Nutrition and Mental Health in Women's Athletics: Mary Cain's Story

This month, Mary Cain dominated the news in the running community when the New York Times published her allegations of physical and emotional abuse while running for the Oregon Project, Nike’s professional running team coached by Alberto Salazar, a world renowned running coach.  Cain was coached by Alberto Salazar, who was recently banned from coaching for violating doping laws.  He has been criticized by athletes for mistreatment for years, and been accused by many elite athletes for over a decade.  Cain claims she was weighed in front of her team and scolded for weighing too much on a daily basis.  She lost enough weight that she didn’t receive her menstrual cycle for 3 years.  She fell into a deep depression, and started having suicidal thoughts and self harming, she only left the team when she approached her coaches about her mental health, and was dismissed.  Cain reports that although she was on the most competitive team in the nation, she did not have access to any psychologists or nutritionists, or any female staff members.  She began to believe what her coaches were telling her, that she need to be thinner to run faster.

Unfortunately, there is very little research on female exercise physiology, and many coaches are unaware of the research that does exist.  It’s a widespread myth that women are at the ideal body fat percentage when they no longer receive a period.  Coaches at many competitive schools encourage dieting and extreme weight loss strategies to delay puberty for women.  Puberty does usually result in a time of decreased athletic performance for girls.  As a way to combat this, the strategy all too many coaches adopt is to keep or revert the female body to it’s prepubescent shape, which often does lead to a temporary time of excellent athletic performance.  However, it does come at the expense of decreased bone density, leading to bone breaks and fractures (Cain broke 5 bones during her career at Nike), disordered eating, and menstrual dysfunction.  Caloric deficiency, low bone density, and menstrual dysfunction is known as the female athlete triad, and leads osteoporosis, eating disorders, and infertility. Ultimately the success achieved by delaying is temporary, and leaves runners defeated when they end up retiring from the sport early, too weak to be competitive, or injured.  

In my experience, it seems that many running coaches don’t understand women’s physiology.  Most coaches train women with training plans that model men’s with modifications including slower paces and shorter distances.  In part, lack of research on training female endurance athletes is to blame for this. Coaches often do not know that to maximize women’s potential they need to design training plans that are specific to female athletes and specific for each athlete within the team, as training should be modified based on where a woman is in her menstrual cycle.  

Above all else, long term physical and mental and physical health, and acceptance of the female body should be priorities when it comes to coaching women and girls at all levels of competition.  

Cain, M. (2019, November 7). I was the Fastest Girl in America Until I Joined Nike. New      York Times.

Longman, J. (2019, September 30). Alberto Salazar, Coach of the Nike Oregon Project, Gets a 4-Year Doping Ban. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/sports/alberto-salazar-doping-ban.html?searchResultPosition=3

Sims, S. (2019, September 23). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5LYGzKUPlE