09/27/2026
Agreed
I was giving a keynote earlier this year to a room full of active women, and asked them to raise their hand if they considered themselves an athlete. I’d say maybe less than a quarter of hands went up. The rest looked around, unsure.
The scientist in me had been curious about this for a while, so it wasn't entirely surprising, but it still told me something. I know for a fact there were badass athletes in that room, and plenty of dedicated exercisers too. So why the hesitation?
My guess: many women who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s absorbed the idea that competing seriously in sport was for men, not for them. It sounds outlandish to say out loud in 2026, but the residue lingers; “athlete” still feels like a label reserved for someone else.
Here’s my pushback: if you exercise on purpose, you're an athlete. It has nothing to do with your pace, your division, or whether anyone pays you to do it. It has everything to do with how you approach your training. And that’s actually good news, because it means thinking like an athlete is a mindset shift, not a fitness threshold you have to cross.
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