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Female Athletes and Coaches Discuss the Need to Prove Themselves
1.3k Plays3 years ago
In the mountain environment women often feel they are the odd-ones out. Here coaches Carolyn Parker, Maya Seckinger, and Karen Bockel openly share their own drives to not only do everything the men can do, but to do it better. Years of competitive sport, coaching, mountain guiding have given this remarkable group of coaches some wonderful wisdom and insights which they share here. Well worth a listen for any Uphill Athlete, male or female.
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Transcript
Introduction and Backgrounds
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another uphill athlete podcast. My name is Maya Seckinger and we are joined by uphill athlete coaches Carolyn Parker and Karen Brockle. In this episode, we talk about being female athletes and feeling the need to prove ourselves. We dive into the challenges and unique assets women face in the mountain endurance world, along with discussing the inadequate training focuses women face and the frustration behind that. It's a fantastic episode and we hope you enjoy it.
00:00:49
Speaker
Good, I want you to say good morning. It's morning here. It's afternoon where Coach Karen is, but good day everyone. I'm Carolyn Parker. I am a coach with uphill athlete, background in rock and ice climbing, expedition climbing. I've done a bunch of trail running, road bikes in college, lots of things. Been at it for a while and I'm a newbie fly fisher. It's pretty fun.
00:01:17
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I'm Karen Bockel, coach with Alpil Athlete, and I'm talking to you from far away, Chamonix, France, the capital of alpinism. I'm a mountain guide. I've been certified for about three, four years now. I started guiding about 15 years ago.
00:01:35
Speaker
on Denali, cold, big mountain up north. And before that, throughout my junior years in college and after an endurance athlete for a big part of my life, I started running and then kind of by accident fell in the bike racing and did some ski racing as well. Pretty much a fan of the outdoors and the mountains.
00:02:01
Speaker
Hi everyone. I'm Maya Seckinger. I'm also a coach with uphill athlete. I've been around this company for a while. My background is in cross country skiing or Nordic skiing, as some people call it. I've done that since I was a little kid and raced on the national circuit for many years and through college. And I've taken a break from that and potentially transitioning more towards running and other outdoor sports. I grew up in the mountains, um, like these two big fan of the outdoors and mountain sports.
Challenges in Male-Dominated Sports
00:02:30
Speaker
Awesome, thank you too. Today we are here to begin a conversation with the goal of helping women gain knowledge to support themselves in training and build confidence in the mountain environment. That's what we're doing with our female uphill athlete group. So our first topic that the three of us are going to talk about today is this topic of feeling like you need to prove yourself. The frustration that many women feel like they need to prove themselves when they're in a mountain environment
00:03:00
Speaker
like they need to earn the right to be there or when training for competitive events where women are often the minority and feeling a lack of support due to that minority position. All three of us likely have stories we can share on that topic and we're going to do that a little bit and how we handled those situations, support we got or didn't,
00:03:22
Speaker
I know that both Karen and Maya have worked and continue to work in jobs where women are minorities, as well as works that they've been in. So this should be a really fun topic. I'll turn it over to you, Maya and Karen, if anybody wants to share some stories. Thanks, Carolyn. This is a good one to bring up. I feel like this is my M.O. for life.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yes, it is. Miss Mountain Guide, you are a minority. But this whole idea of like having to prove myself is something that's like followed me forever. I don't know if we're like more predisposed to have this mindset in general or where this comes from or if it's a cultural thing also growing up in Europe and being like, you know,
00:04:11
Speaker
This is what you're supposed to be and you're supposed to be nice and you're supposed to do well and that sort of thing that might have contributed to it. And then the whole thing being sort of augmented by being in this environment that's often male dominated and feeling like sort of the odd one out a little bit and then having even more of a need to prove oneself.
00:04:33
Speaker
I completely agree. I feel like especially just being a coach in this world, I mean, in skiing, I've had experiences where I've been the only female on a team, but I would say Nordic skiing, you know, if you ski in college, the teams are pretty 50, 50 male, female.
