Audra
Koopman wanted to be leaner and more powerful.
She also wanted to
eat. But, she said, she could sense what her track and field coaches at
Penn State wanted: for her to have less body fat.
اضافة اعلان
Coaches never told
her to achieve a specific body fat percentage, Koopman said, but a lowered
score on periodic body composition tests generally earned a pat on the back.
“It’s interesting
how a lot of us have kind of been brainwashed into thinking that that is
something that’s good for you and it is good for you to lose your period and it
is good for you to have that feeling of hunger in your stomach,” said Koopman,
who competed in long jump and short sprints from 2017-21.
But as she ate less
and her body fat dropped, she was not running any faster. It made her wonder
why the scores mattered so much.
Across the US, many
collegiate athletic departments are asking or requiring student-athletes to
measure their body composition, producing data that can help schools gauge
whether the athletes are optimally training, resting, and eating.
But The New York
Times spoke with nearly 20 female current and former athletes across the Power
5 conferences, many of whom have found body composition tests to be invasive,
inconsequential to their performance, and triggering for those who had eating
disorders or were predisposed to them. The tests are just one aspect of a
culture in women’s college sports in which weight, body image, and body
composition are often discussed in harmful ways — or not discussed at all, even
though they are important factors in the athletes’ physical and
mental health.
Body composition
data often overemphasize the correlation between body fat percentage and
athletic performance, while understating other key factors such as sleep and
hydration, said Dr Paula Quatromoni, an associate professor of nutrition and
epidemiology at Boston University and an expert on sports nutrition and eating
disorders.
Stef Strack, the
founder of Voice in Sport, a digital platform for girls and women in sports
that offers mental health resources and mentorship, said she had heard mixed
feedback about the use of the tests.
“A lot of the
struggles come in when the culture and the environment isn’t great,” Strack
said. “And when you add data prioritized over how athletes feel, that’s when
you get to some of these broader systemic issues that women are facing
regarding body image, confidence, and comparison.”
What the science says
There are several ways to assess body composition. At Penn State, Koopman
was measured with a Bod Pod, a human-size, egg-shaped capsule. She would sit on
a bench inside it for a few minutes while the machine calculated her body fat,
muscle, and bone density and returned a score. Some schools employ a DEXA Scan,
which uses a hovering arm to make measurements as athletes lie on a table.
After The Oregonian
reported on concerns from athletes at the
University of Oregon about how DEXA
Scans were being used in 2021, the school said teams could no longer require
athletes to be tested for body fat percentage or share the results with
coaches.
Quatromoni said
schools should not use body composition tests to measure body fat.
“This practice is
steeped in weight stigma, stereotypes, and misinformation,” Quatromoni wrote in
an email. “It is not based on sports science, and rarely is the practice
managed or monitored closely by qualified health professionals to have any
positive outcome. Instead, it can have devastating consequences for the athlete
and will sabotage the very goals that athletes and coaches pursue.”
Most of the female
current and former athletes interviewed by the New York Times did not know
whether their coaches received the results of the tests, however, they
suspected that they did.
Many felt awkward
discussing their weight with male coaches, whose comments, the women said,
ranged from questions about their sexual activity to urges to get rid of their
“muffin top,” referring to belly fat. And although none said the tests were
mandatory, many felt it would be frowned upon if they asked to opt-out.
Koopman discussed
her tests only with a school nutritionist. Somehow, she said, her coaches
always seemed to know her results.
Kristina Petersen,
Penn State’s associate athletics director of strategic communications, said in
an email that the school’s “general practice” was not to share the test results
with coaches.
“Like other
institutions, Penn State employs a number of resources — including the ‘Bod
Pod’ — to help our student-athletes understand and track body composition,
avoid injury, overcome setbacks, and enhance overall athletic performance,”
Petersen said.
In May 2019, the
University of Kansas announced a collaboration with the University of Kansas
Health System that allowed staff members to report to medical professionals
instead of physicians employed by the athletic department, with the goal of minimizing
potential conflicts of interest between coaches and the sports medicine staff.
Body composition
tests are not mandatory at the university unless a student-athlete has a
previously identified medical condition that requires monitoring, a Kansas spokesperson
said.
Dan Beckler, a
former senior associate athletic director at Kansas, said sports dietitians
would give the athletes recommendations based on the results but would not
share information with coaches without the students’ consent.
Koopman, the former
Penn State athlete, said the information should be shared only in certain
situations. Koopman is now helping to coach track at one of the high schools
she grew up near in Colorado and plans to attend graduate school.
The body
composition tests can be beneficial, she said, depending on how they are used
and how the information is shared.
“If somebody is
really having issues with something, maybe that’s when you bring in the body
scan,” she said. “But if not, I feel like I would have been much better off not
knowing about it at all.”
Read more Sports
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
