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Training Science Podcast
Supporting Female Athletes Through Puberty and Performance With Dr Julia Casadio and Prof Paul Laursen
01:03:28
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- [00:01]
A
This week on the Training Science podcast, we welcome back Dr. Julia Casadillo. So in our prior episode with Julia, we focused on her research and applied work in heat training with New Zealand Olympians. But in this episode, we delve into how Julia actually got to her Olympic sport research and servicing in the first place. In Julia's youth, she was a teenage ski racer when a coach she trusted told her she'd be faster if she were lighter. But no one gave her a safe way to do that. And that comment led to an eating disorder that ended her career. But now Julia's turned that experience into her life's work. So by the end of adolescence, close to two thirds of girls have dropped out of sport. Julia has built her strength to change all of that. A course that teaches coaches and parents what's really going on with a developing female athlete and what to do about it with daughters, ourselves in this age range. Martin and I are proud to have partnered with her strength to bring this to you. And it now lives on Hitscience. So to be sure to head on over to hitscience.com and pick it up, here's Julia now. I'm here with Julia Clacadera. Jiro, welcome back to the podcast.
- [01:04]
B
Thank you, Paul. So good to be here.
- [01:06]
A
Yeah, it's great to have you again. So I was actually, I was looking back, I was like, when was Julia on initially? And I think it was like podcast 28. And it was like, you know, so pretty early on in the piece and it was like July of 2022. And in that podcast, I can recall, we were going over the stuff that we did in your PhD that you did in your PhD. Ultimately, Julia, that I was fortunate to supervise you with when you were working at High Performance Sport New Zealand, which you still do work at, but then also doing your PhD alongside and really looking at how can you program and periodize heat training? So awesome, amazing topic. And your PhD was instrumental, I think, in how people go about actually prescribing that for, you know, well trained athletes. You don't have to do, ultimately the 10 day classic heat training prescription. You can, you know, you really periodize it just like we periodize our training. So if you want to go, go back to that podcast, review that, the paper there as well, the lit review. But that's not what we're going to talk about today, Julia, are we? Nope, we're going to go. So what has happened in the last four years? Because obviously you've done all that work. You went to Rio and then we're continuing to work with HBSNZ on the elite athlete stuff. But something else has caught your interest and spoke to your why and your heart over the last four years. Talk to me about that.
- [02:51]
B
Yeah, so a lot has changed over the last four years. When I talked to you last, I had a one year old and now I have a seven month old. I've also moved from New Zealand to Australia and I also now no longer am a full time employee of HPS nz. I now am a contractor and I work as a sport physiologist consulting with campaigns internationally rather than just for one country. Which is really fun and exciting. Had a lot of athletes come to me with long Covid issues. So that's kind of been something I've, you know, I shifted focus a little bit from heat, heat, heat all the time to, you know, dealing with some of these post viral complications and how, how do we get an athlete back from like ground zero were from a worse place that they thought they could ever be to winning again on the world stage. So that's been a really interesting challenge and a really emotional one for the athletes. You really feel for them when you know, they take a step forward and then they take two or three steps back because they did too much in a week. But, but the, the encouraging thing for anyone out there that's dealing with any kind of post viral issues is that you can, you will come out the other end. Yeah. And, and it's so, it's so much such an honor to watch them then go from all of that hardship and struggle to then winning again on the world stage. So that's, that's one side, that's the, the sport physiology consultant side.
- [04:37]
A
Well, just hold there because you know, I know, I know where you're going to go next but like let, don't leave the listener hanging. Like give us the Kohl's notes. What are the key things that someone can do if they are suffering from that, you know, let's call it long Covid or whatever it is, but they're really struggling for the, you know, presumed viral illness. That's just not, not going right, not going away. What with some of the, and you worked with a lot of, you know, very high, high level athletes. What were some of the key things that you found and to get them going in the right direction again?
- [05:07]
B
Yeah, pretty much in, in every instance we've had to, I've had to convince them to just have a couple weeks off completely just like complete reset physically. And because they're in this Pattern of trying to do too much and not being able to and they never get out of it. It's like just this vicious circle of them doing something and maybe progressing a little bit and then they get a whole bunch of symptoms and then they're set back a number of days and they can't get out of that cycle. And so what I've managed to convince all of them to do which has really helped is just have a reset, take two weeks off, let the body heal, sleep, you know, still get outside, still walk and move and stuff. But we're not trying to achieve something in a training session. We're just letting the body begin to recover. And then often what we've done is actually start back at 50% of an of the training volume of an easy week. So we're talking really low volume for these guys. They're not, they don't really, it's not what they want to do but, but it works and we just take small steps and we gradually build on and, and we're, we're making adjustments based on their symptoms. So it's always, you know, if they've done too much, they'll have symptoms and it's different for everyone. What they are, it might be to do with their heart, it might be vertigo, it might be breathing. It's really actually fascinating how the post viral stuff or long Covid affects each person differently. But we know that when they have those symptoms we just need to adjust and we do and we can keep tracking in the right way so that it doesn't sound exciting but that, that's the main thing. And then some athletes have gone and you know, if we're working with a carded athlete, we sometimes are limited in, in the sport system of, of what the expertise is and I haven't, I've been yet to see national sport organizations be confident enough to say okay, we need medical expertise that is working in long Covid and see what we can do like that. Even though it's 2026, that isn't really happening, unfortunately. So sometimes the athletes will choose to go in and seek some alternative treatments, just maybe supplements that they wouldn't be getting from their nutritionist. And hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been something that helps too. But again sometimes that's even too much. So it's really kind of energy management instead of training load management. It's just overall energy management. Did they travel that day? Did they drive two hours? That might be enough to knock them down. Are they at a sponsorship event? You know, it's Just planning is looking at everything for them rather than just their training.
