Latest news with #womeninathletics
BBC News
21-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Runner hopes to inspire after breastfeeding in 60-mile race win
When a photo of Stephanie Case breastfeeding her baby during an ultramarathon she won without realising made headlines, the Canadian runner envisaged two different celebrating a new mum breaking down stereotypes of what women with a small baby can achieve. The other could leave women feeling she had set a "new, impossible standard" most mothers would never 42-year-old human rights lawyer entered May's 100km (60 mile) Ultra-Trail Snowdonia in Eryri six months after giving birth to her daughter followed a three-year journey through infertility, miscarriages and IVF which saw her step back from running the ultramarathons she grew to who had competed in elite events including the UTMB race across the Alps, entered the Snowdonia ultra as a "warm-up" for the Hardrock 100 mile (167km) run in Colorado, USA, in July. It was her first race since 2022, shortly before finding out she was pregnant, before miscarrying. Because she had not competed for so long, she had no expectations besides managing the run while feeding had permission to feed at three points along the course, which she completed in just under 17 hours, faster than any of the elite female who kept on running during postings for the UN in conflict zones like South Sudan, Afghanistan and Gaza, said lacing up her running shoes again was like reclaiming a core part of herself."It was so stabilising to know that all of the transformation and trauma I'd gone through trying to get pregnant and finally giving birth, that runner part of me was still there," she said. She admitted the number of people in her situation – running a long, technical race, being female and a mum breastfeeding a young baby – was "very niche".But she said she hoped her achievement could change the conversation around what is expected of new mothers."Women breastfeed, women race. It's just the two things together. Other women have done it before and they will do it said more stories of new mums doing things beyond "sitting at home taking care of the baby" were not being amplified enough. But she said she did not want her achievements to make women feel "overwhelmed and pressured". "If and when you do feel like setting a big goal, go for it because you deserve to pursue your own passions." Just a few dozen miles away from Stephanie's unexpected win, another new mum was finding out how running could help with the mental health challenges that can come with having a Enlli Williams, 28, said she had always been active, paddleboarding and walking from her home near Abersoch on the Llyn planned to join her cousin last year in the inaugural SheUltra, a 50km women-only ultramarathon on Llyn, but then got pregnant. After her daughter Cali was born, she knew for health and wellbeing reasons she was "adamant" was going to run in this year's event."I struggled a lot at the beginning with Cali, although I probably didn't notice until the SheUltra how my mindset was, how down in the dumps I got."I struggled with anxiety, especially for the evenings. From five o'clock I was very anxious, thinking 'oh my gosh, we're not going to get any sleep'. But she said walking to train for the race helped her "get me back". Like Stephanie, Enlli was breastfeeding and had to work out how to combine that with training."I don't think I walked more than four hours [consecutively] to prep because I was like, 'I'm not leaving her for more than that'."So my mum would come and meet me so I could feed her and carry on." Enlli completed April's event in under 11 hours, stopping to feed six-month-old Cali and expressing while on the move by using a breast pump that fits inside a bra."It's so discreet now.... the pumps just slot in so you wouldn't really notice."She said exercising during pregnancy and post-birth "helps me so much" and advised new mothers to keep as active as they could. It's a message Sophie Power, the original poster girl for endurance breastfeeding, is keen to promote. A photograph of her feeding her three-month old baby after completing the 100-mile (167km) UTMB in 2018 sent shockwaves through the racing world and race has a strict no-deferral policy for runners who became pregnant, so Sophie went through "hell on earth", racing soon after having her baby."That photo spoke to millions of women around the world," she said. "It's not about the breastfeeding and the ultra."It's about the man next to me that's asleep and the struggle that women have to get back to fitness, to our own goals, to everything after [having a baby]." Sophie's photo and a subsequent campaign means elite runner who get pregnant can now get deferrals. She set up the She Races charity to push for further gains, but like Stephanie, Sophie is more concerned about ordinary mums."When you're fit during pregnancy, labour's easier... recovery's easier, and your baby comes out fitter, with stronger lungs," said the Active Pregnancy Foundation three women said mothers should be encouraged to exercise and hold on to the things that made them tick before having a baby. "We don't lose ourselves and our identity in becoming mums," said Stephanie."We just have another layer."
