The needs of female athletes have long been neglected, but a study at the Australian Institute of Sport is aiming to close the gap in more ways than one, writes PAMELA WHALEY.
The continuing rise of women’s sports means research needs to catch up to meet the needs of athletes.
And change is finally happening, with rugby league at the forefront.
For five weeks, 27 Indigenous female rugby league players are being poked and prodded, educated, tested and pushed to their limits in a revolutionary study conducted at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.
Not only will it help fill in the gaps in research into female athletes – which is shockingly rare – but the NRL believes it will assist with talent identification with the NRLW competition to expand to 10 teams next year.
It’s hoped it will also boost the number of Indigenous women within the Jillaroos program and broaden the pathways for players from remote areas to play in the NRLW.
“We decided to target Indigenous women because we felt that we wanted to increase the representation of Indigenous women, not only in the NRLW but the Jillaroos, that was my overall goal, still is,” says Simon Buxton, the NRL’s elite women’s performance manager .
“We’ve got so many talented women out there in remote places but they just don’t have the clear pathway to the top level and they don’t get assistance in these remote areas.
“We were really fortunate to be successful, I think we beat the Hockeyroos, Matildas, ACT cricket, a few other sports who expressed interest but we managed to get ours in.
“There’s a heap of education delivered to the players involving nutrition, menstrual cycle, cultural workshops, cultural support, goal setting, assistance around employment and resume writing and all those sorts of things, so it’s much more than just a training camp.”
Overall, the study will have big ramifications into the Australian sporting landscape for female athletes.
There is limited information on how the menstrual cycle impacts female athletes and their performance, and answering this question is a huge part of the AIS study. It’s one of the first studies to characterize menstrual phase and hormonal contraceptive use with gold standard methodologies.
Sleep quality and quantity across the menstrual cycle, establishing determinants of performance, breast pain in female collision sports and pelvic floor health will also be examined.
Like many female sports, the NRLW was flying blind when it first launched.
Nothing was known about how fit female rugby league players needed to be, their strength benchmarks or speed and power data.
All of the research and literature is mostly focused on male athletes, and across all sports, not a lot is known about how the different physiologies impact performance.
“There’s not a lot of research in women’s sport. I couldn’t give you the statistics, but most of the literature across all codes is predominantly around the male space,” Buxton says.
He’s been a strength and conditioner and sports scientist for decades, but has worked with the NRL since 2016 ahead of the 2017 Women’s Rugby League World Cup.
His passion for knowledge and growing the women’s game is infectious – but vital to rugby league too.
“Specifically for women’s rugby league, we didn’t have any data, we didn’t have any research to work out what the movement patterns were, how fit an athlete had to be, how strong they had to be, all those sorts of things,” he says.
“Over the past six years or so it’s been establishing what the normative data and benchmarks have been, and how physically fit we had to get the players. With movement patterns that’s around GPS data and all that sort of stuff and I guess in men’s rugby league there’s been research in that area for the last 10 years, so it was really establishing those standards and benchmarks that we had to get the players to. “
Currently it means coaches, physios, strength and conditioners, trainers and the athletes themselves don’t have the information they need to truly be their best. Not only that, but for the game to be the best it can be.
For the AIS study, rugby league players have been selected from all over Australia, some from as far as the Torres Strait who have never set foot in a gym before.
They get access to elite training, while being put through educational programs like media training, career and cultural workshops, resume writing, nutrition and health lessons to help boost all areas of their lives to help them be successful.
“There’s so much we don’t know as performance staff and coaches. Women’s physiology is different from men’s physiology. We still need to research the areas of nutrition and sleep and the menstrual cycle, those areas that impact performance,” Buxton says.
“That’s the information we need to get across to help build the sport. How it impacts the players, for them to transition into a professional code for years to come I think it’s absolutely vital.
“As the sport grows I think with the amount of investment and further resources, that will organically happen. The men’s game has been around for over 100 years, the women’s game, from a national competition perspective, it’s only in its infancy. It’s grown really quickly but we’ve got a little way to go yet.”
For the NRL, information is critical to making decisions about the sport itself – from the ideal number of interchanges to how long a game should go for.
It also helps coaches spot a talent and have benchmarks – just like in the men’s game – to determine whether a gifted player will make a good semi-professional, and one day professional, athlete.
“It’s only a small piece of the puzzle but it’s really important. If you see a player who you like, you think, ‘Oh gee she’s fast’, you can validate that with their sprint times and all of that stuff, it’s another piece of evidence for talent identification,” he explains.
“Same as strength testing and all those sorts of things. We use the testing parameters not just for training interventions, but also gives us a body of information to go, ‘She’s strong in the gym, she’s got a lot of lean muscle’. It’s not everything but it helps.”
Recently, Sydney Roosters fullback Sam Bremner spoke to CODE Sports about making her return from her second baby and the pelvic pain she endured while pregnant. She looked for as much information as she could about how to train to return to a semi-professional sport post-partum, but it was so limited she trawled through Serena Williams’ book looking for hints.
It’s hoped the path forward will be clearer for future athletes.
“The areas we’re trying to build is that network of industry professionals who have the requisite experience with female athletes, sports physicians, physios, coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists,” Buxton says.
“They’re the people we need in women’s rugby league. They’re vital. Their experience, because they’ve been through it with pregnant athletes or athletes returning from having children, through that experience they can implement best practice, and supporting them through that process as well.
“So many sports don’t do that well.”
Players taking part in the study will have access to their own data, but it could take a while for researchers to write out the manuscripts of results from the study.
However, the NRL will use whatever information it can immediately to help boost not only pathways, but the quality of competition and performance as the NRLW grows.
“The game is changing so fast, the NRLW is getting faster and the quality of play is getting better, because the players are getting fitter, faster, stronger,” Buxton says.
“Year on year you see all the metrics going up.”
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