- [08:19]
A
Yeah, totally. And another, another theme we were talking offline about just athletes in general is just like the importance of actually less is more sometimes. Right? Like you were talking about the longer recovery periods. And you know, Martin, Martin came to this realization and shared that with me at one point too where it's like, you know, the minimal dose effect, right? Like, it's like, like what is the minimal dose that we can use to still make a step forward? And it's hard for us type A individuals because we are always uh, you know, we're programmed to think that more training equals better outcomes. And we just know that the, that's not the actual equation for, for success, right? It's recovery is an important, important aspect of it. And it's amazing how the body is, is. It's meant to heal, right? It's meant to, it's meant to heal itself. And I'm learning that personally right now as I'm going through hip surgery. Uh, or I just, you know, I just had a full hip replacement. Like this is massive. And I have to be confident myself to know that, you know what this is, this is week five doing nothing. I know it. I know stuff is just doing small stuff is, is I'm still going to be fine in another, another five weeks kind of. And it's the same, it's the same with the long Covid stuff. They, the. That body is meant to heal, that immune system is meant to kick in and they are meant to heal themselves and get back to where they want to go. Problem is, is it probably just can't be as, as fast as we all want it to be.
- [09:54]
B
Yeah, totally. And the interesting thing Paul, is that all of the athletes that I've worked with, I have had long Covid are, are seasoned like quite successful athletes in their, in their sport. And, and now going forward it's actually they, they, they all kind of appreciate more the importance of recovery and, and they pay attention to it a bit more. They wouldn't skip out on, on that part and they treat it like almost training. It's like, you know, they give the same attention to it, which is great. And then the other part is that we going forward to make it sustainable for them is we are looking at that minimal dose and we find that we can do a lot less than they were doing before and still have the results, which is good.
- [10:45]
A
Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, sorry to keep staying on this topic, but it is so interesting. I work with an Elite young runner. And it's been, you know, again, she just wants to work, work, work, work. And it's the. Over the last two years, it's just been a, an effort to teach her that less is more and that she needs to focus on the recovery. And literally this week when she's, she kind of. Over the last few weeks, you pushed a little bit too hard, but she. I've just seen this. All of a sudden, there's this maturity now and, and she's recognizing that less is more. But it's a slow process to educate the end user, the, the athlete at the end of the day.
- [11:23]
B
Right.
- [11:24]
A
Wonderful. Once you get there. But it's, it's not necessarily easy.
- [11:27]
B
No, they've got to, they've got to learn it for themselves. It's kind of like being a parent and you see your child struggling and they just have to learn some of the things on their own and, and we can just be there to support and guide.
- [11:39]
A
That's right. So speaking about being a parent and being a kid and not really, not really knowing as much, you know, like, wisdom develops over the years. At least it has for myself. I know it has for you as well. You know what, you have an incredible story, Julia, and maybe just. Why don't you just take it away and tell us your story?
- [12:04]
B
Okay. Yeah, so I got into sport at a young age and, and actually I was really influenced by sport at a super young age. So I was, I was three when the 88 Winter Olympics were in Calgary. That's my hometown. And that will tell my age, but that's all right.
- [12:28]
A
Join the club.
- [12:30]
B
And yeah, it really made an impression on me. And it was kind of from my parents took me to a bunch of events. I remember going to the Olympics. My dad was working at those games. And then as a, as a child growing up, like, my, my parents would always have the Olympics on and we'd always be cheering for Canada and, you know, learn the stories of the athletes. And I was just like, this is the best. Like, I definitely, like, from a very young age, I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics. That was what I wanted to do. And by the time I was eight, you know, I was thinking, okay, I better quickly choose what sport I'm going to do the Olympics, because I'm already eight, you know, and was having this conversation with my parents and, and they're like, oh, well, you're good at cross country running and we have snow eight months of the year here in Calgary, so why don't you do cross country skiing. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. And so that was the sport that I went into. And, yeah, I remember. I don't know if this is necessarily healthy, but as a kid at the Canmore Nordic center, skiing up hills in a race and being totally gassed, tired and going as hard as I could, and just thinking, like, don't worry about the pain, like, this is what you have to do to go to the Olympics, right? No, like, that. It was, it was. I was, like, very determined. And, you know, looking back and being a physiologist now, like, I probably, if I'm being completely honest, I didn't have the. The genesis to be a winning cross country skier. Like, I don't have a. I don't have the genetics of a crazy VO2. And, like, yes, I am an endurance athlete, but, yeah, I have my limitations, and that's fine. But anyways, I, I didn't realize that as a kid, and I just kept going. And, you know, in. In my teen years, I kind of started to worry and get a bit frustrated that, like, all this hard work, like, am I actually tracking where I need to be to make the Junior National Team? And maybe I wasn't. And just the reality of, oh, maybe I'm not good enough, you know, and talking to my coach at the time about my frustration. Yeah, so this would have been my late teens. And he said, you know what, Julia? Like, if you were, if you were lighter, you would be faster. And I was like, yeah, you're right. Actually, like, physiologically, I knew that if I was lighter, my VO2 max would go up. I'd be, I'd be faster. Right. And so I, I took that advice and I, I, you know, I wasn't given, like, oh, you know, this is how you get lighter, or this is what you do, this is what you don't do. I just kind of was left to my own devices a little bit. And I did lose weight. I was lighter. I wasn't unhealthy at that time, but I, I had a race in Kelowna. It was World Junior Trials, and it was. I didn't perform any better in my mind. Like, I still, I didn't make. I wasn't fast enough to be qualifying. And I just was so disheartened after all my hard work that I just was like, you just have to be. I had the irrational thought. I knew it was irrational at the time. It was like, you have to be. You have to be lighter. You have to, like, again. And so that was kind of the beginning of an eating disorder. And ultimately if you have an eating disorder, it's not healthy. And I got to the point where I was very unhealthy and I knew physically and psychologically that I couldn't ski anymore. So this had been probably a couple years by now I was in university. At this point I decided I'm going to quit skiing and I moved to Perth. That's where I met you at ecu. So that's, that's, that's how the story goes. But I guess like what I've always noticed and working as a physiologist in elite sport is the young girls coming in and, and you know, they're, they're the one level down from being carted and from getting full support and, and being in the system, competing on the world stage, representing their country and they have no clue about their body and comments are made. They have no clue about food. Coaches say stuff that they shouldn't say about the, their body, about eating. They say things that they, they don't, they shouldn't be saying to themselves and, and they just have no idea about health and their menstrual cycle and all these different things. And so always when I was working and there's, you know, this. Over the last decade, there's been a huge drive to improve things for female athletes. And I've always recognized that for the young athletes, there is a huge gap there and we're losing most of them before they, they get to the level where we could do some good work with them because of some of these things. So, sorry, this is a long winded story.