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
4 ways women are physically stronger than men
In September, Tara Dower became the fastest person ever to complete the Appalachian Trail. Her record - 40 days, 18 hours and 6 minutes - was 13 hours faster than the previous record holder, a man. That same year, 18-year-old Audrey Jimenez made history in Arizona as the first girl to win a Division 1 high school state wrestling title - competing against boys. Across a variety of sports, women are not just catching up after generations of exclusion from athletics - they're setting the pace. In ultramarathons, women regularly outperform men, especially as distances stretch toward the extreme. Jasmin Paris, who in 2024 became one of only 20 people ever to finish the brutal 100-mile Barkley Marathons race in under 60 hours - while pumping breast milk. Advertisement Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. In long-distance swimming, female athletes now so routinely excel that within the community, their records are just part of the sport. In climbing last year, Barbara 'Babsi' Zangerl became the first person, man or woman, ever to 'flash' - climb without prior practice and sans falls - the towering Yosemite rock formation El Capitan in under three days. These aren't just athletic feats. They're cultural resets. Experts say we're finally waking up to what women's bodies are capable of. And it's not just young women blazing new physical trails. Advertisement 'In the Masters 70-plus, they just set a record for the women's deadlift,' says exercise physiologist Stacy Sims, who teaches at Stanford University and the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. 'Older women are demonstrating that 'I am strong and I can do this.'' - - - Built to endure Generally, discussions of 'strength' have meant brute force and speed over short distances - qualities historically associated with male physiology. But stamina, recovery, resilience and adaptability are as essential to athletic performance. And in those areas, female physiology holds real advantages, experts in sports science, human physiology, and biological anthropology have found. Advertisement The myth of female fragility is relatively modern. For most of human history, women were hauling gear, tracking prey, and walking eight to 10 miles a day - often while pregnant, menstruating, nursing or carrying children (one estimate found that hunter-gatherer women covered more than 3,000 miles in a child's first four years of life). That evolutionary foundation undergirds today's feats, experts say. 'Female bodies have superior fatigue resistance,' says Sophia Nimphius, pro-vice-chancellor of sport at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. In test after test, female muscles outlast men's when doing repetitive, if lower-weight, work, according to the pioneering research of Sandra Hunter, an exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan. Hunter's research - and others since - has shown that women's muscles fatigue more slowly than men's, so they can knock out more reps, more consistently. Men might start strong with heavier lifts, but when the workout gets long? Women can keep going, sometimes twice as long, or longer, outlasting even the most jacked guys. That endurance capacity is likely due to female bodies preferentially using slow-burning fat over quickly exhausted carbohydrates, in both athletes and less sporty people, studies have shown. Advertisement In addition to using fat for staying power, fatigue-resistant slow-twitch muscle fibers are generally more common in women's bodies (though all bodies vary in their proportion of muscle fibers according to individual genetics). This muscle type is also more efficient than fast-twitch, which are generally higher in men's muscles. 'Our muscles do more with less,' Nimphius says. - - - Recovery and resilience Beyond endurance, several small studies on sprinting and heavy weightlifting have shown that women also recover from hard workouts more quickly. Slow-twitch muscles inherently have a higher capacity to recover, but the female advantage may also be explained by faster healing: A study shows two times faster muscle repair rates for female mice (though mice studies don't always translate to humans). The reason? There's strong evidence that estrogen reduces inflammation and supports muscle repair (one reason that Sims recommends postmenopausal women get targeted training support and recovery time). Advertisement However, some studies show that women are more prone to other kinds of sports injuries, especially certain kinds of knee and ACL injuries, but it's not yet known whether that's explained by biomechanical differences in bodies, hormones, or poor training. Some researchers say the greater injury rates in women are because existing research is based on men's bodies: 'Female bodies are different - I tell [women] the protocols you're applying aren't meant for your body,' says Sims. Feats of bodily strength - in both ordinary women and trained athletes - are more than just purely physical. Many experts on competitive strength remark on this mental aspect of female endurance: 'I do think that there is a mental grit, a resilience factor that helps women go to a place in their mind - a state that allows them to continue to push to the limit,' says Emily Kraus, director of the Female Athlete Science and Translational Research (FASTR) Program at Stanford University. - - - A changing future Advertisement Men have usually defined strength by what their bodies tend to be good at, but max bench presses or fastest sprint times, both of which men tend to excel at, are just a few ways to test the human body. If we instead focused on endurance, resilience, longevity and recovery, the narrative of who is 'strong' would probably have a female form, many experts say. Currently, young female athletes still don't receive the same level of encouragement, training, and scientific attention as boys, Nimphius says. Research into girl's and women's health, while slowly improving, still lags - just 6 percent of sports and exercise research has looked exclusively at female bodies, according to a 2021 study. Considering all the wins for women already, what would the landscape look like if we designed sports science around female physiology - rather than downsizing routines created for men? The current generation of women athletes is challenging the very architecture of athleticism. Soon, experts say, they will have better information to help female athletes understand and train, and that will be true for weekend warriors and 5k racing types as well. Ongoing and anticipated sports science studies will be 'a game changer for girls and women - not just now, but in five, ten, fifteen years from now,' Kraus says. 'And that's really exciting.' - - - Advertisement Four things women's bodies do exceptionally well - Pain tolerance Human bodies endure all kinds of pain - from menstrual cramps and childbirth to back injuries and broken bones. Pain is subjective, so difficult to measure, but most research agrees with your grandma - women seem to handle pain better. Athletes are pain experts, and numerous studies show that they have higher pain tolerance than non-athletes - and when you break it down by sex, the limited research shows that female athletes don't differ from their male counterparts' pain tolerance despite higher pain sensitivity and that women are more likely to play through injuries. This is probably due to both biology and experience, says Sophia Nimphius, pro-vice-chancellor of sport at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. A 1981 study put it plainly: 'Female athletes had the highest pain tolerance and threshold.' - Immunity Advertisement Among mammals, including humans, it is widely accepted that females have stronger immune systems than males. That's due to the power of estrogen, and also of the XX chromosome carried by women but not men, which provides more variability in immune function. As the University of Minnesota evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk wrote in a 2009 article, 'There is no contest about the identity of the sicker sex - it is males, almost every time. Everyone knows that old age homes have more widows than widowers, but the disparity extends far beyond the elderly.' (There is a downside though; the majority of autoimmune disease patients are female. It's the cost that women bear for an aggressive immune system.) - Resilience Women's bodies seem better built for the long haul - less wear and tear, more staying power, according to the limited research. The data on long-term exercise suggests women may also pay a lower price for physical strain. For instance, the British Heart Foundation studied the vascular condition of 300 Masters' athletes (meaning over age 40), that included a mix of long-distance runners, cyclists, rowers and swimmers. In men, vascular aging increased among the athletes - by some markers up to 10 years, increasing their risk of cardiovascular issues. Among the female athletes, the reverse was true, they had biologically younger vascular systems, lowering their risk of heart problems. - Longevity Advertisement Arguably, the truest test of any body is longevity. And with rare exceptions, no matter the species or culture, women live longer. That's partly behavioral - men tend to take more risks that can kill them - but it's also biological. Women tend to survive disease, starvation and injury at higher rates than men do. Studies have shown that the Y chromosome, which is unique to men, can degrade over time - a phenomenon known as mosaic loss of Y. This degradation has been linked to a range of health issues in men, including increased risks of heart disease and cancer. Related Content Joy, tension collide as WorldPride arrives in Trump's Washington Kari Lake won awards for overseas reporting. Now she has the job of cutting it. Harvard celebrates graduation in the shadow of its fight with Trump
