Women's Soccer: Get Fit While Having Fun

New research shows that women benefit more from playing recreational soccer than from running when it comes to overall fitness. And that's not all: women playing soccer experience a higher degree of motivation when it comes to sticking to their sport, and they increase their ability to bridge and create new acquaintances. Video and photos available from the project website.The study

Over a period of two years, 30 scientist lead by Associate Professor Peter Krustrup, University of Copenhagen, have investigated physiological, sociological and psychological aspects of women's soccer in comparison to running. 100 untrained adult premenopausal women have participated in the study.

The women (65 participated in the physiological study) were randomly divided into three groups: One soccer group, one running group and one control group. The soccer players and runners trained twice a week for one hour. After four and sixteen weeks, all the subjects went through extensive physiological tests. The same 65 subjects + another 35 women playing in soccer clubs were continually observed and interviewed to study the sociological and psychological effects of their training.

Soccer players stick to their game

Many women find it difficult to fit in sport and exercise in their busy daily lives, and many state family and especially small children as the main reason for not finding the time.

The study reveals that contrary to common assumption, the flexibility of running as exercise form actually makes running harder to stick to for most women than soccer, which requires a fixed time and place.

"What is really interesting is that the soccer players differed from the runners in their motivation. The runners were motivated by the idea of getting in shape and improving health. But the soccer players focused on the game itself and were motivated by the social interaction and by having fun with others. As it turns out, the soccer players got in better shape than the runners, and that combined with the social benefits makes soccer a great alternative to running", says Associate Professor Laila Ottesen and continues:

"The women who played soccer have continued their soccer training as a group whereas few of the women in the running group continued running after the study. Actually, some of the women from the running group joined teams with the soccer group after the project finished."

Why soccer players are more fit

When choosing a sport, women tend to favour cardiovascular training to strength training although the build-up of muscles and bone strength are vital to preserve health into old age.

"While playing soccer, the women have high heart rates and perform many sprints, turns, kicks and tackles, making soccer an effective integration of both cardio and strength training", says project leader Peter Krustrup.

"Our study shows that the 16 weeks of recreational women's soccer causes marked improvement in maximal oxygen uptake, muscle mass and physical performance, including the endurance, intermittent exercise and sprinting ability, explains Peter Krustrup, and continues

"This makes soccer a very favourable choice of exercise training for women.

In the recent decade, we have seen a significant rise in women and girls playing soccer. It seems as though women are really beginning to take in soccer and make it a popular sport for women on their own terms. This is a very positive step forward, not only because of the improved physical fitness and health profile but also for the enjoyment of sports", Krustrup concludes.

Publication plans

The present results will be submitted online in the international journal Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports next week (Bangsbo, Nielsen, Mohr, Randers, Krustrup, Brito, Nybo and Krustrup. Performance enhancements and muscular adaptations of a 16-week recreational football intervention for untrained women. Scand J Med Sci Sports, 2009).

In January 2010, the same journal will publish a supplementum describing multiple health effects of recreational football for various subject groups, including men, women, young and elderly. The supplementum includes one review and 13 original scientific papers.

The data will also be presented at the Scandinavian Congress of Medicine and Science in Sports 2010, Copenhagen, Denmark, 4-6 February 2010, and at the 3rd International Football Medicine Conference in Sun City, South Africa, 19-21 February 2010.

The project group currently includes collaborators from Switzerland, Norway and Italy, and major applications are currently being processed to include collaborators from England, Portugal, Belgium, Australia and Kenya.

Funding

The work has been financially supported by F-MARC, The Danish Ministry of Culture, The Danish Football Association and The Danish Sport Federation, The Danish Gymnastics and Sports Associations and by 3F (United Federation of Danish Workers).

Phthalates Hard To Avoid In Food

Phthalates – the softening agents in synthetic materials – were a hot topic during the last decade and have been linked to deformities in the male genitals, diabetes, premature births and excess weight. Now, a study from ETH Zurich has revealed that they are extremely difficult to avoid, even if you eat healthily.Synthetic materials are omnipresent in our everyday lives. To make them soft, flexible, durable and nicer, PVC or synthetically produced rubber is mixed with an organic compound made up of phthalate ester and alcohol (otherwise known as phthalates), for example. The synthetics industry uses about five million tons of these softeners annually; they are present in conventional flooring, cables and packaging materials, but also medical products and cosmetics.

Easy pickings

Because they are everywhere, they can easily enter the food chain and the human organism via food and drink. When and where this happens, however, is difficult to ascertain and has barely been researched. “After all,” says Michael Siegrist, a professor at the Institute of Environmental Decisions at ETH Zurich, “often you don’t know where in the food chain the phthalates get into the food – whether they come from the bucket used to harvest olives, the conveyor belt, or elsewhere in the production chain”.

Consequently, Siegrist supervised a study at the Institute of Environmental Decisions in conjunction with the Institute of Chemistry and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich which showed that sensible eating cannot really prevent the intake of phthalates. As a matter of fact, consumers who eat naturally and healthily and try to keep the chemical additives in their food to a minimum might even be ingesting more phthalates on a daily basis than those who do not worry about their diet at all.

On the one hand, the study was aimed at assessing consumers’ eating habits to show the extent to which they are exposed to phthalates. On the other hand, however, the scientists examined the relationship between the consumers’ exposure and their interest in a natural and healthy diet, as well as their risk perception of chemicals in food, such as pesticides or phthalates, such as with pesticides or phthalates. For the first time, the scientists thus established a link between consumer perception and physical reality as regards the intake of food containing phthalates.

In their study, the research team polled about 1200 people in German-speaking Switzerland about their eating habits. The respondents were asked to provide information on their diet. The evaluation of the survey yielded four characteristic groups: people who eat health-consciously and also rely on vitamin supplements compared to those who eat healthily and naturally, people who do not worry about their food and react passively, and people who consume an especially high amount of fatty and sugary food and ready-to-eat meals.

Junk food no worse than healthy products

To quantify the phthalate amounts ingested by the test people in their food, the researchers used existing data for food where the phthalate exposure had already been examined. It became clear that the people who have a healthy and natural diet ingest most of some phthalates, whereas those who behave more passively in their eating habits are the least exposed to the pollutants. All in all, the results of the two nutritionally aware groups and the “fatty, sugary and ready-to-eat meals” group were similar. However, it seems reassuring that the various tolerance levels issued by the European Food Safety Agency for different softening agents did not even come close to being reached in the study, let alone exceeded. Nevertheless, the researchers admit that the result should be taken with a pinch of salt as not all foods could be taken into account.

All the same, the result seems ironic and the researchers are also at a loss to explain why. Maria Dickson-Spillmann, Siegrist’s doctoral student and first author of the study, stresses that the matter still needs a lot of research. She says, “Our results show that even consumers who make a point of having a healthy and natural diet cannot escape chemical pollutants like phthalates. The findings underline the importance of food controls by cantonal laboratories”. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to advise consumers against fresh fruit and vegetables, for example, as this may cause other health risks.

In recent years, various studies have suggested that phthalates act like hormones in humans: above all, deformities in the genital area in male offspring became apparent. However, additional but still debatable links to sterility and diabetes in men, premature births in pregnant women and premature breast development in girls were also established. Consequently, teething rings for babies without phthalates are now being promoted, for instance, and the food industry is using rubber gloves and packaging materials that hardly emit any phthalates, or do not contain any at all. That said, due to their omnipresence, it is highly unlikely that they can be eliminated from the food chain altogether.