- [17:36]
A
No, it's beautiful.
- [17:37]
B
Keep it going with, with all of that. You know, I, I thought we, you know, the, the where we could have the most impact in female sport is not about getting more people watching female sport. Like, I know that's a big one, you know, or the pay of professional athletes. All these things are important and good, but the biggest impact overall is actually supporting and educating these younger athletes so that they can understand their body, so the coaches understand what's going on with them and what some of their challenges are. The parents, everyone has a better understanding and has some tools to help them get through puberty. You know, female puberty is so different than male puberty. It's a, it's, there's multiple challenges. I can, if you want to know, I can share some of them with you and I know it would be obvious to some of the listeners, but that, that has, I had an opportunity in New Zealand to kind of do something with this. I was living in Taranaki, or if you're a Kiwi, you would say Taranaki. And I, I got to go to this pitch night and they said, oh, pitch an idea. And I pitched this idea of, of doing something to help young girls in sport through an app or whatever and I called it her strength. And yeah, a few years later I've actually developed something, some resources and I do workshops for coaches and, and parent athlete nights and we have a whole bunch of things lined up. But effectively we're, we're starting to work in this area where there is such a huge gap and such huge potential to have a positive impact for these girls. Not just, not just about keeping them in sport, keeping sporty girls in sport, but also just for their lifetime. Like the, the. Yeah, anyways, totally.
- [19:24]
A
Yeah. Loads of questions. Hey, coaches and sports scientists, let's be honest, you're probably drowning in data, right? Gps, heart rate, force plates, blood markers, and you're still probably not even sure if your players are actually ready or not. That's because more data doesn't fix anything if you don't have a system to make sense of it. My buddy Martin Scheidt has been solving this exact problem for well over 15 years at all the big name clubs. His brand new course at hitscience gives you that system. Load and response monitoring in elite football is now live and walks you through how to separate neuromuscular from metabolic load, what GPS actually tells you about the load and where it completely falls short, as well as how to build real feedback loops between the dose and the response. Now this isn't the 2019 version warmed up. It's a full and complete rebuild. New tech, new research, real examples from elite clubs across Europe and the Middle East. You get lifetime access, full handouts, a hit sign certificate and CEUs, all for just $2.99. So stop stacking dashboards and start making decisions. Head on over to Hitscience and enroll and we'll see you on the inside. Hey everyone. Just want to let you know about something cool we've built into Athletica. It's called Athletica U. So this isn't another training app. Add on. It's a structured education series designed to give athletes, coaches and practitioners a shared foundation in endurance training principles. In our Certificate 1 Foundations course, we walk you through the essentials. Base training, build training, balancing, volume and intensity, fueling and hydration, recovery, and how to interpret your own training data. So what makes this different is the integration in each principle, you'll learn how to get experience directly through your athletic appliance. It's science and practice training as both the classroom and the lab, because we all learn best by feeling and doing. So. If you're interested in how we can better scale best practice coaching and bridge science with applied sport, you'll want to take a look. You'll find everything over at Athletica AI. We'll see you there. Just a first question. What do you think is still the prevalence of the coaches that are out there? Keep in mind this is largely a coach coach listening podcast. But, you know, what do you, what do you think is the prevalence still of that coach that. That told you, Julia, you need to be lighter. If you, if you're lighter, you will go faster. Where's that sitting still at this point in time?
- [21:50]
B
I don't know if there's exact stats on the number of coaches saying things that might have a negative consequence on body image and behavior, but the literature does show that there's a huge influence of coaches. And we also know that, that teen Girls between like 12 and 18 are unfortunately and kind of sadly, they have body dissatisfaction, most of them. So 60% of teen girls have body dissatisfaction. So then you add some of these comments in about what they need to do. Or they could be direct comments, they could be indirect comments like, oh, look at, look at Sally. You know, she's come back from the summer and she is so lean and fast, you know, and saying that to. With other athletes around you, you know, so it doesn't even need to be direct to them. It, it does happen all the time. And there's so many. Probably every single female athlete I've worked with has had comments like that made. So, and, and we know, we know from the literature that coaches have an awareness of some of the things that happen during puberty, but they don't know how to adjust training and they don't know how to communicate about it. And that's kind of where her strength comes in. One of, one of the things we offer is a coach course that, that does all of those things. It really breaks it down. You know, female puberty is not easy. You know, that was going to be
- [23:21]
A
my next question, so why don't you go there? You said that female puberty is different and probably more challenging than male puberty. So can you give us some, some physiology there?
