"Long term consistency beats short term intensity"
Ashley Lin, a Chinese figure skater and student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has faced numerous challenges throughout her athletic career. One of the biggest challenges she faced was puberty and the stigmatism around this sport. In this interview, Ashley shares her personal experience, strategies for maintaining a positive mindset, and advice for teenage athletes going through similar struggles.
Her challenge
There were many challenges that Ashley has faced but the greatest challenge for her was puberty. Puberty changes the ways you look, your body undergoes many changes and girls tend to gain weight during this period. This had a great impact on Ashley as figure skating is a sport that involves aesthetics and the stigmatism around this sport created a perception for her to want to be slim.
For Ashley, it was tough because she was told not to put on more weight, not to gain weight at that time, and was put on stricter diets because she looked a little bit chubbier or she was gaining a little bit of weight during puberty. This also affected her mental health and relationship with food during that time.
“It was a really big challenge. One, maintaining that weight for such a long time, and, two, overcoming the fact that food for me was a huge factor but still putting in the diet and putting in the work to maintain how I was looking at the time. Butt looking back, I think it was definitely not the most healthy way to go about things, but that was how I went about growing and going through puberty. Honestly, my puberty was delayed a lot because I wasn't feeding myself and I wasn't doing a lot to take care of what needed to happen for me to fully develop.”-Ashley Lin
Clench your teeth and push through!
It was hard for Ashley to maintain a positive mindset and to strive through, some days were harder than others. However, she believes that talking to peers is helpful, specifically females, because we would go through the same thing so it was like trauma bonding in a sense so you feel a little bit better that you're not doing it alone.
“I think secondly was at certain times like I had a nutritionist, so talking to her about how I was feeling, what I was craving, and like working around that also helped me curb different cravings but also allowed me to modify things in a way that still maintain like my physique.”
However, she reclaims her experiences when talking to adults like her parents and coaches about mental health and struggles. She says she was “a little bit less open when [she] spoke to them because it was just the nature of being stricter in terms of what [she] wanted to share.” However, she believes that talking to people is helpful as they motivate her to push through the hard times and continue on her pathway to a professional career in figure skating. She advises, however, to not bottle up feelings and it is always better to talk to others.
Conquering negativity
One great advice from Ashley is to “be true to yourself” through the negativity and hate you might get from others. She says that even when you get comments about body shaming and hate thrown around, the mindset that you are not going to please everyone should be the most important thing an athlete should know to lead to success.
And sometimes if “that means like eating more carbs or eating more sugars to help fuel your body, then so be it” because criticism from others should not dictate your understanding of yourself and what works best for you. While she understands that these words are hard to put into action, it is best to keep a positive mindset to get over these kinds of comments and negative stigmatism around sports and body positivity.
Spreading awareness
One thing that Ashley hopes to see more in the athletic community is spreading awareness through people with different backgrounds and perspectives who went through puberty in all shapes and forms.
One thing that helped her gain awareness of the topic was to talk to people in certain careers and people from different backgrounds to understand the bigger picture and
understand their perspectives and experiences which helped shape hers. She believes having these platforms that spread awareness to the difficulties of puberty that are overlooked helped her a lot and she wished that there were more when she was going through the process of puberty which would have helped her a lot.
“I’m so glad to be a part of this and I think it’s great to spread education about girls and puberty and going through different phases in life.”
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