On March 12, a 14-year-old student-athlete was warming up during a track practice at Allen Park High School when the event occurred. The two coaches administered CPR and called emergency responders to take her to a nearby hospital.

A recent story from WWNYTV.com detailed the coaches’ heroics and the response from the student-athlete’s family. Below is an excerpt from WWNYTV.com.

The 14-year-old later learned she went into sudden cardiac arrest.

“I was very grateful to be even awake, but it was also scary to know that happened to me,” she said.

It was a surreal moment, especially for the athlete, as she had never shown any signs of a heart problem previously.

“She does her sports physical every year for sports activities in high school and middle school. So, this was sprung upon us and we had no idea,” her mother, Kelly Dolan, said.

As she recovers, two Allen Park track coaches are being called heroes. After she had gone unresponsive at practice, they quickly performed CPR and used an AED.

“It got her heart rhythm back before emergency crews arrived. Those critical seconds changed my life, my daughter’s life, and it saved her life,” Dolan said.

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Being ready to respond during a medical emergency is something Allen Park High School’s Athletic Director James Victor says they take very seriously.

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We would listen to what they had to say, then walk out, and nothing would change in our daily routine.  

That’s because making big changes — especially to our health and lifestyle — can be hard, even when we know it could take our performance to the next level. We’re willing to try to train, but we often neglect the work outside the field and gym required to fully optimize our performance. We’re fit — but too frequently, we’re not really healthy.

After all, it’s much easier to do the little things. Swimmers, for example, will shave the hair off their entire bodies just to drop a hundredth of a second off their times. But then they end up grabbing fast food on the road or pulling an all-nighter just before competitions. They take simple actions that save milliseconds but are giving away much more. And virtually every other sport has its own twist on the same story.

Unfortunately, really getting healthy requires more than just being told by a coach, trainer, or nutritionist what to do. It’s about doing the hard work of bridging intention to action. It’s about eating right, paying attention to sleep, managing stress and anxiety, and much more. But that’s hard to do on your own — especially for college students, who are often learning to take care of themselves for the first time. 

Yet getting healthy doesn’t have to be a solo sport. It takes support, and it helps to have someone there to keep you on the right path and hold you accountable. And because each individual athlete is so different — from physical makeup and motivations to lifestyle and diet — there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Each person needs a customized program that’s tailored to help them succeed in their own unique circumstances.

Even the most engaged college coaches simply don’t have the bandwidth to provide this kind of support. They might see where their athletes are having issues off the field, but they don’t have the time on top of all their other responsibilities — and aren’t necessarily trained — to do the individualized, hands-on work that is needed to help their players change their health behaviors. And the nutrition and training centers that have begun to work with universities in recent years typically are less personalized and often only focus on an athlete’s diet and conditioning, rather than looking holistically at all aspects of their health.

That’s where health coaching — a new profession, not yet widely known in the athletic arena — comes in. Health coaches can provide athletes with the tools they need to improve their health and well-being. They work with individuals one-on-one to figure out how to consistently apply and incorporate key health fundamentals into their lives. They help people develop realistic plans for reaching their health goals and then provide ongoing support, motivation, and accountability through regular check-ins that are needed to stay on track along the way. In many respects, health coaches serve as a kind of advisor, support network, and accountability partner all rolled into one.

A recent health coaching pilot we conducted with the University of the Pacific swim team produced a promising initial set of results. Of the swimmers who participated, all reported an increase in their energy levels at workouts and in general due to improvements in sleep and having a greater understanding of their diet and how to plan meals. Every participant who completed the pilot produced at least one personal best time after their health coaching period. 

As Pacific swimmer Paige Sondgeroth explained, “I’m so much more conscious now about all the different ways I fuel and prepare myself for training. I use what I learned every day, and I can say my overall health and eating habits have improved 100%!” Beyond their in-the-pool performance, the athletes are also gaining critical knowledge and learning new behaviors that will help them lead healthier lives even after their college sports careers are over.

» ALSO SEE: Conversation with Morehouse College head coach Terance Mathis

It’s important to understand that health coaches aren’t nutritionists, dieticians, or physicians; they work alongside those professionals to help athletes make changes for themselves, build long-term healthy habits, and self-manage their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. 

And that’s critical because knowing what you need to do to get healthier is only half the battle. Health coaches can support athletes to help them actually do it. As New York Times health columnist Jane Brody has explained, health coaching is the thing almost everybody needs, but most just don’t know they need it yet.

Katie Long is a National Board Certified Health Coach based in Oakland, California, USA. As a former Division I swimmer, her health coaching practice is rooted in providing college sports teams and student-athletes with the personalized advice, support, and accountability they need to be healthy, not just fit. She can be reached at katielonghealth@gmail.com. Katelyne Herrington, a two-time Division I All-American swimmer, is entering her 6th year as the head coach of the men’s and women’s swimming teams at the University of the Pacific.