- [23:35]
B
Yeah, so girls develop breasts. Guys don't have to worry about that. That's a whole nother thing to worry about is having a supportive sports bra. That feels comfortable. They, they grow taller before they get stronger, so they shoot up. But the, the tendons and the muscles around ligaments, around the bones don't get stronger till later. Neither do their bones. Whereas males, when they're going through puberty, they have higher amounts of testosterone and they get stronger and taller at the same time. So that, that makes a big difference. Girls get a widening of their hips. You know, that changes their center of gravity. It changes running mechanics a little bit and jumping and landing and change of direction. And that's why teen female athletes are the highest risk of ACL injuries. Mm. Because of that. You know, so. And, and that's like a career ending injury for some.
- [24:32]
A
Yep.
- [24:33]
B
You know, the other one is, you know, they don't just get taller. They, their body composition changes for, for hormone health. And, and girls have to put on body fat. You know, they go from being a girl to having female fat patterning. So more fat on, on their abdomen, their thighs, their butt, arms. And, and that's normal. Right. And in some sports that's maybe not ideal and there could be fluctuations in performance because of that, especially in endurance sport. So, you know, that can be a big frustration for girls, but that's just part like for them to understand that that's actually healthy and normal and that's okay. Like I could have when I, when I was, you know, had the coach tell me I was probably coming at the tail end of that, of, of having put on a bit more weight and eventually, you know, you're, you're still growing and developing. Eventually it settles down and you, you lean up a little bit again. Yeah, but, but for you to be healthy and, and get your first period and have regular cycles, you have to put on body fat.
- [25:42]
A
Totally.
- [25:43]
B
Um, and so all of these things and, and, and then, and then just. Yeah. Young. The body dissatisfaction one. And then also young girls, teen girls are at more at risk of eating disorders or disordered eating and, and you know, low energy availability. Availability and red s. Right. So there's this whole thing. Whereas, and, and with all of this, it's not. Oh, they also get their period. I didn't say that they get their period. You know, six out of ten sporty girls will avoid sport during their period. Sporty girls, six out of ten. And that's fine. It's fine if they avoid it, but it's just, you know, do the coaches understand that? Do they, do they understand what's going on with them? And yeah, I think we could raise the bar for everyone to understand, you know female puberty and how sport is affected and how their experience is affected. And you know, boys, again, coming back to boys, they get taller, they get stronger, they're, they actually get leaner. So they, they, they get, they lean up. Their confidence goes up in. For girls during puberty, their confidence goes down.
- [26:54]
A
And we have, we haven't even mentioned the impact of social media all around this as well and the potential of the images that are being, you know, shared. The best images that are being shared.
- [27:04]
B
Right?
- [27:05]
A
Not the. Yeah. And, and what that does to the psyche and, and those feelings.
- [27:10]
B
So, you know, so, yeah, there's a lot going on.
- [27:14]
A
Well, there, there is, there is and there's a lot of, A lot of work to be done to change the, the mindset. Like, let's look at, let's look forward because it's almost like you're describing Julia, like a potential crossroads for, for a girl because you just said, well, you know, you gave one stat there where, you know, six out of 10 are going to avoid, avoid training sport during their, their period. So again, there's, there's probably another stat you, you would be aware of where there's potentially dropouts as well, where it's like, okay, this is just not for me. That's not the type of girl I'm gonna be. And they just make that decision and they go down a different path. What is the, what's the consequences of that potentially for, for adulthood? And I'm just thinking, wait, you know, you know, my, my Kaya and, and she's like, sport is, it means so much to her. And I know she gets so much health out of that, that activity. And I would, I would never want to see her not enjoying her, her sport and partaking in it for her life.
- [28:21]
B
Yeah, totally. So the teen years for a female are the, is like the mass exodus of girls from sport. That's where we lose like upwards of. I think it's like 64% by the end of adolescence. That's how many have dropped out. So it's a huge, it's a huge loss. And like, you know, imagine, imagine that, you know, this is talking from a very different hat on, but imagine the talent pool that, that leaves sport before they can actually start realizing their potential. You know, it's huge. And then for, for the longevity side and just general health, like, obviously people are pretty familiar and your listeners would be too. The benefits of sport, like, that's why we're in it. So physical health, mental health, doing better in school, being more successful in their Career, all these things. Yeah, it's obviously really good to be, to be in sport and have a positive experience in sport. But yeah, there's definitely a huge gap that, that needs some attention.
- [29:30]
A
So going back to your story, Julia, and imagine, I mean, like, you know, we have to forgive your coach somewhat because your coach was doing what he knew best. That was what he was educated. And that's, that's the, that was the best he knew. But what, you know, when we know better, we do better. So let's, let's imagine that that coach had had a. Her strength course. What, what should that coach have advised you after, after taking that course? What. How would, how would he, how would his actions have changed?