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
4 ways women are physically stronger than men
In September, Tara Dower became the fastest person ever to complete the Appalachian Trail. Her record - 40 days, 18 hours and 6 minutes - was 13 hours faster than the previous record holder, a man. That same year, 18-year-old Audrey Jimenez made history in Arizona as the first girl to win a Division 1 high school state wrestling title - competing against boys. Across a variety of sports, women are not just catching up after generations of exclusion from athletics - they're setting the pace. In ultramarathons, women regularly outperform men, especially as distances stretch toward the extreme. Jasmin Paris, who in 2024 became one of only 20 people ever to finish the brutal 100-mile Barkley Marathons race in under 60 hours - while pumping breast milk. Advertisement Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. In long-distance swimming, female athletes now so routinely excel that within the community, their records are just part of the sport. In climbing last year, Barbara 'Babsi' Zangerl became the first person, man or woman, ever to 'flash' - climb without prior practice and sans falls - the towering Yosemite rock formation El Capitan in under three days. These aren't just athletic feats. They're cultural resets. Experts say we're finally waking up to what women's bodies are capable of. And it's not just young women blazing new physical trails. Advertisement 'In the Masters 70-plus, they just set a record for the women's deadlift,' says exercise physiologist Stacy Sims, who teaches at Stanford University and the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. 'Older women are demonstrating that 'I am strong and I can do this.'' - - - Built to endure Generally, discussions of 'strength' have meant brute force and speed over short distances - qualities historically associated with male physiology. But stamina, recovery, resilience and adaptability are as essential to athletic performance. And in those areas, female physiology holds real advantages, experts in sports science, human physiology, and biological anthropology have found. Advertisement The myth of female fragility is relatively modern. For most of human history, women were hauling gear, tracking prey, and walking eight to 10 miles a day - often while pregnant, menstruating, nursing or carrying children (one estimate found that hunter-gatherer women covered more than 3,000 miles in a child's first four years of life). That evolutionary foundation undergirds today's feats, experts say. 'Female bodies have superior fatigue resistance,' says Sophia Nimphius, pro-vice-chancellor of sport at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. In test after test, female muscles outlast men's when doing repetitive, if lower-weight, work, according to the pioneering research of Sandra Hunter, an exercise physiologist at the University of Michigan. Hunter's research - and others since - has shown that women's muscles fatigue more slowly than men's, so they can knock out more reps, more consistently. Men might start strong with heavier lifts, but when the workout gets long? Women can keep going, sometimes twice as long, or longer, outlasting even the most jacked guys. That endurance capacity is likely due to female bodies preferentially using slow-burning fat over quickly exhausted carbohydrates, in both athletes and less sporty people, studies have shown. Advertisement In addition to using fat for staying power, fatigue-resistant slow-twitch muscle fibers are generally more common in women's bodies (though all bodies vary in their proportion of muscle fibers according to individual genetics). This muscle type is also more efficient than fast-twitch, which are generally higher in men's muscles. 'Our muscles do more with less,' Nimphius says. - - - Recovery and resilience Beyond endurance, several small studies on sprinting and heavy weightlifting have shown that women also recover from hard workouts more quickly. Slow-twitch muscles inherently have a higher capacity to recover, but the female advantage may also be explained by faster healing: A study shows two times faster muscle repair rates for female mice (though mice studies don't always translate to humans). The reason? There's strong evidence that estrogen reduces inflammation and supports muscle repair (one reason that Sims recommends postmenopausal women get targeted training support and recovery time). Advertisement However, some studies show that women are more prone to other kinds of sports injuries, especially certain kinds of knee and ACL injuries, but it's not yet known whether that's explained by biomechanical differences in bodies, hormones, or poor training. Some researchers say the greater injury rates in women are because existing research is based on men's bodies: 'Female bodies are different - I tell [women] the protocols you're applying aren't meant for your body,' says Sims. Feats of bodily strength - in