Staying Open to New Experiences with Sports Medicine Physician Yuka Tsukahara

Madam Athlete

On today’s episode, I’m talking to sports medicine physician Dr. Yuka Tsukahara about staying open to new experiences.
Yuka is an orthopedic sports medicine physician and professor of sports medicine at Tokyo Women’s College of Physical Education. She’s served as a team physician for many Japanese national teams and as the lead physician for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games. Throughout her career, Yuka has not been afraid to do and study new things. When she wanted to understand why the Japanese women’s national team sprinters were underperforming on the international stage, she applied for and received a grant that led her to PhD. Yuka is balancing teaching, research, and her clinical work while collaborating across the globe to learn how to close the gender gap in sports medicine.
We talk about:

• How Yuka found sports medicine by staying open to new experiences through medical school and continuing to train and compete as an Olympic-level sprinter. She wondered why some athletes got faster and some got injured and wanted to learn more.
• The discrimination she’s faced in sports medicine, both as a woman and by choosing to work as a non-operative physician.
• Yuka reveals that her talent for networking and making connections comes from bonding over shared experiences.

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