Why Female Athletes Are Faster, Until They Aren’t
I grew up with a lot of boys around me. I was the first granddaughter in the family which meant that I spent most of my time running around and roughhousing with the boys. I loved it when we would play tag or race because I beat every single one of them and was not quiet about it!
Then when I was around 12 or 13 I got a bit slower, then eventually I stopped winning altogether. Every time we raced or played tag I was caught. I felt slower, became frustrated, and I didn’t want to play anymore.
Girls begin puberty around the age of 12 and boys around the age of 15. Prior to puberty, girls and boys have similar physiology, which means that they are similar in strength, speed, and size. Once puberty begins everything changes.
The boys will slowly start getting faster than the girls. Many of the top female runners on middle school and high school teams will no longer be the fastest on the team and have no idea why. This can begin a cycle of frustration, injury, poor health choices, unnecessary anxiety, and depression among our young female athletes.
In sports, there is something called the performance plateau that occurs in the years following puberty. It happens to boys and girls, but it happens earlier in girls and seems to have a larger impact on girls.
It is our responsibility as parents, coaches, and healthcare providers to educate our athletes that it is normal for our performance to be impacted during puberty AND it will pass. Lack of knowledge about what is happening to the body often creates unhealthy and sometimes even scary habits in athletes.
What is the Performance Plateau?
During puberty, growth occurs quickly in bones, muscles, and tendons. Bones grow rapidly increasing the resting tension in muscles and making muscles have to work harder with every action. As the muscles try to catch up, they are moving bones and joints that are heavier and larger than they used to be. The young athletes' change in body mass then requires more work and coordination from the neuromuscular and sensory systems.
These sensory and neuromuscular systems have to communicate in order to perform complex movements such as running. With rapid changes occurring all of the time, it can be difficult for the brain and the body to keep up with one another resulting in changes in performance and injury risk.
The psychological impact on athletes can be huge.
How Do Athletes Often Compensate for the Performance Plateau?
When an athlete’s performance begins to decrease they will inevitably try to do everything they can to stop it. Especially, if they don’t understand why it is happening. This often leads to athletes overtraining and undereating in order to regain their edge.
Overtraining is when we do too much too soon. This often looks like athletes running more often, doing more difficult workouts, and pushing themselves to the limit more frequently. Even though this may seem like the answer at the time, overtraining always leads to injury or poorer performance.
The second most common issue that occurs during this time is undereating. In running culture, there are a lot of myths about weight and what a runner’s body “should” look like. When an athlete is feeling vulnerable because their performance is lacking, it becomes very easy to grasp at this myth and stop fueling themselves appropriately.
When athletes under eat they are at risk to fall into what we call a Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) category. REDs are all about energy availability in the body.
Energy Output — Energy intake = Energy Availability
Our body requires a certain amount of calories to perform everyday functions. Athletes and active individuals require additional calories in order to perform the task that is required of their body — training, racing, lifting, etc. If a person puts less calories in than they burn they are in a negative energy balance. When an athlete is in negative energy balance they will be fatigued, irritable, more vulnerable to respiratory infections, less focused, sleep is impacted and so much more.
REDs can be very serious because it impacts every system in the body. REDs and undereating can lead to bone stress injuries, hormonal imbalances, brain fog, stunted growth, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular issues.
Eating less and training more does not improve performance, it is a recipe for destruction of mental, emotional, and physical health.
So…What Can We Do?
When an athlete begins to show signs of a performance plateau (getting slower, feeling less coordinated, becoming frustrated with their race times) we need to support them with education and tools.
Validate their feelings of frustration and explain that their change in performance is not directly tied to just their training. They may be doing everything right, but their body needs something different. Working on neuromuscular control (movement patterns), strength, and continuing to run without pushing themselves to the brink is important.
Advocating for talking with a sports dietician and sports psychologist are always at the top of my list for athletes that are really struggling. This can help them fuel properly and re-frame the situation.
Whatever you do, talk to your athletes, especially those athletes that have a strong athletic identity. Normalize and educate so that they can get through this short time healthy and uninjured.
References
Corso M. Developmental changes in the youth athlete: implications for movement, skills acquisition, performance and injuries. J Can Chiropr Assoc. 2018 Dec;62(3):150–160. PMID: 30662070; PMCID: PMC6319435.
Papaiakovou, G, et al. “The effect of Chronological Age and Gender on the Development of Sprint Performance During Childhood
and Puberty.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 23.9 (2009):2568–2573.
Do you want more information and support for your young athletes or female athletes from the experts? Try the 7-day Free Trial of RUNsource from Fast Bananas. In the next few months (summer 2023) we will be releasing a whole new track for middle and high school runners called Banana Smoothies!
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