- [30:04]
B
Yeah. So before I answer your question, like, the coach that said that to me is actually like someone that I really look up to. He's amazing, amazing coach, amazing person. And I, yeah, I probably forgave him. I don't know, I never needed to forgive him. There was never hard feelings. I just knew he didn't know that what he said was not the right thing at the time or didn't give me a path forward. But yeah, so if someone like him did the course, they would have their eyes opened. And a lot of the coaches, especially the male coaches that come in and they hear like, they hear the things about female puberty, but then also just the menstrual cycle and what that, how that can affect some for training and performance. I know there's a big thing going around at the moment that, you know, the menstrual cycle doesn't, you know, some people say, oh, it doesn't affect, affect your performance? Well, it can. For some it can. So it's just like learning, learning the individual things, but it's just having that understanding and then just having the awareness to maybe adjust things a little bit and the confidence to do that. That's the whole thing. What I wanted with her strength is not passing on knowledge for the sake of it. It's passing on knowledge and tools in a way that is going to actually change behavior and, you know, delivery. It's to change their delivery to the athletes. And so giving them the scripts, giving, like this is what you actually say. This is what you do. If you're afraid to talk about this stuff, that's okay. Just don't ignore it. You get a female person that can champion this space and can work alongside you. Maybe it's a assistant coach, maybe it's a mom, maybe it's a physiotherapist. There's Always someone that can champion this space. And the other thing, I think a lot of males feel overwhelmed and, and like it's. It's too much. It's over their head. They're not qualified to talk about it. They think the girls don't want to talk about it. Um, but interestingly, girls assume that if. The research has actually shown that girls assume that if it's important, the coach will talk to them about it, and the coaches assume that they don't want the coach to talk about it. So, you know, it's kind of this weird space. So it's just breaking down some of the misconceptions and barriers and giving them the tools and the confidence that this is something that they can have a huge impact on and really change potentially someone's life. You know, we're talking about changing someone's path forward. It's pretty cool place to be in. And, and it's. Once you, once you learn the stuff, it isn't actually that overwhelming. And the other thing that I want to say to coaches is that you don't have to become an expert. You just have to have some level of knowledge and awareness so you know what to do if you spot something, you know. And who are those people? Who is, who is your sport dietitian that you know is going to give sound advice? Who is, who is your sports doc that if you see that someone's lost a whole bunch of weight and you're concerned that they might have low energy availability, who is that person that, that you can tell the parents, like, oh, this person is a good person to start with, you know, and because they're, they're. Yeah, like the coach. The coach's responsibility is prescribing training and making decisions. And, and their decisions can have a positive impact or it could have a real detrimental impact, not just to them, but as a teen, but it could impact things for their lifetime.
- [34:03]
A
What are some of the things that start happening when a gal or guy starts moving towards red s or taking that mindset? Oh, maybe if I just reduce my caloric intake that things will lean up a little bit. What starts to happen? What starts happening to the body and the mind in that condition?
- [34:35]
B
Yeah, it's definitely not just the body, it's the mind too. So more frequent injury and illness, cognitively a difficult time focusing. Maybe their grades start to drop, poor mood, increased fatigue, difficulty sleeping. Also just a reduction in their performance that doesn't actually go up, go back up. Those are all kind of flags. And, you know, it often can be related to eating disorders or disordered eating. But often it's actually unintentional as well. Like probably the majority of people with low energy availability, they're not having a clinical issue psychologically with having disordered eating and stuff. Often it's just unintentional and they don't know they don't have the right education and no one's been telling them or their parents are not buying the right food and they're not giving themselves the opportunity.
- [35:42]
A
So I think that's, you know, that probably is a potential confounder in all of this is that sometimes the, the parents who are providing the food are not aware that they could be, they themselves for their family could be making improved choices. And then, you know, the, the child is child and teen is. That's what they're, that's what they're left to eat. Right. So that's a tiff. That's a difficult one. I don't know if there's a solution there.
- [36:15]
B
Yeah, like with her strength, I wanted to target the first because we could. They're the decision maker on the playing field or at the training field and their decision making can really have an impact on the athletes. I started there, but parents, there's a huge space for parents to become better educated. And you know, her strength is really more targeting the girls that are sporty, that want to be in sport and they want to, they're competitive already. And it's not about getting girls in sport, it's about keeping the competitive, sporty girls in sport and enjoying it. And so for those parents there, as you know yourself, Paul, you are invested in your daughter and her sport, right?
- [37:01]
A
Sure am, yeah.
- [37:02]
B
You're totally invested and you don't know what you don't know. And so if you are given the opportunity to learn, you're happy to learn. So kind of just more recently we've been targeting more parent education. I'm working with some schools in New Zealand that have like a private school in New Zealand that has a. They're special kind of like high performance athletes and they have, it's a little program that they do to help support them. And I'm running a parent education series for these parents like through webinars. And, and so there's. Yeah, it's just giving them the opportunity to learn. And, and not just the learning, but the tools. And like, how do you, how do you, what do you do with this? How do you apply it? And it's pretty, it's actually pretty simple and achievable.
- [37:52]
A
That's awesome. But not a lot of resources really in that space. Right. At least at present. I mean you are, you're definitely a first mover from what I can see on this one. You're the first that I've kind of come across this. So kudos to you on that.
- [38:06]
B
Thank you. There are little things starting to emerge.
- [38:09]
A
Good.
- [38:10]
B
But I guess I approach this more from you know, rather than that part participation and getting girls in sport. It's really more for the high performance development female and, and using. Using the approach and holistic sorry approach that you would see in a high performance sport which we can afford to do that. Right. So we have, we have the advice from a nutritionist, the strength and conditioning coach, the psychologist, sports doctor, physiologist. We have that team working around this athlete to help support them. And so I've taken, I've taken that approach that we use at that level and I've brought it down to her strength for the high performance, like not high performance but the developing athlete that wants to be doing well because they still need to know about nutrition, they still need to know about the psychology and, and that's what this, our approach is. It's looking at the whole athlete. We're not just talking about, about menstrual cycles, we're talking about all the things that a teen athlete is going to come across that is going to affect their sports experience.