00:04:48
Speaker
you know, being in the world of being an endurance or mountain coach, you know, there's, I think four of us in all of uphill athlete as female coaches, um, with a pretty big team of men. So I always felt like, you know, we have to maybe
Societal Expectations and Supportive Environments
00:05:01
Speaker
work harder. I think Karen's right. I think we're a little predisposed to be like, you got to keep up with the boys. Like we got to, uh, prove that we are just as good or better. Um, I know you got to beat them really. Yeah.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was a sad day when I stopped being able to beat the boys like in races. That was hard for me because, you know, I think we're all have a competitive streak in us. Since we're just in this line of work, we've all raced a lot. And I think, you know, that transfers over into work and life. Yeah. What I found, it's sort of funny that the beat them. So
00:05:39
Speaker
I'm in my fifties now, thank goodness. When I was younger, I used to call it my Tinkerbell attitude. Because in the original Peter Pan movie, Tinkerbell used to sing to him, anything you can do, I can do better. And so that was, I can do anything better than you. That was my philosophy when I was younger. I was like, just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I can't hang, do, be,
00:06:04
Speaker
which actually really was an asset on some levels. It adds stress. There's a societal lens that we shouldn't be doing the things we're doing because we're girls. But in the same breath, I do want to support that over all these years of doing these sports.
00:06:25
Speaker
working in these industries, having those challenges, I have certainly gained a lot of insight and confidence. But I've also worked with a lot of remarkable men. And so that is something to highlight is that there have been some exceptions, and that is the challenge. But it's nice to know that especially in the mountain environment, coaching environments, for example, the team and uphill athlete,
00:06:53
Speaker
Generally speaking, we've got a lot of fairly woke men around us that are trying, right? You try really hard. They do a great job. I mean, we're really lucky.
00:07:06
Speaker
which is why we've got this female epilathlete group going so that more women can, you know, have access to us and help like share stories. I mean, Karen, if you had situations, I mean, do you feel like in your world of mountain guiding, which I know as a fully certified guide, you are in a significant minority, but do you feel like generally you get support from the community? Is it still,
00:07:32
Speaker
Is it pretty good? In some ways, I sometimes feel like being a woman is an asset in that world because you can offer some things that maybe all those 99% of male guides can't offer. You've got something special. So that can be nice. And at the same time, when I show up at a hut, for example, with lots of local guides, say from France or from Switzerland,
00:07:58
Speaker
And I'm there and I'm friendly and I say hello and they don't view me as much of an intruder or competition. And often it allows me to like start the conversation and we'll talk and we'll talk about conditions and we'll share information and experiences and it becomes a positive thing for everyone involved, you know? And so often I can be like the one who starts it, which is nice.
00:08:21
Speaker
But it also has its hard moments,
Self-Improvement and Gender Divisions
00:08:24
Speaker
of course. And I think one thing that really helped me along the years of being in sort of the minority is that when I was running at the time, like I remember in high school, you know, trying out for the varsity team, I would have made the boys varsity team.
00:08:40
Speaker
and it was sort of boys and girls always separate, but in the mountains, you're not competing against someone else. You're not divided up into boys and girls. It's like the mountains are the challenge and we're there to do our best regardless of who we are. So that's something that I've come to realize and that gave me confidence and allowed me to sort of look beyond the gender issue or division.
00:09:07
Speaker
I think that's such a good point that, and I think you can take that outside of the mountains too, because maybe not in high school, cross country, but in life, you know, you're not really competing against a male or even females. Like you're competing or you're just, you're just living, you're not even competing. You're just proving yourself, what you can do, if it's in your job or in the mountains or in a relationship, like you are your own competition or your own challenge. And I think it's a good thing to remember that.
00:09:35
Speaker
doesn't really matter what gender you are or how you identify. It's really up to you. Yeah. With everything I had done over the years, people asked me frequently. I run a strength conditioning facility, which is not common. I used to guide. Karen does. It's being in minority roles for work, as well as sports you choose. And people would ask, why you do?
00:10:02
Speaker
And I used to say, it's what I do, I do because it's a passion in my heart and soul. It really doesn't have anything to do with anybody else. And I try to do it in a very genderless formula in the sense of like, I'm not good at this for a woman.
Training Approaches for Female Athletes
00:10:16
Speaker
I'm good at this. But within that, just understanding that we are different than men. And I think that's one of the beautiful things that our women coaches
00:10:27
Speaker
like Karen said, in her situation in the mountains, she can diffuse any tension, she can start conversations, you know, she can be like the ambassador, you know, of all that. And we can do that as women, we can coach men, because we've done a lot of these things, but we can also
00:10:44
Speaker
use that asset of understanding the difference of what it feels like to be a female athlete and what modifications we need to make to achieve because we have a different physiology.
00:11:00
Speaker
And I know Maya had experienced that when she was younger in competitive sports. The protocols for training young women are different than young men. And this might be a nice time to maybe pause and roll into another subject. What do you all think? Yeah. Yeah. So our next topic.
