CW: weight loss and dieting mentions In the early days of the 20th century, sports teams tended to select people with an "average" or a "typical" build, f
CW: Weight loss and dieting mentions
By Harry Sutton and Kel Glaister
In the early days of the 20th century, sports teams tended to select people with an "average" or a "typical" build, for all sports. It was presumed that the most typical human shape would produce the greatest performance. When selection for normativity was scrapped, and entry opened to people with previously unwelcome body types, not only did sports teams see an immediate divergence in body shapes between sports, they also saw an increase in average performance in those sports. This seems obvious, looking back. Gymnastics will tend to select for short people, as short bodies experience less stress during lever holds and tumbling skills. High jump, on the other hand, tends to favour tall, light bodies.
However, in some sports, something similar has happened in more recent years. For some time, athletes in gymnastics teams, footy teams and the like all had to be under a certain percentage body fat. The assumption was much the same as the assumption back in the day: being really lean is just better. Therefore, if you're a young kid and you want to achieve Olympic greatness on beam, by gawd you'd better be under 15% body fat. If you're a teen thinking of kicking the winning goal in the grand final, you'd better be lean enough or you're going home. The fitness industry is built on this idea; that the leaner and harder and veinier your body is, the better you'll be. However the reality, like so many other things, is far from as clear-cut, and just like with the body shapes example, the eventual scrapping of the body fat percentage requirements lead to a reshuffle in national teams' layouts. It turns out that some body compositions aren't healthy for everyone. Every body has a 'set point', a weight their body likes to be at. Higher or lower, their ability to do things will suffer.
We've been talking about elite, competitive sport all this time. However, movement is not an inherently competitive activity. You don't win at parkour training. There are places where you can compete (at parkour, or fitness, or just about anything) but fundamentally what we do is a personal, mindful dialogue with our bodies and our environment.