- [39:26]
A
Yeah, no, I love that. And yeah, I'm all about the holistic approach as well as you know and you know, we've, we've kind of dealt with a little bit of the nutrition arm with making sure that you know, energy is available. Right. Your, your caloric needs are met for all of the changes that are happening. I'd imagine that you know, an equal balance of macronutrients across that and micros as well of course. But then, and again a lot of that comes from the parents probably as the suppliers of those nutrients most in most, most contexts. But you, you also. I've been, you know, I've been looking through your handout. You're about to give a, a presentation to the, the city of Revelstoke tonight, which I'm really looking forward to. And in some of the handouts, one of the ones I really liked that I hadn't sort of seen before, maybe it's out there but I missed it. But it was around training and you had like a really nice simple message around training and that the training hours in the week really shouldn't, shouldn't be higher than the age of the, of the athlete which I was like, ah, it's kind of, it's nice. Right. And I. Makes sense and I'm sure that gets violated from in at various times unintentionally. Like, like, you know, like we sort of said when we know better, we do better, don't know what we don't know. So that's a nice one. I'm not sure if you want to kind of comment on the training volume because that's a con. That's a confounder to all this too.
- [40:50]
B
Yeah. So for, for any of your listeners that work in youth sport, develop young athletes, I'd hope that most of them would know that that point. Yeah that that comes from the literature and it's been around for a while that it's a rough gauge that no more than your, no more number of hours of training than your age per week. So if you're 10 years old probably shouldn't be training for more than 10 hours. But as a, as a physiologist we also know that a 10 year old training 10 hours every week is not actually going to be best for them either. So it's learning how to manage that training load and then it's learning how to manage that training load and not just give them the opportunity to recover. What does that look like in a week? What does that look like in a month? What does that look like in a year? And you know, the more I've looked at been working in this area, the more I realize that if we can give parents some well and coaches some really quick numbers and guides for them to be aware of and just have in the back of their head, they, they kind of become the physiologist for their young athlete. They, they're the decision maker. They, you know, if one, one of I'll give you an example. So during puberty when a female goes through a gross spurt, that's when they're more at risk of getting injured, which makes sense. And it's really important that especially for multi sport athletes and there's a lot of teen girls in multiple sports, especially for multi, multi sport athletes that they don't have a sudden increase in training load and you can very easily have a sudden increase in training load and be in a growth spurt. What does a sudden increase look like in youth sport? It could be going to a training camp, it could be starting the, a new season and it could be joining another sport and keeping another, you know, maintaining a sport that you're already in. Or it could be going up a level in a sport. And if any of those things happen when they're, when they're in the middle of a growth spurt, yeah, they're, they're going to be at risk. And so that's when the training actually needs to be brought back a little bit. And so if we can give parents and coaches awareness of that and say, okay, here's, here's a scenario. This is how you can tell if they're in a growth spurt. And a lot of times the parents can tell. They live with them. And if, if this is the jump in, in training, actually talk to your coach and say, hey, this is a situation. My daughter's going through a growth spurt. We, I want her to be doing this training camp, but can we reduce some of it and maybe a few hours here and there and that's actually going to make the difference?
- [43:44]
A
No. That's awesome. Absolutely. I mean, I'm reflecting here. When you're talking on, of course, Kaya's program, she's in swimming and she does summer swimming. So heavy volume in the summer period, May through August, but the rest, she's just like the rest of the year they only actually allow two swims per week. So it's actually quite a safe program from the typical swimming culture, which is Miles wins medals. But nevertheless, to your point, when we hit May 1st and you're ramping up and you're doing double training twice a day, including dry land, et cetera. Right. It's big. So fortunately, through my various guests and a little bit of knowledge in the area, I'm able to just let, let her manage that, that training load. And she's, you know, she wakes up tired and doesn't want to go to go to practice. Great. Have a sleep in, just, you know, just chill. We don't need to go. So it's, it's easy that way. But I could definitely see where you get a parent that's maybe, or a coach that's quite excited about, you know, their potential in their, in their young, young athlete and their, you know, maybe pushing them and encouraging them to train more with the mindset that more more equals better. And that's a problem. So, yeah, that's. And the other, the other podcast that I was reflecting on was the work from Arne Gulic. And I'm not sure if you saw this one, but it was a, it was a Nature. Oh, no. So it was a science publication. So top, top journal. And. But they basically show the, the importance. And this was reflected in Your notes, Julia, where the early specialization, not necessarily a good outcome and late specialization being very broad in that base when you're young, tended to be the more successful outcome. Almost the Norwegian method. They somehow are so ahead of their time because they really, they really broaden the different experiences and keep things fun. And so that's, that's another important one that I know you highlighted.
- [46:03]
B
Yeah, totally. And there's a nice phrase that they use in New Zealand with, with sport New Zealand, they tell parents that balance is better. And you know, I've been to some talks where the parents say, oh, balance is better. You know, it's like public health messaging. That's worked for them.
- [46:20]
A
That's great.
- [46:21]
B
That's so which is, which is awesome. And just, you know, giving, giving them as a parent and also their child, their daughter permission to, to just take it easy sometimes. And you know, this, you know, in our culture there's, you know, if I reflect being a teenager and being in high school, it's like you have to choose, you know, in junior high what you want to study at university. They put that pressure on you. And it's the same for sport. Like youth sport is becoming professionalized. I, I even see it even younger than like teen years, but like, you know, eight, nine year old professionalizing soccer, you know, sending kids from Canada overseas to play soccer. And that's, you know, is, is not having that balance is better mindset. So it's just, I guess giving permission to parents and athletes that, you know, you don't have to make it in your teen years, it's, that's not actually the indicator of success. As you said, the research shows that late specialization is actually, you're more likely to continue and do well at a high level in your sport. So it's just taking a deep breath. You know, I always like to say, you know, if you have a plateau in your performance or you know, you're fluctuating in your performance and you're not tracking how you want to, and you're a teen athlete, take a step back and just see, you know, how can I improve as an athlete overall? Is it in my mental skills? Is it learning about fueling better? Is it learning about recovery? There's always an area that you can focus on that can be improved. It doesn't always need to be performance and training volume.