00:11:22
Speaker
that we wanted to dive more deeply into. And again, I know we're all going to have a lot of personal experiences here.
00:11:30
Speaker
is when being trained an inadequate training focus. And so this was something that a lot of women expressed frustration with. So it was sort of demystifying and debunking this common issue of non-female coaches, coaching women, maybe modifying training inappropriately too easy or not modifying at all, it was too hard.
00:11:56
Speaker
It doesn't mean that we can't have equal performance. We want to come at it slightly differently. And we have different physiologic makeup than men. But maybe we can share our experiences both as athletes and maybe a little bit as coaches in the way we like to talk about that. Maya, you and I were talking a little bit
00:12:19
Speaker
about something like that earlier. Do you want to share that or some of your experience? Yeah, well, absolutely. I think so, you know, training male versus female, I think is, it's different, but also it's the same. Like people, women and men have the same goals in the mountains. Um, I think we don't fully change our training structure. I think a lot of the time, I mean, depending on the individual, our training is so individualized, you know, men and women can handle a lot of the same Arabic volume.
00:12:44
Speaker
specifically Carolyn and I were talking about strength training. And I think we see the biggest difference just in our makeup, you know, our strength, the weight ratio is different. I think women usually carry more weight in a way than men do not because they have less, more fat and then not as much muscle. So we were talking about, you know, a lot, some of our workouts are written that you should start with 10% body weight for, you know,
00:13:07
Speaker
doing squats or lunges or whatnot, and I was asking Carolyn because she is the strength expert, what her thoughts were for women who maybe don't have as much of a strength background, doesn't mean they're not fit, doesn't mean they're not strong, but taking an approach of maybe easing into strength training a little more and doing maybe more of six to eight percent body fat rather than with a man I think I've found, they just have more base strength, like in the gym strength. If you throw them some heavier weights, it doesn't have the same impacts.
00:13:36
Speaker
as you would see with a woman. That's good that you're bringing up strength training right away. That's what I feel like I was really missing as an athlete myself. Like when I started training, I did lots of volume and lots of endurance training, but I didn't hardly do any strength training. And the boys, you know, at that time they could get away with it because then they already had some more muscle and we're just overall like stronger in that way.
00:14:04
Speaker
And I wasn't, it was something that would have helped me, but I didn't, you know, I didn't get that from my coaches at the time. Yeah. And you know, it's so, so true, Karen, that, you know, I feel fortunate for this, like the situations that set me up to get into strength training early on.
00:14:26
Speaker
So I started some scheduled sort of routine strength training at about age 18. And then, and that was through cycling and work with my brother and that was a long time ago, 35 years ago.
00:14:42
Speaker
you know, I was more of a legs and legs athlete that yeah, like backcountry ski never bikes. So I got into climbing and then had to kind of twist that strength training understanding I could see where my upper body strength limitation was like I had a lot of potential to be strong, but I wasn't like I maybe I could do a pull up and for female athletes, you know,
00:15:07
Speaker
We don't have the same usual sizable bone structure difference. We don't carry nearly as much testosterone, all those things. And so for joint stabilization, for injury prevention, for speed and power, and then you look at mountain athletes a lot of times. So I run a strength conditioning facility, as you know, specific to mountain athletes.
00:15:30
Speaker
And getting people in the door, they're like, I just want to be outside. I know you want to be outside. One to two hours a week, all you got to give me. And you're going to injury prevention. You'll go faster. You'll feel better. Your posture will be better. But it's not even present today in our mountain culture.
00:15:51
Speaker
And that's where I feel like it's so great that Apple Athlete really reinforces that and provides that education for all of our athletes, but especially for our women who frequently are not as often comfortable
00:16:08
Speaker
or you'd feel comfortable to get into a gym environment, although that is changing. It is. I think when we talked about this before, Carolyn, just women's fear of bulking up in the gym or not having the right education, I sort of a tangent, but I think relevant to this conversation, I was listening
Strength Training and Injury Prevention
00:16:26
Speaker
to a podcast. It was sent out, I think, to all the coaches.
00:16:29
Speaker
about strength training for ultra runners and this research they've done about women and their tendon strength. And this, I've had tendonitis in almost every joint growing up. It's been one of my biggest like problems with sports for me. And it lays me off for weeks or one time I had to take almost a full year off just to try to heal. And they're doing research that like women it's have weaker tendons, especially with their cycle. So they're seeing more tendon injury for women. That's way more frequent than for men.
