Welcome to Strong Girl Talk, where we dive into the latest in sports science, performance, and well-being—all with a focus on women and girls in sport. Each episode, we take a deep dive into the research, the challenges, and the opportunities that impact female athletes. This week is all about …

Women’s Sports Highlights This Week:

Read the Athletic Article, Put the women’s NCAA Tournament championship game on ABC in prime time.

Want to learn more about Grand Slam Track? We loved watching this different format and wonder what you think about it.

Check out the latest UCI Mountain bike results from Araxa, Brazil. The latest Road Cycling results are here and learn more about what the UCI is doing for women’s cycling.

Sport as a Human Right

The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. We ignite human potential to build understanding and create new possibilities for a better world. Project Play, develops insights, ideas and opportunities to help stakeholders build healthy communities through sports. Alongside the Centre for Human Rights and Sports, UNICEF and others, Project Play developed The Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals framework

The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) developed The Children’s Rights in Sport: The Provision of Children’s Sports based on the UN Rights of the Child. When 9 in 10 children in Norway play sports I think we can say they are doing something right!

We also mentioned True Sport, an approach to values-based sport that is underpinned by seven principles: Go For It, Play Fair, Respect Others, Keep It Fun, Stay Healthy, Include Everyone, and Give Back.

So let’s make this practical with you and the young athletes in your life.

Performance Pillars

If you go to Sasha’s website, you’ll see her performance pillars - Sleep Soundly, Feed The Machine, Move Your Body, Be Intentional, and Engineer Excellence. We primarily talked about sleep and fuel this week.

Sleep:

You can take Dr. Amy Bender & the Centre for Sleep and Human Performance’s validated sleep questionnaire for high performance athletes. (Listen to her on Molly’s other podcast here!) Matthew Walker gave this great TEDTalk on Sleep as your Superpower in 2019, and of course there is his book, Why We Sleep - Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. His updated thoughts ask you to think about Quality, Quantity, Regularity and Timing.

Share with us your results, your sleep strengths, and what you’ll work on from this episode!

Fuel:

Stevie Smith, future Strong Girl Publishing author, consistently shares great information about fueling for you and the young athletes in your life. Other resources for nutrition we love: Canadian Sport Institute Ontario’s Nutrition Hub and The Run Fast Eat Slow Cookbook Series.

And finally we left you with I Love to Watch you Play, helping parents and guardians raise healthy, happy, and successful athletes.

Remember you can follow Molly and Sasha on Social Media including:

Molly - @mollyjhurford @stronggirlpublishing

Sasha - @SGollishRuns @Yellow_Running_Shoes

Get full access to Strong Girl Society at stronggirl.substack.com/subscribe