- [48:00]
A
Yeah, it's so true. It's such sage advice. Hey, team sport coaches, this is the one you've been waiting for. Dr. Martin Bescheidt's brand new course, Met Metabolic Conditioning for Team Sports is now live at Hitscience in just four focused hours. Martin distills his latest research so you can build repeated effort capacity without pointless mileage. Pick the hit format that matches each of your players profile and dose your sessions precisely. No more over or under training you get lifetime access, full course handouts, a hit science certificate and CEUs, all for just $299. You won't find this value elsewhere, so head over to the hitscience website, hit the pop up and enroll. We'll see you on the inside. Hey team, Big news. We have just launched the new Athletica athlete app, what We've been calling App 2 and it's the closest thing yet to having a sports scientist in your pocket. So this isn't another static training plan, it's an AI coach that you can actually talk to. Ask it how recovered am I today or should I change this session? Why is the week set up as it is? And it answers based on your training files, your history and your load response over time. Under the hood, it's powered by the same hitscience principles that we talk about on the individualized interval training, Critical power and pace, hrv, guided load management and polarized training distribution. On top of that, you get a completely new sleek interface and a full training experience. Integrated community in App Help and Athletica U Education built right into the platform so that you understand the why behind every session, not just the what. There's very little out there that can read and analyze your files, keep tabs on your recovery, and coach you using proven sports science. But that's exactly what we've built in Athletica's new app 2. Head on over to Athletic AI and check it out today with a free trial. Hey team. At Hitscience, we've learned that the best knowledge doesn't just come from books or labs. It grows through conversations with other coaches, practitioners and athletes in the field. And that's why we've created the hitscience Community, a global space to connect, share and turn sport and coaching science into practice. Inside you'll find free courses, applied discussions and a worldwide network of professionals who push each other forward. So don't just keep up with the science, be part of shaping it. Join the Hitscience community today for free. Simply access through our website, our socials, or click the link in our show notes. Look forward to working with you on the inside. Julia, one of the things you mentioned was the individual response to the menstrual cycle and the I guess ultimately the symptoms that can actually affect your training around your period. And this came through with one of my other guests, Madison Taylor, who was leading the Fundura study, which was probably one of the most rigorous studies done on female athletes. But one of the things she did say, she's really leading that movement around the mean response, the general mean or average response, is that indeed there are. You know, when we blend all the women together, there's not a huge effect of the menstrual cycle on training. But she emphasized the fact that there are individuals within that mean that are very much affected by their. By their period around that. That time, and they need to be accompanied or they need to be accounted for. And specifically that. That came down to the responsibility of the coach that's prescribing and. And ultimately, the coach needs to be a good listener and a. And a monitor of that.
- [51:32]
B
Totally. And that's why, you know, a lot of coaches are like, oh, maybe I don't need to talk about that. But if it affects your athletes individually, you need to have some kind of an awareness. And you also need to have an awareness if. If they've lost their period or if they haven't had their period and they're, you know, 15, 16 years old. Because these are. These are some, you know, serious health red flags that are popping up. But, yeah, can you go.
- [51:57]
A
Can you go there? Can. So what is like, that's a big. That's a big rock. And, you know, that's. That speaks back to the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. The hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis. Right. Like, this is a symptom. A period is a regular positive signal or symptom that things are healthy. And now we've had a situation where that is absent for too long of a period of time. You know, that's probably signaling back to the whole. Like, the HPA axis is controlling everything from the nervous system to the endocrine system. So this is. This. There's potential downstream problems there, for sure.
- [52:44]
B
So just as you said, menstrual cycle is a barometer of health. And. And the red. The main red flags that coaches need to be aware of is a female athlete not getting their first period by the time they're 15. And that's called menarche is their first period. And then other ones are they've lost their period for three months or longer. Now, I'll just pause there with those two ones. How would a coach know? They're probably not asking. They're probably not Asking their athletes to track. The athletes don't know. Some parents might have an awareness but often they don't know either. And so it's like where do we begin? But if we distill it really simply, it's just, you know, I think that going forward and there was a paper that came out of Singapore that, that recommended that there's some. Menstrual health is built into the, the screening for a female athlete kind of from the age of 12, 13, because most girls are going to start getting their period around 12, 13. And so you know, have you had your period? You know, get the parents involved too because we're talking about kids. So be talking to the parents and athletes together and include it in the health screening. Do they have a period every three months? If you're working with more higher level, like 15, 16, 17 year olds, every three months, do a little quick menstrual health check by a survey. You know, do you still have your period? Have you lost it? Are you having symptoms that are impacting your ability to do everyday things? That kind of thing. And, and we go through this in depth in the HER strength course and it just, it just makes it so, it's like, okay, as a coach I'm confident that I don't, I, I've got that covered. And it's actually really simple. Yeah, you don't need to become a specialist and say, oh, you're at this type time in your cycle. So we're going to change the training. It's not actually about that. It's just having the awareness and knowing when something's wrong. The other thing is abnormal cycles and abnormal menstruation rather even adult females don't know what that is and they think their mom will have had super painful periods and they'd watch them growing up and think that's normal. And then they're an adult, late 30s, have had this their whole life and they need to take a day off work at the beginning of their period and they think that's just normal, but like it's not normal. And, and, and so there's, there's still a lot of work to be done.
