Maëlle Ricker's gold medal in snowboard cross is the stuff that fuels the Olympic dreams of girls across Canada.
But before taking up training, young women be warned: Female athletes are far more likely to be injured during regular training and competition than their male counterparts.
According to University of Alberta professor Vicki Harber, a former Olympic rower who researches female sports physiology, women need simple but specialized training to avoid injury, and she warns against a one-size-fits-all approach.
Prof. Harber's paper, The Female Athlete Perspective, was promoted by the Canadian Sport For Life organization in the run-up to the Olympic Games as a guide to parents, coaches and athletes. She is now developing a report on physical literacy for young girls, dealing with injury prevention and sport nutrition. Prof. Harber spoke to The Globe and Mail from her home in Edmonton.
You say “women are not men; children are not small adults.” Can you explain?
When we think of the origins of training programs for elite athletes, those were often conducted on white males and so, as a result, we take the findings from white males and we apply them to women without any considerations of whether it's going to be different.
Now that we've got almost as many female athletes as male athletes competing at the Olympic Games and world championships, we have a growing body of literature in the scientific area [that offers] a much better understanding about how women are adapting to male-generated programs. And this is now where we're starting to understand, “Oh, there are some subtle differences,” and this is where some of the musculoskeletal injuries have come to bear.
It's the same thing [for children]. Most of our training programs are generated in adults and we seem to apply them without care or concern that we're applying these adult-oriented programs to young, growing children.
What kinds of injuries are more common among female athletes?
If we look first of all at musculoskeletal injuries, I would say the ones associated with the knee, so patellofemoral joint pain (behind the kneecap) along with anterior cruciate ligament injuries. And when I'm talking about these injuries, I'm talking about non-impact. ... These are ones that typically occur just when the female is undergoing regular training and competition.
ACL injuries are probably two-to-six-fold greater in women compared to men if we match those against the same sport and level of competition.
With the first ACL injury, there's an increased likelihood of a subsequent ACL injury, and we also know that an ACL injury increases risk for early onset of osteoarthritis. So from a lifestyle point of view and an impact on quality of life, those ACL injuries are certainly important to take a look at.
What does a prevention program for women look like?
It's so simple, one might look at it and go, “Hey, this doesn't look like anything terribly magical.”
Some of the risk factors that lead to the athletes having a non-impact ACL injury often occur during very simple movement skills, like deceleration, coming out of a fast run and slowing down, landing from a jump, and the third type of manoeuvre is a pivot or turn.
Some of the prevention programs then look at what's going on in the execution of these movement skills.
If a girl jumps down from a step and lands on two feet, if you see her knees collapse in, that's one of the telltale signs that the muscle balance between the quadriceps and the hamstrings are not firing properly in order that the knees remain over the toes when they land.
[Prevention programs] often include forms of plyometrics, core stability and balance, looking after quadricep and hamstring ratio – we know that in female athletes, their quadricep strength is greater than their hamstrings – so part of it is improving the relative strength between those muscle groups.
Mostly, just practising the very moves that will put them in trouble, but to execute them properly with attention to the muscle strength and muscle balance required.
In your paper, you mention some specific sports, like cross-country running, gymnastics and soccer, in which girls suffer higher injury rates. Are these sports somehow harder on the female body?
I wouldn't say they're any harder on the body. I think it goes back to whether you have those movement skills that I just described, and if they're not executed properly or if the strength isn't there to match the speed of the game.
How should women train differently than men?
Habits are formed in the very early formative years. So parents become vital in making decisions on behalf of their children, on behalf of their daughters, about what kinds of programs their child gets enrolled in. Parents then can ask, “Is your program mindful of any of the differences around male and female performance?” and “What does your program do to prevent ACL injury in my daughter?”
Is there a way of dealing with these differences without sending the message to your daughter that she's somehow more fragile than her brother?
It was not so long ago – probably as little as 100 years ago – when there were many sports or sport opportunities that were defined as not appropriate for women to get involved in for some pretty archaic reasons.
But the idea now if we're suggesting that there's a reason to put them back in the closet again and not let them play, [that's] not at all [the case]. I would say the overwhelming evidence we have around the benefits of regular physical activity and engagement in sport and competition, in particular for young females and women, are undeniable. Undeniable.
So when we now have some ideas around that there might be some vulnerabilities, that's good news because we now know how to help female athletes navigate them.
