Runner's World glorifies body-composition analysis, then categorically condemns it the next day
RW has been disseminating self-contradicting pablum forever, but this one-two punch establishes a new editorial standard for incoherent contemporaneous messaging
Last Wednesday, Runner’s World published an article with a headline specifically inviting readers to consider what their bodies look like and a subhead preparing them to shrink those bodies intelligently.
The phrase “weight-loss potential” ensures that readers register one message: “This is a weight-loss article—everything else is keyword-capture dressing.”
The opening sentence asks readers if they feel like they’re constantly battling their bodies on the run. (Not me. I usually feel great when I get out there, even when plodding, knowing the time will be interesting and worthwhile. It's everything else I'm battling, hence my daily running habit.) Having already planted the idea of weight loss in readers’ minds, it reminds them all sorts of others are trying, too. It's a big, worldwide competition, and your ass is part of it.
The piece then quotes elite runner-turned-book-author Lauren Fleshman:
"We make this assumption that a female body, to be excellent, has to have a very narrow band of body fat, but that's not actually true. There's more body diversity possible in excellence in the female body. You see it all kinds of sports—women's tennis, for example."
In standard, non-fembot English, this translates to "Not all elite athletes are especially lean—look at female tennis players."
Women’s tennis is in fact a pretty awful example of an exception to the norm. Maria Sharapova is 6' 2" and 130 pounds, Daniela Hantuchova was often Twiggy with a racket in her hands, and the Venus sisters (in-prime Serena) together boasted at least 300 pounds of lean body mass in their days of hey. Most professional tennis players are ripped, even if they’re not usually small. And they should be, as they’re all juiced to the last strings of their rackets. In contrast, golf, softball, and weightlifting are examples of sports that allow athletes to reach the elite level with substantial (for an athlete) levels of body fat.
The article then instructs readers to aim for lean body mass. How this is any different—at least in women—from "weight loss," I have no idea, since achieving a higher proportion of lean body mass means some combination of losing fat and gaining muscle, and most women don't naturally accumulate much muscle mass—especially regular runners. But it doesn't really matter, because this story has already explicitly owned up to being a weight-loss advocacy piece up at the top.
Choice excerpts:
"If you're a competitive athlete, your aim is likely the lower end of the body-fat percentage scale (again, taking your somatotype into consideration), but remember that you are never gunning for zero fat, and lower is not always better."
"Don't get too hung up on trimming every little ounce."
Does anyone think those little disclaimers stick at all? The message is, even if you're large-framed, you can still become more ripped. Or at least smaller.
This is the money passage:
The body-fat ranges for optimal health are 14% to 30% for women and 6% to 25% for men.
Including number ranges expressly compels readers to wonder what their exact body-fat percentage is. This invites readers to subject themselves to a body-composition analysis, since almost no one has the equipment do this at home. “Understanding your body composition is liberating,” promises the author. And this puts the idea in many readers’ minds that a good body-fat percentage to shoot for is 6% if you’re male and 14% if you’re female.
The explanations of the three traditionally accepted body types—first described in 90,000 BCE by short, powerful, beetle-browed men squatting in a cave in what is now France, and not reconsidered even one goddamned time since—contain the observation that ectomorphs can be "skinny fat”; that endomorphs "are most likely to feel like they drew the short straw" and "struggle to keep their body-fat percentage in check”; and that mesomorphs are basically superheroes who can "lose weight easily."
What if someone who thinks she's a mesomorph actually can't lose weight easily? Is she now to conclude she drew a short straw after all?
This piece is mostly noncontributory and harmless filler—the "eating for body type" parts were just entertainment—in the form of a weight-loss article repackaged to suit people's individual hang-ups: a too-flat ass here, a prickly-pear shape there, two ungainly flipper-like feet on one side, an overly saggy, collagen-starved donkey-scrotum on the other (or directly above).
All of this imperfection is to be endlessly celebrated—but never replicated. Because all of these body parts can be made leaner. And everyone else is on the move, so get going on that battle against your own body.
Okay, fine. But the very next day, Runner’s World—still under its January 11, 2023 ownership and “management,” according to sources—apparently decided this rapidly cloying advice needed some tempering.
This time, the headline and subhead combine to tell readers that many top collegiate runners are subjected a harmful tool called body-comp analysis—the specific benefits of which RW loyalists have just read about. It even includes the definitive claim, “The practice doesn’t help young athletes improve performance.” Since the author, Cindy Kuzma, clearly didn’t talk to every collegiate runner, this statement immediately shoots down the article’s credibility. But the story’s content is far less relevant here then its placement.
