Jennifer Kirk: Skating's Not-So-Secret Shame

[seniorita]

Regarding seniorita's original question, it is possible to endure hardcore training with limited intake of calories. I've never been a professional athlete, but I suffered from recurring anorexia while playing varsity sports for years in high school.

I havent been professional athlete also but I was an amateur one thats why i wonder how much your body can endure with the level of training they have as top athletes and if it influences their results, you can hold on for some time without proper eating, but how much time?
Eating disorder is pretty often in gymnastics and rhythmic, especially the second where sometimes they really push for your weight in abnormal way, even put you to sauna to lost a grammar or two before a competition, but in skating I d never listened to stories like this thats why i was curious.Thank you for your post

and Joubidou???LOL, I love it.

[pippa]

This is not new. There was a book published decades ago called Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Girls-P...6843293&sr=8-1

The publish date on this revised edition is August 2000, but I think I read an earlier edition in the mid to late 1980's.

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes was first published in 1995.

[Wrlmy]

I havent been professional athlete also but I was an amateur one thats why i wonder how much your body can endure with the level of training they have as top athletes and if it influences their results, you can hold on for some time without proper eating, but how much time?
Eating disorder is pretty often in gymnastics and rhythmic, especially the second where sometimes they really push for your weight in abnormal way, even put you to sauna to lost a grammar or two before a competition, but in skating I d never listened to stories like this thats why i was curious.Thank you for your post

and Joubidou???LOL, I love it.

Models take water pills to lose excess water, so the sauna stories, however scary they sound, doesn't surprise me. As I wrote in my last post, eating disorder is IMO extremely counterproductive in the long run, and perhaps, that partly explains short careers in fs, ag, and rg.

Oh I can't take the credit for "Joubidou", but I thank whomever first came up with that nickname. Just perfectly adorable as the subject himself

[soogar]

Less weight is less pressure on the joints- especially with jumping. As a regular person, when I was really heavy I had a lot of problems with my joints. When I lost weight the pain was gone- and returns if I put on pounds.

The manner in which Jenny kept her weight down was counterproductive to her health. However a lighter body does help prevent injury. Both Baboo and Elvis are robust skaters but both had to deal with a lot of injury. Evan is much thinner after having sustained his stress fracture in his hip than he was earlier in his career.

Keeping a strict diet during the competitive years is probably the best preventative against injury. A skater can always return to a normal diet after the competitive years, but hip, knee and back injuries can last forever and affect everyday life.

[sillylionlove]

I really like this article. I think that it's great that she is being so honest. It's nice to see since now a days so many athletes lie about so many things.

[Medusa]

Less weight is less pressure on the joints- especially with jumping. As a regular person, when I was really heavy I had a lot of problems with my joints. When I lost weight the pain was gone- and returns if I put on pounds.

The manner in which Jenny kept her weight down was counterproductive to her health. However a lighter body does help prevent injury. Both Baboo and Elvis are robust skaters but both had to deal with a lot of injury. Evan is much thinner after having sustained his stress fracture in his hip than he was earlier in his career.

Keeping a strict diet during the competitive years is probably the best preventative against injury. A skater can always return to a normal diet after the competitive years, but hip, knee and back injuries can last forever and affect everyday life.

Do you have studies on that? I don't want to be a brat, but I would really like to know. Because that sounds like some risky statement - not good off-ice training, not good physiotherapy - but a strict diet is the way to go? Being underweight is the way to go in order to prevent injuries?

The way you describe it, it means that it is best to be underweight. Because Joubert is in the lower normal weight. I know it is better for the joints to be of normal weight. But it is better to be underweight? Would Joubert have been less injured (by the way, I don't think he has suffered more injuries than others. Lysacek has always had a hip problemm, now the stress fracture, Weir a foot and back problem, Lambiel has his knees, Takahashi with his knees, Yagudin with his hip, Plushenko with his knees, Buttle with his back...) if he would weigh 65kg at his height?

[Buttercup]

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes was first published in 1995.

I think it deals mostly with gymnastics, though, doesn't it? And the demands of that sport are different from those of skating.