- [55:33]
A
Yeah, for sure, for sure. You know, again I'm, I'm kind of just thinking and spitballing here as you're, as you're talking. I'm thinking about the little bit of physiology that I know about, the HPA axis, the you know, HPA gonadalaxis. And I'm just thinking just like heart rate variability where heart rate variability is kind of a global indicator. And there's a lot of things that can increase or grow heart rate variability in terms of rising that likely it's kind of an indicator of parasympathetic dominance and recovery. And then there's the sympathetic arm that tends to lower the parasympathetic branch and lower that hrv. But it's sort of the same with, with the menstrual cycle because it's attached to the HBA axis. There's probably so many different things and factors that could influence it. It could be stress from an interpersonal relationship or something. It could be the nutritional arm, it could be the training load. There's a lot of parallels with hrv. It's quite interesting.
- [56:40]
B
Yeah, you're spot on. And even I remember the first time I traveled overseas as an adult who had a period, I was 20 and I had a long haul flight and I, it totally mixed up my cycle and I always had, you know, pretty predictable things. And so yeah, stress does have an effect. Yeah.
- [57:00]
A
So yeah, I mean the more you can learn to, you know, we're, we're all N of 1 experiments. The more you can learn to, you know, know that, have that knowledge and then use that as, you know, a barometer as you said of your, the, the more you can equip yourself with that, that knowledge probably as an individual female. That's, that's, that's going to be beneficial.
- [57:23]
B
Yeah. And, and to just like bring it to life a little bit. I think that's, that really is what helps coaches and practitioners is bringing it to life. So say you, you are working with a female athlete and, and you learn that like in the one to two days before their period they really struggle and with symptoms and maybe their coordination or reaction time is off. And literature shows that and that impacts the sport that they do performance wise. And it's just having that awareness in the sport arena is so helpful because then it's like, okay, this is where I think this is what's going on with me today. Okay. And then the coach is like, ah, okay, well this is a session I had planned. But let's just change a couple things for you today because this is where you're at. You know, that athlete leaves feeling way better, they're supported, they don't have the frustration of not being able to perform how they wanted to in the session. And you know, it's, it's huge. You know, going and then also having, you know, a few strategies. Okay. Make sure you eat well, quality food today. You know, have A good sleep, those things, it just makes it so it's like, oh, this is what I can do to help myself. And that's take, you know, that will be. If we can teach people in the teen years these things, they're going to take that their whole life and have that better awareness. And yeah, that's a huge win.
- [58:57]
A
That's amazing. So we're going to be teaching that tonight to our community in a very well attended presentation. I can't wait. And then that's also available to, to coaches, parents and I guess athletes via her strength. Is there any big rock items, Julia, you don't think we've covered so far in the podcast on this that you wanted to put out there?
- [59:26]
B
Just that it doesn't need to be an overwhelming think. I find with, with the female health stuff and female athlete topics, I hear people talking about them a lot, but I don't see people doing something about it. They still don't have that confidence. And, and that's what, that's why I made her strength is to bridge that gap. And it's like, this is what you say, this is what you do. And it's simple. And it could start with a coach just making sure they have period products at training and letting the girls know that, hey, without having done the Hirsch Rank course, which I highly recommend, this is what they can do. They can say, hey, I've learned a little bit from this podcast about your experience with the menstrual cycle and we know that it might affect some of you. So if that happens, you can tell me that, that maybe we need to change the training or you're not feeling well or your parent can tell me. And we've got these period products here if you ever need them. They're in the, this bag. There's a toilet. We've even got a pair of, of spare training shorts and underwear for anyone that ever needs it.
- [60:45]
A
Yeah, nice.
- [60:45]
B
And, and this is something that we can talk about in this space. And, and you know, I've had, I've had coaches that have had, you know, done some stuff with her strength and had the confidence to say that out loud with their group. Parents are usually there. I highly recommend parents being there too. And everyone is just like, wow, wow, thank you, thank you for saying something. And the parents are always very encouraging and like, wow, thank you so much, blah, blah, blah, like it's, it's not going to be an embarrassing thing. Yeah, it's going to be well received and yeah. So just to have the confidence that if you. If you've been aware that, oh, I'm going to have to talk about this one day or probably should do something. It doesn't need to be that difficult, you know, just start the conversation.
- [61:35]
A
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. No, I mean, I guess it comes back culturally and traditionally that it's not typically a thing. Like if we're. If we're putting the male coach hat on. It's not a. It's not something that we're. We're raised necessarily to think about, and it's almost a taboo subject. You know, kind of don't go there. Don't think about that. That's. But. But yeah, it shouldn't be. And especially if we want to get more girls participating and remaining healthy throughout that span. And I, you know, of course, I certainly do. It's true to my heart with my daughter right in the midst of it all right now. And so it's very timely for me. It's something that we're very proud at Hit Science and Athletica to support and partner with you, Julia, with her strength. And we'll be promoting that on a lot of different channels in the. In the very near future. So look forward to that and look forward to more. More info on this and Julia, just. Yeah. On. On behalf of Martin and myself, you know, we're just, yeah. Really proud to be a part of this and thank you so much for you and all you do. And I love how this kind of comes from your heart with your. With your story and. Yeah, it's great. You're out there making a difference. So thank you.
- [63:05]
B
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And, yeah, it's great to have the talk about it and super excited to be able to talk about this with you and. And work together because, yeah, I think. I think we can have quite a big impact.
- [63:21]
A
Yeah, you are, and we will. And we're going to continue to. So, yeah, watch. Watch this space, everyone. Lots more coming.