Just heard a story on NPR about the onset of puberty in America. It’s happening earlier than it used to. No big newsflash there. But one remark got me thinking.
The reporter listed various potential causes. One of them was the hightened level of protein ingested in the diet of pre-teens.
Gymnasts burn an enormous amount of fuel and their protein intake on a daily basis is prodigious. The serious ones are training from the age of 3-5 through those prime Olympic years. ( Fair to say those are… 8-16 ? )
Now, the protein factor was one of many listed together and en masse the factors may be triggering puberty ealier. Protein intake, an overall increase in caloric intake on a daily basis even if that does not result in obesity, hormones present in non-organically farmed meats, etc.
How can it be that so many gymnasts prolong the onset of puberty, showing little to no breast development and narrower hips than more mature females- yet at the same time manage a diet that properly supports the tremendous demands placed upon their bodies by the muscle and bone work being done daily ?
Do gymnasts often come from gymnastic families? If their moms and sisters are tiny with delayed puberty, they are more likely to be tiny with delayed puberty, compared to the general population. The best way to predict age of menarche is to find out your mother’s age at menarche.
Also, if you’ve been training and you then begin to develop height, curves and breasts big enough to impair your performance, you’ll no longer win events. If you’re no longer winning events, we’re not going to see you in the Olympics. So we’re not even seeing ALL girls who train in gymnastics when we see tiny gymnasts with delayed puberty, just a selected subset of the set.
There is certainly an amount of self-selection involved. Girls who incur early onset puberty are more awkward (or, so I am lead to believe) and subsequently drop out of serious gymnastics. Therefore, the only gymnasts you see competing are those who have not reached that stage.
Currently, as per the 1997 regulation, gymnasts must be at least 16 years of age, or turning 16 within the calendar year, to compete in senior-level events. For the current Olympic cycle, in order to compete in the 2012 Olympics, a gymnast must have a birth date before January 1, 1997. There is no maximum age restriction, and some gymnasts compete well into their 20s. The oldest female gymnast currently competing in senior international events is Germany’s Oksana Chusovitina,[15] (b. 1975) who was 33 years,1 month old at the 2008 Summer Olympics. She was 17 years,1 month old at her first Olympics, the 1992 Summer Olympics.
Gymnasts are all muscle; they’ve got a very low body fat percentage, compared to non-athletes of the same age.
The small breasts and narrow hips are partly low body fat and partly self-selection, like WhyNot said: a naturally hourglass-shaped girl isn’t going to go as far as a slighter one.