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<\/a>For former Team USA ice dancer Elliana Pogrebinsky, it took leaving the sport she loved to see some of its flaws \u2014 and ignite a drive to change them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started off last year. A lot of the girls that I used to skate with were coming out on Instagram, saying that they have experienced eating disorders in the past. And only now, once they stopped skating, they started searching for help and understanding it\u2019s a really big problem and wanting to share their stories,\u201d says Pogrebinsky, who competed with Alex Benoit at the highest levels of ice dancing from 2012 until her retirement in 2018. \u201cTo me, it gave the incentive where, one, I didn\u2019t want women to have to wait until they were retired to finally understand that the way they have been going about their sport \u2014 and the way they have been feeling about themselves \u2014 has been wrong this whole time. And I also wanted to give a better platform that could potentially reach more people, where they could share their stories and in addition to that, where we could help educate at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As her skating peers were sharing their stories, Pogrebinsky was studying kinesiology, which is the study of human movement, at the University of San Francisco (USF). She combined the perspective from her competitive skating career and the science from her education to create Women in Athletics<\/span><\/a>, a website and interview series that aims to create change for women in sports. She wanted to have a space for skaters who have been there to share their stories, and for qualified health professionals to give reliable advice.<\/p>\n Their goal, as stated on her site, is to: \u201c[bring] attention to topics often faced in sports such as the female triad (eating disorders, menstrual disturbances, bone mineral loss), burnout, mental health, lack of strength training. I hope to create change in the community to instill more incentive for coaches, parents, and officials to become educated in the fields of strength and conditioning, nutrition, sport psychology, and anatomy and physiology.\u201d<\/p>\n The site includes a resource page of organizations and health professionals that skaters and other athletes can reach out to for help. \u201cNow there\u2019s a platform where I can bring on qualified health care professionals and say, well, this skater came out saying that they have an eating disorder. Now here\u2019s a professional to give you their insight as to what can be done to start working on it earlier, especially because a lot of skaters don\u2019t know what qualifications to look for in a health care professional when they are looking for help,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n For Pogrebinsky, it was about finding a way to give back to the athletic community, and specifically figure skating, in a way outside of coaching.<\/p>\n \u201cI studied kinesiology in school with the intention of helping give back. The goal was to give a broad understanding \u2014 to athletes, parents, coaches \u2014 of anatomy and physiology, the importance of working out in a gym, of nutrition, sports psychology, really anything that goes into an athlete\u2019s entire life, when they are in a sport,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd making sure [the information] is coming from qualified health care professionals, rather than looking on the internet for any information that you might find. I wanted to be that person that athletes could come to and just get help with whatever they wanted, whether it was in the gym, or nutrition advice, or just, you know, be a helping hand that maybe they don’t have somewhere else in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n Flatt shared not only her experiences as a skater, but her expertise from undergraduate and graduate studies in psychology specializing in eating disorders. Pogrebinsky says she relates to each of the skaters she interviews.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s all so similar, where you just hear the same variations of things over and over again. It\u2019s almost always going to be about aesthetics and girls being told that they need to look a certain way in order to be successful, whereas, in fact, that is not true at all,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s athletes being told that they have to fuel themselves in different ways based on aesthetics, which is also wrong. Because if you\u2019re an elite athlete, you\u2019re fueling yourself for the purpose of performing your sport. You can\u2019t try and look like a model while skating four-minute programs \u2014 those two don\u2019t coincide together.\u201d<\/p>\n Pogrebinsky graduated from USF in December of 2020 and lives in Campbell, California, where she works as a personal trainer at 49ers FIT. And she\u2019s also working on a new project, a spinoff of sorts for Women in Athletics. It\u2019s called the Sustainable Sports Alliance. \u201cThe goal is to travel to either different rinks or sports facilities and help inform them about very similar topics as to those covered in Women in Athletics, but more as a seminar,\u201d Pogrebinsky says. \u201cSo rather than inviting people onto my YouTube Channel and just talking to them, this is a little bit more proactive. We\u2019re actually going to them, creating a presentation, sitting the athlete or parents down and giving them their toolbox so that they can keep going in their sport having the right information.\u201d<\/p>\n Her hope for Sustainable Sports Alliance is to give athletes more support and knowledge earlier in their careers, so she\u2019s tailoring the presentation to younger athletes. \u201cA lot of times when athletes get onto an international team, they\u2019re a bit older and they already come with years of bad habits. So what we\u2019re trying to do with Sustainable Sports Alliance is give them the information so that they can, as early as possible, start forming the right habits. And that\u2019s going to help them be an elite athlete for as long as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Check out Pogrebinsky\u2019s interview series and other health resources on her website<\/span><\/a>, and follow along as she launches Sustainable Sports Alliance on their Instagram account, @sustainable.sports.alliance<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a>In addition to the resources on her website, Pogrebinsky has the interview series on her Women in Athletics YouTube channel<\/span><\/a>, where she has interviewed the likes of 2010 U.S. Champion and Olympian Rachael Flatt and current Team USA competitors including 2019 U.S. Pairs Champion Ashley Cain-Gribble and three-time U.S. Ice Dance Champion Madison Hubbell. Outside of skating, she\u2019s hosted an athletic trainer, ballroom dance coach, licensed clinical counselor and a strength and conditioning coach.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n