My wife recently pointed me to an article with an interesting and politically incorrect title WHY (MOST) WOMEN SHOULDN'T RUN.
In this article Michael Boyle questions the wisdom of long distance running for women. He advocates interval training rather than marathons because of the higher potential for injury for women relative to men. The crux of the article is described in the paragraph below.
Why do I say this? Two simple reasons. Anatomy and physics. My favorite two sciences. No matter how hard you try or how well you eat, you can't change your skeleton. The problem with most women and running comes down to something they call Q angle in sportsmedicine. I won't bore you with the details, but it boils down to this. Wider hips make for narrow knees. This angle of hip to knee creates problems. Problems are magnified based on the number of steps. The average person gets about 1500 foot strikes per mile. Do the math on your 5-mile run. Running produces forces in the area of two to five times bodyweight per foot contact. Do we need more math?
The article (originally titled as a question Should Women Run? – thanks editors!) generated some heated responses at the blog of one Nancy Toby.
leach -
what a jerk. I don't know what else to say. Elite women runners don't have curves either because they are well....elite and I'm guessing don't have any fat on them.
Iron pol -
What an boob, what a maroon... (in my best Bugs Bunny impression).
M
What a dick.
Nancy Toby –
Actually what pisses me off most is the patronizing tone, telling women what's good for them.Yeah, and males really shouldn't cycle, either, unless they use big fat chair seats, because it's bad for their reproductive organs.
Triteacher –
That is friggin' unbelievable!!!
21st century mom -
What an elitist snob and big fat jerk. Not worth our emotional energy.
I know nothing about anatomy or physics, and cannot intelligently comment on the accuracy of Mr. Boyle’s theories. I found the question an interesting one to ponder, but my primary focus became the responses. Has our society become one in which it is not acceptable to offer theories that suggest differences between the sexes*. Even in the area of anatomy, which is one area that science can actually test. Why is it offensive to question the existence of physical differences between the sexes?
I have no way of knowing whether Mr. Boyle is wrong or right. I do know that he is obviously qualified to discuss the topic and offers rationale that appear reasonable. He is concerned about the higher risk of injury for women from long distance training but this translates to some as condescending and patronizing, even though Mr. Boyle is a professional trainer. This is not a question that exists only in theory. If Mr. Boyle is correct then real people are getting hurt unnecessarily.
I should note that Mr. Boyle also questions the wisdom of long distance training for men as well as certain types of strength training for either sex.
I’ll let Mr. Boyle finish with a response to his critics:
The reality is that whether you are male or female, endurance-athlete training can lead to overuse injury. My point is that the female body type puts them at greater risk. Was my article intended to be a chauvinist rant aimed at demeaning women? No, exactly the opposite. It was meant as a word to the wise.
P.S. I look forward to your comments – psyche!
*Unless, of course, the differences suggest the superiority of the female; then it’s okay.
Copyright ©2007 Michael Garibaldi
Comments (3)
Ah, but now comments are activated, so readers are free to let fly. That's what you get for speaking too soon.
Posted by G'Kar | February 23, 2007 6:58 PM
Posted on February 23, 2007 18:58
Just stopping by to say hello.
I don't think it's off limits to talk about gender differences. I do think that it's useful to consider and then explicitly disavow some ways in which such talk might be misinterpreted. In this respect, it's like trying to convince one's political opponents of something: when you know that people might take your innocuous statement of X (say: this might be a good government program/this program might be a good one to cut) to mean the horrid dreadful Y (all government programs are good; bring on the Nanny State!/all government programs are bad; toss the widows and orphans out to starve!), a few words up front can help to avoid huge masses of pointless argument.
Posted by hilzoy | February 24, 2007 2:11 AM
Posted on February 24, 2007 02:11
I think you missed exactly what about the article made people angry. It's not the suggestion that women get injured doing endurance running more often than men -- that's either true or it isn't, and it's not the writer's fault if it's true. It's that the writer decided that 'women get hurt more often than men' was equivalent to 'women get hurt often enough that they mostly shouldn't do endurance running at all', without doing anything to justify the latter statement. People get cross when they're told they should stop doing something they enjoy without good reason.
(And the argument from 'elite female runners look like men' made no sense at all in context. Someone is an elite runner because they're fast, not necessarily because they're durable -- the fact that wide-hipped women are probably slower than narrow-hipped women doesn't amount to any particular evidence that they have an intolerable rate of injury.)
Posted by LizardBreath | February 27, 2007 3:04 AM
Posted on February 27, 2007 03:04