matters
for their performance. And even more important, it
matters for their health. And it, it is not a small
challenge that we face on a daily basis.
This is a, we're saying 30% of our athletes are missing
periods. So I mean, we are saying then
that probably 75% of them aren'thaving the caloric intake that
(40:20):
they should be having. I mean, that's making some
jumps, but I, I think it's probably a pretty safe jump to
make. And so this is a, a really big
issue. I think, I guess I'd say issue
might be a strong word, but a challenge that these athletes
are facing. It is a huge performance
indicator. So as you are just like banging
(40:41):
your head around like how hard they're working and are they
performing and they're doing allof these things.
And a lot of times it just comesdown to like, are they fueling
enough to to ask their body to do the things you're asking them
to do, you know, so frequently? Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump
over to the college level for just a second and I'm gonna talk
about the pro level cuz this, this trend that I see is, you
(41:03):
know, the structure we have, we have this incredible influx
right now, you know, about at the top level of our game and
the college level where, you know, strength and conditioning
and nutritional intake. These things are so managed that
teams are just they're locking in because every little
performance bump matters, right,Especially at, you know, that
(41:23):
end of season and how are we keeping ourselves healthy?
And what I often see is when I see, you know, these these high
profile college players, when I see them post college, the first
thing that jumps out of me, and this is not a criticism, it's
just simply an observation is wow, they got small, right?
Wow, they lost that body mass. And so if you are, I mean, this
is again, a plea. If you are go if you're seeking
(41:46):
to play professional softball, any level Olympics doesn't
matter the demand to those organizations to those
structures that you have appropriate strength and
conditioning and nutritional support, whether that means
enough salary support in order to feed yourself, but also
access to a nutritionist at you know, access to people that can
help you to do that. Because I, part of me and sort
(42:07):
of my cynical nature is I, I feel like that's a lot of the
reason why some of our professional softball attempts
have not done well is because those athletes have, these
athletes have lost that structure, that power, and
they're, they're just trying to get it back for themselves with
minimal support. And I think like that's, that's
got to be a connection. If we want that pro level to
(42:29):
thrive, we want those players tobe healthy.
We want the, that pro level gameto be as exciting as the college
level, as competitive as the college level.
That's the sustainability reallyunder the pro level, in my
opinion is like this is just an extended conversation of making
sure that you as an athlete are fueled and training
appropriately under your sport, whether you're a high school
(42:50):
athlete or a professional athlete that spans the entire,
you know, gamut of that. Yeah, well, I was just going to
say, I mean, look at Major League Baseball and and what
happened with the minors, which is basically like you had a
bunch of guys making pennies, you know, trying to perform at
the highest level and move up and MLB and and one of the
biggest things they would say isI am eating peanut butter
(43:13):
sandwiches on the floor of someone's random apartment.
Like how could I possibly be performing at a high level?
And so one of the biggest, you know, we we talk about player
development, we talk about tech,we talk about, you know, all of
these like bio mechanics labs and all of these things that MLB
is investing in. But one of the biggest changes
over the last three years has been that MLB programs have
(43:36):
hired massive amounts of nutritionists that can go to all
of these minor league camps and help support the nutritional
intake of these athletes to be able to perform at the high
level. That is one of the like the
untapped things that we don't really talk about, but that has
been happening very frequently over the past few years.
And I think, you know, it's it'sit is important.
(43:58):
It is a key is your body. You're asking your body to do
things. And So what you are fueling your
body obviously matters. And so I think to kind of end
this and then please listen nextweek as we get into it more with
Courtney. But I think The thing is, is
that it matters. It can't not be a part of the
conversation. And so if there's something
(44:20):
holding it back from being a part of the conversation, as
we've said, which is some uncomfortableness we have around
body image, If it's because, youknow, we are being told sort of
like it's lack of education because we're being told these
things don't matter or it doesn't play a part, or we're
being fed the wrong information about those things.
(44:41):
We as a community, those are thethings we have to start to face
and have conversations around. How can we build education up
for our athletes? How can we start to to lower
that body image restriction thatwe're facing?
How can we start to have the right support in place for our
athletes? And so I think that's the
conversation that we, we need tokeep having to push, you know,
(45:03):
forward for our athletes and to make sure that one, they're able
to reach their peak performance.And as I said, that's like the
smallest thing that we're tryingto do here.
But like, it would be an amazing, you know, benefit of
all of this. But then also so that we're not
putting as athletes at risk of things that's and then ignoring
(45:23):
the risk that we're putting themat by sort of, you know, some
things like missing periods and bone health and, and the sort of
like takedown of things that youcan go when nutrition is not
addressed. And then we're asking their body
to to do all the things that we're asking it to do.
So we'll kind of leave it at that.
I, like I said, this is I'm surewe'll come back to this topic a
(45:44):
few times. There's a lot of different ways
that we can go with this. And so this is more of just the
general way that we've seen it and bridge that conversation.
And, and next week we get into with Courtney, some of the
really nailed down some of theseconversations around Reds or
what's called now getting to theconversation around like some
(46:05):
helpful take home actionable steps that you can use for for
things that you can fuel with. And, and hopefully we can really
dive into that next week. So until then, thanks for
listening And sure, we'll get lots of topics on this one.
There are lots of comments. So we'll get the get the
conversation going, like and subscribe the OGX podcast
anywhere you listen to your podcast.
(46:27):
It helps us and we appreciate it.
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