Closing the Gap: Science Finally Catches Up with Women Athletes

Christine Yu shares 5 key insights from Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Do you run like a girl? Good, because over the last 50 years women have made great strides in athletics and increasing numbers of women are participating in sports and fitness as professionals or enthusiastic amateurs. Yet until recently much of the available advice on exercise and nutrition was based on research done on men. Sports journalist Christine Yu addresses this problem in the new book Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. Christine’s writing has appeared in Outside, The Washington Post, Runner’s World, and other publications, and she joins us now to share 5 of her big ideas.

1. What we know about exercise and sports is based on studies of men.

Throughout history, women have been kept off the pitch, the court, and the starting line, and they’ve also been kept out of the research labs. So much of what we take as gospel about exercise and sports is based solely on studies of men.

For decades, scientists have worked under the assumption that women and men are biologically and physiologically the same if you ignore the reproductive organs. But as I read more papers and talked to more experts, I realized that the exclusion of women was more than an oversight.