Contrary to what some in the US media seem to think, skating is not just for 15-16 year old pwetty pwincesses. There are many skaters, even ladies, and certainly in pairs and dance, who skate well into their twenties, and who do not look too thin. Joannie Rochette would be a good example. I think she's even said in an interview she has to be careful in training or she becomes too muscular!

Both Baboo and Elvis are robust skaters but both had to deal with a lot of injury. Evan is much thinner after having sustained his stress fracture in his hip than he was earlier in his career.

I would separate stress and strain injuries from training accidents in this discussion. The latter don't seem to me to have much to do with skaters' weight or body type.

Joubert's injuries and health issues that I know of: a foot injury in 2007, when he spiked his blade into his foot and needed stitches; the mystery illness in 2007-8; and back problems in 2008-9. Only the last can be conceivably linked to his weight, and to me he doesn't look heavy at all. As Medusa noted, other male skaters have also had serious injuries - career ending in some cases. It's a sport that takes a real toll on people's body's, and barring breakthroughs in training and medical care, I'm afraid we'll continue to see serious injuries.

[enlight78]

Personally I don't know how they could keep it up for months or years. While I was a dancer major in college I was dancing 16 hours a week and loosing weight no matter how much I ate. At the beginning of the semester I weighed about 180 by the end I was down to 161. My leaps did get easeir but I also got injured by the end of the semester . I couldn't imagine what condition I would have been if I was starving myself. The skaters train up to 20 hrs a week. It is insane for coaches to allow their skaters to do this, (I'm male by the way so its definitly a different issue for women but still it can't help their results that much)

[CzarinaAnya]

What's sad is that it's usually not comments from fans that make skaters go too thin. Half the time it comes straight from their coaches.

[R.D.]

What's sad is that it's usually not comments from fans that make skaters go too thin. Half the time it comes straight from their coaches.

there HAS to be a way to encourage a healthy workout routine and diet without promoting anorexia. I thought many of these coaches would know better by now. Apparently not. BTW, I did a little Googling and it turns out many gymnastics coaches are notorious for weigh-ins and insults.

[CzarinaAnya]

Keeping a strict diet during the competitive years is probably the best preventative against injury. A skater can always return to a normal diet after the competitive years, but hip, knee and back injuries can last forever and affect everyday life.

Not getting enough nutrients in your diet during growing years can prevent good bone mass. Which makes joints far easier to fracture, and can lead to osteoporosis problems later on.
PLUS, in bulimic cases, the acid that the teeth endure is stripping away enamel, and can also lead to permanently damaging vocal chords.

[antmanb]

My guess is that the lighter you are, the easier it might be to jump...? (Not a skater, as you can tell.)

I think , in theory yes - less of you to get up ni the air and rotate = easier jumping. BUT, and it is a very big BUT, this is not necessairly true if you lose a lot of muscel in the weight loss. Remember Yags at the Goodwill Games prior to the Olympics, he'd lost something ridiculous like 15/16lbs in the off season convinced it would help his jumps, and he just lost muscle and his jumps went south. Tarasova enentually talked sense into him and he put the weight back on and was fine.

Ant

Contrary to what some in the US media seem to think, skating is not just for 15-16 year old pwetty pwincesses. There are many skaters, even ladies, and certainly in pairs and dance, who skate well into their twenties, and who do not look too thin. Joannie Rochette would be a good example. I think she's even said in an interview she has to be careful in training or she becomes too muscular!

Joubert has also said exactly the same thing. I think it was a few years ago now, he said he started to do mroe work with weights and had to stop because he bulked up too easily and it was changing his shape drastically such that it would throw his jumps off.

Ant

[Joesitz]

It's hard to believe that building muscle would hinder a skater's air turns. I'll have to think about that.

[antmanb]

It's hard to believe that building muscle would hinder a skater's air turns. I'll have to think about that.

He specifically mentioned his upper body since i think most skaters have very big legs/buttocks proportionately with the rest of their bodies. So I think it's just as simple as - something that is bigger will rotate slower than something that is slimmer, be it muscle or not.

Ant

[Mathman]

One of our old-time Golden Skate stalwarts, going back to About.com, wrote a very well-regarded book about this subject, Diet for Dancers.

"Rgirl" was herself a former professional dancer who afterward took advanced degrees in physiology and sports training. The book is still in print and, I believe, widely consulted.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Die.../9780916622893