both ordinary women and trained athletes - are more than just purely physical. Many experts on competitive strength remark on this mental aspect of female endurance: 'I do think that there is a mental grit, a resilience factor that helps women go to a place in their mind - a state that allows them to continue to push to the limit,' says Emily Kraus, director of the Female Athlete Science and Translational Research (FASTR) Program at Stanford University. - - - A changing future Advertisement Men have usually defined strength by what their bodies tend to be good at, but max bench presses or fastest sprint times, both of which men tend to excel at, are just a few ways to test the human body. If we instead focused on endurance, resilience, longevity and recovery, the narrative of who is 'strong' would probably have a female form, many experts say. Currently, young female athletes still don't receive the same level of encouragement, training, and scientific attention as boys, Nimphius says. Research into girl's and women's health, while slowly improving, still lags - just 6 percent of sports and exercise research has looked exclusively at female bodies, according to a 2021 study. Considering all the wins for women already, what would the landscape look like if we designed sports science around female physiology - rather than downsizing routines created for men? The current generation of women athletes is challenging the very architecture of athleticism. Soon, experts say, they will have better information to help female athletes understand and train, and that will be true for weekend warriors and 5k racing types as well. Ongoing and anticipated sports science studies will be 'a game changer for girls and women - not just now, but in five, ten, fifteen years from now,' Kraus says. 'And that's really exciting.' - - - Advertisement Four things women's bodies do exceptionally well - Pain tolerance Human bodies endure all kinds of pain - from menstrual cramps and childbirth to back injuries and broken bones. Pain is subjective, so difficult to measure, but most research agrees with your grandma - women seem to handle pain better. Athletes are pain experts, and numerous studies show that they have higher pain tolerance than non-athletes - and when you break it down by sex, the limited research shows that female athletes don't differ from their male counterparts' pain tolerance despite higher pain sensitivity and that women are more likely to play through injuries. This is probably due to both biology and experience, says Sophia Nimphius, pro-vice-chancellor of sport at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. A 1981 study put it plainly: 'Female athletes had the highest pain tolerance and threshold.' - Immunity Advertisement Among mammals, including humans, it is widely accepted that females have stronger immune systems than males. That's due to the power of estrogen, and also of the XX chromosome carried by women but not men, which provides more variability in immune function. As the University of Minnesota evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk wrote in a 2009 article, 'There is no contest about the identity of the sicker sex - it is males, almost every time. Everyone knows that old age homes have more widows than widowers, but the disparity extends far beyond the elderly.' (There is a downside though; the majority of autoimmune disease patients are female. It's the cost that women bear for an aggressive immune system.) - Resilience Women's bodies seem better built for the long haul - less wear and tear, more staying power, according to the limited research. The data on long-term exercise suggests women may also pay a lower price for physical strain. For instance, the British Heart Foundation studied the vascular condition of 300 Masters' athletes (meaning over age 40), that included a mix of long-distance runners, cyclists, rowers and swimmers. In men, vascular aging increased among the athletes - by some markers up to 10 years, increasing their risk of cardiovascular issues. Among the female athletes, the reverse was true, they had biologically younger vascular systems, lowering their risk of heart problems. - Longevity Advertisement Arguably, the truest test of any body is longevity. And with rare exceptions, no matter the species or culture, women live longer. That's partly behavioral - men tend to take more risks that can kill them - but it's also biological. Women tend to survive disease, starvation and injury at higher rates than men do. Studies have shown that the Y chromosome, which is unique to men, can degrade over time - a phenomenon known as mosaic loss of Y. This degradation has been linked to a range of health issues in men, including increased risks of heart disease and cancer. Related Content Joy, tension collide as WorldPride arrives in Trump's Washington Kari Lake won awards for overseas reporting. Now she has the job of cutting it. Harvard celebrates graduation in the shadow of its fight with Trump
