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MEET THE EXPERTS · No. 1 of 10
The scientist who told sports science what women already knew: women are not small men.
Who is Stacy Sims?
Stacy Sims, PhD, is an exercise physiologist and sports-nutrition scientist. She trained in environmental exercise physiology and spent her career studying how heat, hydration, food and training work in the female body. She is also an author and teacher who turns lab science into plain advice for athletes and everyday women.
What she saw first
Sims noticed something most of her field had missed: the rules for training and fueling were written from studies done mostly on men, then handed to women as if they fit. Her short answer became famous: "Women are not small men."
She did not stop at the slogan. With Alison Heather, she published a 2018 review laying out how to design studies that compare the sexes and track the menstrual cycle, so research on women produces answers women can actually use.
What the science shows now
The research world has been catching up. A 2014 review of more than 1,300 sports-science studies found women made up only about 39 percent of the people studied. In 2016, the National Institutes of Health began requiring researchers it funds to consider sex as a biological variable. Both point to the same gap Sims had been talking about for years.
WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU
If you are a woman who was told to train, diet or recover like a man and it never worked, it may not have been you. It may have been the plan. Sims gives women a reason to ask one simple question about any fitness or diet advice: who was actually studied?
Follow her work
Website: drstacysims.com/wansm
Books: ROAR (2016) and Next Level (2022)
Sources
Sims ST, Heather AK. Myths and Methodologies: Reducing scientific design ambiguity in studies comparing sexes and/or menstrual cycle phases. Experimental Physiology (2018). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Sims+Heather+2018+myths+methodologies
Costello JT, Bieuzen F, Bleakley CM. Where are all the female participants in Sports and Exercise Medicine research? European Journal of Sport Science (2014). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Costello+Bieuzen+Bleakley+2014+female+participants
NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health. NIH Policy on Sex as a Biological Variable. orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender/nih-policy-sex-biological-variable
Dr. Stacy Sims is not affiliated with The Broadside. We feature her work because it helps bring new science to everyday people.
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