00:16:58
Speaker
you're going to see more like torn muscles or pulled muscles because they don't have as much flexibility and their tendons are stronger. So they're not seeing the same types of injuries. I didn't even know that. I thought it was so interesting that like our tendons get weaker through our cycle. And then, you know, how can we as women like counteract that with specific strength training and how can we be careful and not overuse our tendons? Um, so I think that's another thing as coaches, we,
00:17:23
Speaker
pay attention to now. And I wish I had known as an athlete for sure. And it would have answered some questions about why do I have tendonitis in my feet and my knees and my shoulders and my elbows all the time. Yeah. And especially because you were young and doing all of that while you were growing. Yes. So, you know, you're very taught. It grew a lot. I'm six foot. So there was a lot of energy going in a lot of different directions. Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
It's a little off topic but fun because this is what we're doing. You definitely need to come to Meissner conditioning facility. I do. I need help. And you would fit right in because I have a staff of Amazons. I don't know how it happened. Yeah, I think I made a trip to Colorado. I know. I'm the shrimp at 5'7".
00:18:09
Speaker
like all my girls are like five nine five ten another anecdote for me it took uh it took being really injured to really come to terms with strength training because but before that i could just sort of get away without doing it you know i could i could progress on the bike or running by doing those things and i didn't really know what i what i was missing and i did like the haphazardous journey into the
00:18:38
Speaker
gym every once in a while and that wasn't very productive. But after I got injured with a bad knee injury and lost lots of muscle and had to have a second surgery a few years later, I really needed to train up my quality and my muscle. And so then I was like researching strength training a lot more and starting to spend lots of time in the gym to grow that thing back.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, and it worked and I saw the progress in the gym became my happy place. It was pretty amazing transformation, you know, and I could see the benefits like on my own body what the strength training was doing and what it was allowing me to get back to, which is what I really love being in the mountains, you know.
00:19:18
Speaker
I need to start making my gym the happy place again. You're gonna inspire me. Come to Colorado, see the theme over and over, get on the plane, come and visit. You know, Karen, that is so great. I love the happy place.
00:19:33
Speaker
I don't strength train a ton every week, but it is my happy place when I go, I love strength, obviously. I love strength training, but I love, yeah. You can come to Colorado too. Let's all come to Colorado and strength training. And then we'll go into the mountains. Because that's what my gym is. That's what my vision with strength training is. It's a support mechanism.
00:19:55
Speaker
so that you can go do the things you want to do and be confident, not get hurt, continue to spend your entire life out there, which is what we all want to do. Yeah. So yeah, the strength training is so invaluable for that. And that was my thing. Like I was exposed to it young and then by the time I got to climbing,
00:20:16
Speaker
You know, I had that super obsessive personality in person, and I wanted to get better at climbing, but I knew I needed to be stronger. And that's not the only thing that makes you better at climbing. We know that, but I did the same thing. Started picking up the books, you know, everything, two door bump. I read everything and just started applying and got strong. And I love being strong too. And not bulky, Maya, right?
Core Strength and Closing Remarks
00:20:41
Speaker
Not bulky. Strong, not bulky. That could be our tagline.
00:20:46
Speaker
Hashtag. I also, I don't know if you guys have found this. I think women are strong in their core more than men. I always give women's core workouts and they're like, that's easy. Like they, the focus when I work with women, it's like stabilization of the hips. So your knee tracks correctly, all the little injury, preventions, strength in shoulders and arms and like those bigger muscles. But I think women have a strong core. It's just what I've found. I don't know if you guys have found this.
00:21:15
Speaker
I'm not, no, I'm, maybe I'm the outlier, but I don't know. I mean, I think women are like hard on themselves naturally, but comparing like the same strength workouts I've given men versus women, I usually find that the women are like, yeah, that was good. I can push me harder.
00:21:33
Speaker
I find that sometimes women, like especially endurance athletes, are really efficient and so they find work arounds. That might be it. And core weakness is one where they find good work arounds. Yeah. I've seen, yeah. And I'm being facetious here. Men just complain more.
00:21:54
Speaker
That's it. That's why we're the ones that can get birth. You know, that it's the whole life cycle thing. Yeah, you're probably right. My theory is wrong. Carolyn corrected. Oh, I think your theory is rock solid. But you know, it's just the whining factor might be less. That's, that's me being funny. Don't get mad, boys. Anyway. Well, that was really fun. That was a good chat.
00:22:24
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in. For more information about joining our female uphill athlete group kicking off October 11th, 2021, go to www.uphillathlete.com. We would love to have you.