This is just an observation, but one that has me wondering what happens to a young girl’s body when it is subjected to the rigors of gymnastics at an early age.
It has seemed that many female gymnasts have a bit of a stunted appearance after they mature and eventually retire from the sport. Kerri Strug, Mary Lou Retton, Shannon Miller, Phoebe Mills, etc–all of these girls have grown into fairly short, and fairly stout, women. Certainly, a gymnast needs a great deal of muscle and power to perform the high-flying feats that are demanded of them, but when the athletes are active, they have very lithe, girl-like bodies.
I know some gymnasts and dancers actually have menarche postponed (or, paused) due to the low body fat percetages contained within their bodies. Is there a similar reason for the change in appearance when maturing? Is their growth somehow retarded? Or, are they exceptionally small girls to begin with (height-wise)? Are there statistics or studies on this matter?
Nadia Comaneci doesn’t look particularly stout in photos I’ve seen of her. Kathy Rigby stayed thin (an suffered through a bout of eating disorders.) Julianne McNamara looked fairly petite when I last saw her.
Some gymnastic events are easier for girls with a lower center of gravity–the balance beam, for one. Being shorter has many advantages in womens’ gymnastics. It definitely makes the vault easier. One of the reasons that most of the adult gymnasts you see are short and stout is because the girls who hit a growth spurt and grew tall, were unable to continue competing because of it. Another reason may be what you said–their growth may be stunted from years of dieting and rigorous training. Hopefully someone else can answer you with studies on that topic–sorry!
So far as their being stout, these girls are very solidly built from a young age. They appear more thin than they really are because of the graceful nature of what they do. However, they must have tremendous strength in both their upper and lower body. They have built up their muscle tone all over their bodies to be able to perform at the levels they do. Mia Hamm will never have nice, even, supermodel-style legs because she has built her leg muscles up playing soccer her whole life. Also, the fact that the girls are so short adds to the illusion that they are also rather thin. They are not fat by any means but they are very, very compact even when they are still competing.
As I said, this is not something observed in all retired gymnasts, but in many of them. It seems (and this is completely this layman’s observations) that about half became fairly squat, and the other half maintain normal proportions.
Most other athletes appear to remain lithe, or at the very least, more evenly distribute the weight gained in their retirement years. Again, I’m curious to see studies regarding this.
There’s a good book about gymnastics and what it does to girls’ mentally and physically called “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes” that came out a couple years ago.
The tall gymnasts are weeded out pretty early. Smaller girls are more aerodynamic, for lack of a better term, and are what is rewarded by judges. The tall ones usually can’t get the scores needed to advance and thus give up.
Elite gymnasts (the highest level of competition) live a very regimented life. They are often on extremely strict diets and exercise for many hours a day. This combines for the lithe appearance you mentioned. I recall reading an interview with Shannon Miller a couple years back where she mentioned she got to eat pizza and ice cream for her birthday, implying that kind of food was forbidden at other times. The book I mentioned above goes into a lot more detail.
I think once gymnasts retire, they aren’t on the strict diets anymore (would YOU?) and are working out a lot less, so they gain weight.
The damage so much gymnastic exercise does to these girl’s bodies is well documented. Many of them have competed with serious injuries. Some have been crippled or died. Because of the restricted diets and repetitive stress, they don’t heal as well either. Sad situation all around.
Girls of a certain genetic type are steered into gymnastics, they being shorter and stockier than average.
Extreme exercise regimens and stresses on the developing bones causes them to ossify earlier than they would otherwise (producing a more squat body type). Can this happen?
[My guess as to the most likely cause] Young gymnasts have EXTREMELY high metabolic rates from all that activity. Plus they are in their greatest growth phase when they become known in competition. Those girls must eat a LOT of calories just to stay at their peaks and avoid starvation. When the activity level declines, eating habits have to change along with them or the gymnast will get fat. Eating habits, you may be aware, are very, very difficult to change. I’ve seen this happen with other athletes, though I don’t really know any gymnasts.