The first six paragraphs describe a runner, Rachel Minor, who had adversarial personal experiences with body-composition analysis at two different colleges, understandably concluding that she couldn't see how this tool could help her or anyone. (She’s not alone, but this is not a consensus opinion among collegiate runners.) Now graduated and in a professional position to change things, she has "phased out body composition testing on all the teams in her purview, including track and cross country" in her post at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
That's six straight paragraphs on why no serious runner should even consider undergoing this kind of testing. Minor saying, “I think body composition testing increases risk for disordered eating and eating disorders" and adding that the testing contributes to symptoms of depression and anxiety should be enough to talk any sane reader out of wanting to know anything about their body-fat percentage, as none of these emotions strike me as “liberating.”
The remainder of the piece is typical Kuzma drivel in which she again fails to concede that external agents are not the primary drivers of eating disorders in highly competitive running environments. Kuzma writes these kinds of monotonic “weight doesn’t matter” pieces everywhere she can, either because she doesn't fully understand competitive running minds or wants to extinguish them in a demented application of harm reduction. And she has plenty of company.
Every experienced competitive runner knowingly enters the arena accepting that weight remains an issue of importance, and that for every random observer who says you’re too skinny is another who arrives to whisper that you could maybe lose five pounds. You hope for good mentors and mates and move forward with your running, with post-collegiate opportunities providing venues for reclaiming anything you believe was unfairly taken from you in your collegiate years, as was the case for me. A continual stream of tsk-tsk-ing from outsiders in the media only serves to amplify existing body-related neuroses.
Such banal “investigations” can also sow division within teams who see themselves featured in these hack jobs. The last time Kuzma wrote this same article for RW, it was right before the Colorado men’s and women’s teams were about to compete at the NCAA National Championships. Was this salvo really to be interpreted as a sincere journalistic intervention on behalf of beleaguered young athletes?
For every collegiate runner with a legitimate story of how body-composition analysis derailed them are far more stories of collegiate runners who simply deal with it by making use of or, probably more often, simply ignoring the data. And as long as any given program as a whole is perceived to benefit from internal physiometric procedures and rituals, it is going to find a way to keep them in circulation. Kuzma and anti-athletic sorts like her can keep up the pressure and none of it will scare anyone for long.
And no article that contains passages like this is serious about its thesis:
"Body composition and weight do influence running performance, (sport psychologist Riley) Nickols said—but so do at least 38 other physiological and psychological factors, from genetics to training to motivation and mental health."
Okay, I want to know where someone received grant money to come up with 38 (or more) factors that influence running performance, being sure to mention things no one's thought of yet like mindset and attitude. But this only drives the piece further adrift—who thinks that anyone would rank “body weight” down in the thirties with "Color of childhood wallpaper"?
There’s this: "More than half of student athletes—56.5 percent—who underwent body composition testing said they compared their results to those of their teammates." What a surprise (and I'm sure it actually higher than that). But this doesn't make the point Kuzma thinks it does. It underscores that college runners take careful note of what their teammates look like and at least speculate about their weight. Many discuss this stuff openly.
And there’s this quote from a coach: “I think where you can get in trouble is when you are getting body composition data, and you’re just acting on that alone." No kidding. But how many college coaches ignore mile-repeat times and operate solely on body-comp metrics?
Kuzma closes with a list of unrealistic policy demands of the NCAA, laughably unlikely stuff really, all of it pointless. And "Nickols recognizes these types of guidelines take considerable resources, and that athletic departments are often stretched thin" means he knows nothing on this roster of sanitizing gambits will never tumble into play, and that no one is going to push for them. Kuzma can feel great about again trying to leave what she somehow believes is a helpful stamp on something that completely eludes her. Distance running has never benefited from a single finger-waggling ninny on these issues and ultimately just learns to ignore them.
But suppose at this point you as a reader are tempted to agree with Kuzma that body-comp analysis is a rotten thing for most people. Or at least widely pointless, which I would co-sign. Why, then, did Runner's World publish an article inviting every reader to give this very process a shot just one day earlier?
I would suggest that going forward, the editors of Runner’s World (and the equally maladroit bumble-barons in charge of the Outside, Inc. publications) wait at least a week between unfurling completely contradictory articles like these. I would also suggest putting them in the reverse order. That is, run the long, bitter takedown piece first, establishing whatever’s being villainized as comprehensively damaging, and then publish the chirpy “Check this out!” piece second. It’s “funny” either way, but it’s more comedic with things ending on a positive but wildly disingenuous note.
Later this week, after some influencer-trashing, I’ll be writing about the time I helped someone cheat in a marathon because he had brought the wrong shoes and could definitely have qualified for Boston for real if he’d brought the right ones. After that, I will offer various brief disclosures about catching covid for a tenth time despite never getting any mRNA treatments; my DIY vasectomy that went several swipes of a poorly sterilized tin-can lid too far; why I think I can play women’s tennis without the net; and why drinking and driving is almost always stupid when more than one drunk dog is riding in the car. And I would thank this week’s newsletter sponsors, but I forget who the hell they are, or used to be before I published this.