THE CORRELATION BETWEEN BODY IMAGE, PERFORMANCE & HEALTH

As you might know, I work closely with the local Olympic Center (Olympiazentrum Vorarlberg). I’m one out of four sport psychologists supporting athletes on a mental level, conducting individual mental coachings or workshops on request. Within this collaboration, I work not only with climbers, but also with athletes from other sports such as karate, biathlon or swimming. I always find the insights in other sports really valuable and fascinating – there are so many parallels, yet so many differences in the mental challenges of each sport.

But that’s not what this blog post is about. The other week I received an email by my sport psych colleague from the Olympia Center, Simon Nussbaumer, whether I was interested in working on an interdisciplinary project, in cooperation with dietician Martin Rinderer and sport scientist Simone Schmelzenbach. The topics to be discussed: body image, losing weight in sports in specific disciplines, developing a good relationship with food, your body and doing sports. All of these topics are not only prevalent in climbing but also in other sports. This highlights the necessity of creating more awareness and understanding of these topics. Of course, I agreed immediately.

In the past half a year I had done a lot of reading and research on these topics, particularly in relation to climbing. It had all started when my friend Matilda Söderlund publicly shared her story of being body shamed on Instagram. She was told to not keep on training hard or she’d look too masculine (read more in one of my older blog post: The female body image in climbing). The result on Matilda’s post was an outraged reaction and outcry by many climbers, among them many professionals and particularly climbing girls: why are women body shamed for doing something we absolutely love? This incident triggered many other climbers to share their own stories, insecurities and experiences when it comes to body image and body shaming. When we talk about body image, we talk about our self-perception and attitude towards our own physical appearance. It involves how we see ourselves, compared to the standards that have been set by society. A mismatch between our image of our own body, particularly body shape and weight, and the body perceived as ideal, can lead to body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction is associated with drive for thinness, dieting, disordered eating patterns, and the development of clinical eating disorders (read more: What influences our body image?).

However, the topic is more complex than that. When talking about body image, the line to eating disorders is very thin (I got a befriended clinical psychologist to write an expert guest blog about it – read more here). There is another thin line to performance (read more about one older blog post about The Trend of Teenagers in the Lead Climbing): In climbing, less weight can be a benefit to performing stronger – and we are not talking about an unhealthy loss of weight. Particularly in lead climbing where body weight counteracts gravity. Athletes who compete at elite level or participate in leanness focused sports (such as lead climbing is) might engage in dieting behaviours to not gain weight which could interfere with their sport performance.

You see, all these factors interfere with each other, and often, when talking about one topic, e.g. body image, I have found it hard to not automatically switch to another subject, e.g. performance or eating. In previous discussions, I had often felt like there was a missing link. How exactly were these different factors related? How exactly did they correlate and affect each other? Can we separately look at them or is there a bigger picture?

It was only until I had a chat with dietician Martin Rinderer from the Vorarlberg Olympiazentrum in our interdisciplinary meeting, when I found out what the missing puzzle was: I called it the “Martin-Model” (after Martin Rinderer who introduced me to it. There probably is a scientific name for it but since I’m not a dietician, I don’t know to be honest). This model shows perfectly well how all of these factors correlate:

However, this model is not only interesting from a nutritionist’s perspective but also from a psychological perspective. There are three parameters: health, constitution (body image) and performance which all overlap, regardless of whether we are professional or recreational climbers. To be able to maintain our best possible performance and well-being, our main aim should be to keep a healthy balance between all of these factors.

Depending on what stage of life (or of the competition circle) we are in, we sometimes have to focus on one parameter more than on others: e.g. if the Olympics are coming up we might focus a lot more on the factor performance than on the other factors health and body image. However, neglecting one or more parameters for a longer period of time will sooner or later lead to an imbalance for which, in turn, we will eventually have to pay the price. Here is another example: if we always ignore the health component, we will sooner or later suffer from the consequences (in the worst case, developing e.g. eating disorders or other physical and mental illnesses). If we don’t develop a healthy body image and are confident in who we are and how we look, we will develop insecurites which potentially impact our life, climbing or even health. Not everyone has the physical constitution to be a top athlete but ignoring this factor can potentially impact both the health or performance parameter. You can see, all of these parameters are interdependent.

Why is this model interesting not only from a nutritionist but also from a psychological perspective?

Nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle is more than “just eating” and impacts not only our performance, but also our life, well-being and health. It is a lot about our relationship with food and the associated emotions. The aim should be to develop a healthy relationship with food and our body before it’s too late, before having developed any disorders. For some of you, this can mean to ask a professional for help. Whether that’s a dietician to develop a healthier diet and better understanding for nutrition in general or a psychologist for a better relationship with your body and food, or maybe even both, is up to you. Performance, health and constitution influence each other. Creating more awareness and understanding that all of these factors are closely linked together is a first important step in order to prevent any unhealthy behaviours or even disorders.

Talking about increasing awareness: we are currently working on an interdisciplinary offer at the Olympia Center in Vorarlberg for sports clubs and federations, for trainers & parents and for athletes. The project is still in its infancy. However, if you would be interested in collaborating and find out more about potential workshops or talks, subscribe to the Newsletter to stay updated.