My sister was an Olympic-caliber gymnast, or at least was being trained toward that end. (See my post in your other Olympic thread). She was short and slight during her early training days (~70 lbs. as a 9-10 year old), yet very, very strong.
She matured into a short and somewhat stocky young lady. This is likely a genetic predisposition, as both our parents tended to gain weight. My sister is about 5’2" and ranges between 125-160. She’s had three kids, which has a lot to do with the upper end of that range.
Menarche was slightly late (14) for what is common these days, although not abnormally so.
I’ve always wondered how gymnastic strength would translate into other events (always keeping in mind that each sport
makes its own particular demands on the body for which the
champion must train). For instance, your sister’s one-handed pull-ups sound very impressive. I’ve been in and around gyms, off and on, for a long time but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do such a feat, not even the sort of
guys who are totally buffed out and bench pressing three times their body weight.
Dammit, I read an article on this exact topic on the web a few monts ago, but I can’t figure out what keywords I used to originally find it.
Anyway, yes, many gymnasts are thought to become stocky because of repetitive impact on the growth plates found on the bases of the long bones (Femur, tibia, fibula) of the legs, particularly during critical growth periods during early adolecence.
javaman, I assume there is a point of diminishing returns where extra upper body muscle cannot ovecome the overall mass of the body. In my sister’s case, the force exerted by her muscles only needed to be enough to lift her very light body 2-3 feet. Her training had conditioned her upper body muscles for strength as well as quick-contraction (necessary for the “spring” in doing some of the feats required of a gymnast). Thus, less build-up of sheer mass.
I have no doubt that even if she had stuck with gymnastics, natural growth and increase in mass would have taken over within a few years.
I do wonder, though, how many of our Olympic gymnasts can still do sets of one-armed pull-ups. Looking at the build of some of them (I’m envisioning the arms of some of the male gymnasts on the rings, for example), I would hazard a guess that they are more than capable. If they were buffed out like a weight-lifter, no way.
Female college gymnasts are much much heavier and fatter (not just muscle mass) than their Olympic counterparts. Watch any collegiate meet, or the NCAA championships. It’s true, it’s true- they get fat.
I do know that professional weight lifters can look “fat” with a larger than normal belly. But that belly is full of muscles, not fat. I suspect that what you’re seeing is some combination of yes, maybe some fat, but also a LOT of muscle mass that makes the women look larger than the non-muscular twigs with poofy lips.
I am a good friend of a woman who was a member of the Canadian ballet. She is severely underweight (< 80 lb at 5’2") but claims it is not anorexia but nausea that they cannot diagnose. (I have my doubts; her husband has a BMI of 21 and she constantly nags him to lose weight.) But most of her friends from the ballet got quite fat after they retired.
If I had to guess short, muscular yet lithe women probably have a better sense of proprioception and fine motor control over the movements of their bodies and this is favorable in gymnastics. Its also about proportion there is probably an ideal leg length ratio to the upper body that aids in balance, control, and stamina.
Unfortunately it’s a fact that most short people don’t visually carry their weight all that well. For guys it’s true as well. If a 6’4" man gains 40 pounds people may notice but it doesn’t look all that out of proportion, if his 5’5" friend gains 40 pounds it probably won’t look so great, and because of his short stature it has an exaggerated effect on appearance, it’s hard not to notice.
To convert incremental height to incremental weight in humans you want an exponent somewhere around 2. NIH cite. So to scale the weight correctly we want to use a factor of about 1.17^2 = 1.37.
40# on the short guy would be the equivalent of 40 * 1.37 = 55# on the tall guy. Now how good does the tall guy look?
As well, how “well” somebody carries weight has a lot to do with frame size more than just height as height. Distribution matters too.
A big frame guy regardless of height can have a few pounds spread around and not show it. A scrawny guy regardless of height growing a beer belly can look 8 months pregnant with just 15 lbs concentrated behind his navel.