Stop-rules — they override every plan
· Pain is a stop signal, not a training variable. Stop the movement, tell your coach and a parent.
· Shoulder pain in the water or in dryland: stop, back off the volume, and see a professional before returning.
· Dizziness, chest pain or unusual shortness of breath: stop immediately and tell an adult.
· Nothing here is ever trained to failure, and no plan overrides how your body actually feels today.
Warning signs worth knowing
When under-fuelling becomes a health problem
There is a point where not eating enough stops being a performance issue and becomes a medical one. Sports medicine calls it Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), and in female athletes the related pattern is the triad — low energy availability, disrupted or absent periods, and weakened bone. It is common in swimming, it is treatable, and it is missed constantly because the early version just looks like a dedicated athlete having a rough patch.
Signs worth taking seriously: skipping meals or building rules about what you are allowed to eat; training through constant tiredness; periods becoming irregular or stopping; growth or development seeming to stall; repeated stress fractures or bone injuries; getting ill more than teammates; feeling cold all the time; anxiety or guilt attached to eating.
Talk to someone
Talk to a pediatrician or a sports dietitian, and tell a parent. This page cannot diagnose anything and is not trying to — but several of these together is a real reason to get seen, and going early is the whole point. Nothing here is a judgement about you.
American Academy of Pediatrics — adolescent athlete nutritionAAP clinical guidance on the adolescent athlete: growth carries its own energy cost on top of training, and Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) / the female athlete triad present through bone, menstrual and growth signals that warrant clinical review
NATA position statement — disordered eating in athletesNational Athletic Trainers' Association consensus on preventing, detecting and managing disordered eating in athletes: warning signs belong to coaches, parents and clinicians, and referral is the response — never a diagnosis from a screen
For parents: what to notice, and what to say
The behaviours worth noticing are usually social before they are physical: eating separately from the family, new rules or whole categories of food dropped, unusual interest in what teammates eat, distress when a meal plan changes, disappearing after meals, training on top of scheduled training. Alongside those: stalled growth, a period that stops, repeated bone injuries, or performance sliding while effort climbs.
What helps when you say something: lead with what you have seen and with concern for their health, not their weight or their appearance — comments about bodies, including approving ones, tend to make this harder. Sport is often where it is spotted first, and a parent raising it early changes how well it goes.
Talk to someone
Start with your pediatrician, who can refer on to a sports dietitian or an eating-disorder specialist. NEDA helpline 1-800-931-2237. If a coach is commenting on your athlete's weight, that is worth raising with the club directly.
NATA position statement — disordered eating in athletesNational Athletic Trainers' Association consensus on preventing, detecting and managing disordered eating in athletes: warning signs belong to coaches, parents and clinicians, and referral is the response — never a diagnosis from a screen
American Academy of Pediatrics — adolescent athlete nutritionAAP clinical guidance on the adolescent athlete: growth carries its own energy cost on top of training, and Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) / the female athlete triad present through bone, menstrual and growth signals that warrant clinical review
Knowing burnout when you see it
Warning signs worth naming out loud: performance sliding while you train the same or more, dreading practice you used to enjoy, sleep getting worse, irritability, nagging soreness that stops clearing. These are reasons to talk to your coach and a parent — not reasons to push harder.
Talk to someone
Talk to your coach and a parent — these are reasons to adjust, not reasons to push harder.
AAP / Jayanthi youth training-load guidanceAmerican Academy of Pediatrics youth-sport guidance plus Jayanthi et al. specialization research: weekly organized-sport hours beyond the athlete's age in years, and fewer than 1-2 rest days weekly, track with higher overuse-injury odds; cited in paid-tier-build-spec.md §5
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