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The researchers based their study on Sweden’s two highest hockey divisions for men — the SHL and Hockeyallsvenskan, and the women’s top league, SDHL. A total of 648 players, 180 of them women, completed the researchers’ online questionnaire. The focus of the questions was on alcohol consumption, mental health and concussion history.

A lot of research is undertaken in both Europe and the USA into the effects of concussions on mental health and well-being.

“However, we want to investigate more long-term consequences for Swedish top players — six months or more after a concussion. The players’ responses have provided important insights into the links between concussion and mental health effects,” says Mitchell Andersson, doctoral student in psychiatry at Lund University.

He is behind the study, which has now been published in the journal BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, together with Anders Håkansson, consultant physician and professor of addiction medicine at Lund University. When Lund University researchers collated the reported psychiatric symptoms among players, the male players were shown to have significantly fewer symptoms of depression/anxiety and burnout than other men — whether that be elite athletes in other sports or the wider Swedish male workforce. Thirty percent of male hockey players did, however, report at-risk levels of alcohol consumption — far more than in the comparison groups.

For female hockey players, the picture was slightly different. The prevalence of depression/anxiety symptoms was comparable to that of the average Swedish woman. Burnout, however, was far more common: over 19 percent of the women reported living with clinical symptoms of burnout — almost double the rate among Swedish women on average. The female hockey players also reported that they drank a lot of alcohol. The percentage of respondents reporting that they reached the level of at-risk consumption was 36.4 percent — also far above average.

Concerning concussions, both female and male hockey players who reported more concussions were more likely to report elevations in various psychiatric symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety). The correlation was clearest in both sexes after three or more concussions: the risk of developing symptoms of depression doubled, and the risk of burnout was three-and-a-half times higher. More than one in four male and almost one in five female players reported having suffered at least three concussions.

“Other studies have shown that women experience more short-term symptoms after a concussion than men, but it was interesting that the link between concussion and heightened prevalence of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and burnout was equally strong for both sexes. This might indicate that the long-term neuropsychiatric recovery process is more similar in men and women than the short-term process,” says Mitchell Andersson.

To meet the criteria for burnout, the individual is to have lived under stress for a least six months and to have developed a number of physical and psychiatric symptoms. According to Mitchell Andersson, however, it can sometimes be difficult to see what is what — long-term symptoms after a concussion are often similar to those of burnout, such as cognitive impairment, irritability, difficulty concentrating and sleep problems.

The results of the study suggest several lines to follow up, argues Mitchell Andersson. One is to dig into why alcohol consumption among elite players is so high.

“Hockey players are physically slightly larger and are perhaps able to drink a little more. Their own view of themselves, and that of others, maybe that they are a bit tougher than others. There can be a sense of pride in being part of such a subculture. Romanticizing alcohol can be a part of it, for both men and women,” Mitchell Andersson speculates. He played hockey at a non-elite level.

» ALSO SEE: Study reveals effects of resistance training break on muscle and strength

This same self-assumed toughness might contribute to male players actually underreporting possible mental health issues. The fact that such a high proportion of women report burnout symptoms even without concussion might point to a recurring pattern within women’s sport at the highest level: Their salaries are lower than the men’s. They are more likely to have to combine hockey with another job or academic studies. Juggling their responsibilities with late-night matches, often far from home, can be an impossible equation.

“Swedish hockey players at elite level need to know where and how they can get help. There is help available aimed at this target group. Imagine that you are an elite athlete who trains regularly, eats healthily, and earns good money from the sport you love — and yet you are still struggling. Can you imagine how frightening and isolating that must feel? Not having to feel alone in your state of mind is important,” concludes Mitchell Andersson.

This is a press release from Lund Unversity.* 

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The study compared the results of 20 weeks of resistance training in two groups, one with continuous training and one with a 10-week break midway.

The study found that the results for maximum strength and muscle size development were similar in both groups. According to the researchers, the equal progress in both groups was due to the fact that maximum strength and especially muscle size quickly returned to pre-break levels when training was resumed.

“During the first few weeks after the break, progress was very rapid and after only five weeks of re-training, the pre-break level had already been reached,” says Eeli Halonen from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, who is writing his doctoral thesis on the effects of the training break.

“Muscle memory” will next be studied at the cellular and molecular level

The phenomenon where the previous level of muscle size is quickly regained after a break is termed “muscle memory”.

“The physiological mechanisms of muscle memory are not yet fully understood,” said senior researchers Juha Hulmi and Juha Ahtiainen, “and our next step is to study in more depth the cellular and molecular changes in muscles that could potentially explain this phenomenon.”

Maximum strength is better preserved than muscle size

The study also found that maximum strength was better preserved during the break than muscle size.

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