How the Centre of Excellence for Women in Sport Is Plugging the Research Gap For Female Athletes

The research gap – or gender gap in research – is one of the most enduring challenges in women’s sport.

Not only is there less research on female athletes, often that which does exist is of poor quality and is limited in its application to athletes.

To compound matters, much of the tech available does not have female athletes in mind, which calls for greater levels of safeguarding for those athletes.

The Centre of Excellence for Women in Sport is a space in which to address all of those challenges. It addresses the unique needs of female athletes, focusing on health and performance support for Olympic and Paralympic sports, as well as professional sport. The Centre also aims to bridge the gap between academic research and practical application in elite sports, ensuring that female athletes receive tailored support based on rigorous scientific research.

Opened in March 2024, the Centre is a collaboration between the UK Sports Institute [UKSI] and Manchester Metropolitan University.

In several key ways it is an ideal marriage. On one hand, the UKSI brings its sports knowledge and knowhow, and understanding of the complex environment of elite athletes and sports. On the other, Manchester Met brings their research expertise and both quality assurance and scientific rigour.

Leading the project are Dr Richard Burden, the UKSI’s Female Health & Performance Lead, and Kirsty Elliott-Sale, Professor of Endocrinology & Exercise Physiology at the Institute of Sport at Manchester Met.

Their hope is to generate richer information that is more valuable and applicable to the athlete, coach and the sport – all of which should lead to greater engagement from everyone.

Both joined the Women in High Performance Sport community call that took place in early October. It was the first of two in partnership between the UKSI and the Leaders Performance Institute. Joining the duo was rower Heidi Long, who won bronze in the women’s eights at the Paris Olympics this summer.

The Centre of Excellence for Women in Sport has three key purposes:

1. Thought leadership and collaboration

The Centre aims to be a hub for thought leadership in women’s sport, setting the agenda for elite female athletes in the UK. Experts from various fields are involved, ensuring that research is co-designed with athletes and coaches. It is then the duty of the Centre to ensure that its findings are relevant and applicable.

Part of this is building a network within elite sport so that the data can be picked up and used again. Then planning the research so that there can be intentional overlaps between sports and a pipeline of future users.

2. Standards and quality assurance

High-quality research is a must. The Centre is committed to producing credible and impactful data that can be translated into practical applications. This involves rigorous methodological standards and continuous feedback loops with athletes and coaches.

Knowing the sport specifics to focus on that help uncover necessary insights, but with the right overlaps to other projects so that the science and sample sizes increase to build the science.

3. Adapting research at the pace of high performance

With research traditionally taking time, the Centre is a live example of research adapting to the needs and wants and context of the sport without losing the scientific robustness that we so need and that’s constantly evolving. For example, exploring less invasive ways of measuring ovarian hormone profiles using saliva and urine based methods.. Whilst taking any measurements can feel time consuming for the athletes, it’s a balancing act of beneficial learning versus over imposing on the athletes..

Realtime feedback has been a key advancement of engaging the sports with the research, and to be able to make changes based on findings before the full project is completed in the run up to an Olympic or Paralympic Games.

All of which raises standards as the data collected is credible, with the potential to be translatable, which in turn increases its utility and potential impact.

Project Minerva is a prime example of this process in practice.

Introducing Project Minerva

Project Minerva – named after the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice and strategic war – is an ongoing research project started by the GB Rowing team in collaboration with the UKSI, Manchester Met and several external stakeholders.

It has set out to investigate the relationship between the women’s squad training programme characteristics (e.g. training volume, intensity distribution and frequency), internal training load (heart rate, RPE, and blood lactate monitoring) and hormone function, on the menstrual cycle and overall health.

For GB Rowing, project  Minerva has been an iterative process, and ,  working with the UKSI Female Athlete Programme, Man Met, and in collaboration with the athletes, has increased the research capability and scientific rigour, so it now provides a valuable resource within the UK sports system, as Dr Burden and Prof. Elliott-Sale explained alongside Long, who shared her experience of Minerva as an athlete during the Paris Olympic cycle.

Project Minerva has led to…

… increased athlete and coach engagement through education and a focus on purpose / the why. The more performance-based something is, the more likely an athlete will be to engage. Heidi Long and her teammates were keen to know what they could glean from the research.

… better communication and understanding between athletes and coaches. This allows for more personalised training and performance strategies (that can be tweaked due to embedded real-time research and data). They could see the results of applied research – and the data that was personalised for each athlete – which was further motivation for a cohort of goal and results-driven athletes.

… the debunking of common myths, particularly those around the menstrual cycle. There is no supporting evidence to suggest that an athlete’s phases impact her ability to train. Minerva – in an unplanned moment of feedback – demonstrated to athletes they could perform – and win – in different phases of their cycle.

… increased use of useful tech. Minerva can call upon technology developed by the UKSI and its partners, such as Intel. Data collection is less arduous and much more accessible as a consequence.

Three questions to ask yourselves when embarking on such projects:

1. Your female-specific research: is it being conducted from a health perspective, a performance perspective, or both?
2. Do your performance team have the bandwidth, the funding, the right people with the knowledge and experience, and capacity develop and deliver to make changes based on the results?
3. Is it useful or merely interesting? Understand the question you want to ask; where it’s come from and why it needs answering.

The Centre of Excellence for Women in Sport’s ultimate vision is to pioneer innovative and impactful research that accelerates the development of women’s sport. This includes:

• Ensuring that research findings are directly applicable to athletes’ training and competition.
• Leaving a lasting legacy through credible data sets, resources, and educational initiatives that benefit future generations of female athletes.
• To allow every female athlete to train and compete to her potential.
• By generating and showing cases resources that can be used, raising awareness that starts now and continues through all future generations.
• Providing trustworthy, reliable, rigorous education tools. Filling the void around female athlete health that is too often filled with nonsense.
• Continue to be a place for athletes, coaches, and all staff to have deeper conversations, as understanding is deepened and academic application expanded.
• Be a hub for colleagues and allies across the world, not just a UK-based centre, but something that becomes truly global. There’s a lot to be learned from one another.

Final question: is any research better than no research?

Not all research is good research. Research can bring beneficial interest in an area, but poor-quality research can lead to misinformation (particularly on social media) as well as misdirected efforts and resources, which is a significant concern in the context of limited budgets and time.

Research has to meet standards in terms of methods, equipment and protocols (all of which can be expensive or time-consuming). Moderate research may have its uses but it’s nuances must be clearly signposted.

Prof. Elliott-Sale explained that research can never be one-size-fits-all. It is important to work with individual athletes, establish their response (if there is one) to stimulus and whether or not theirs is a consistent response. Either way, you can leverage a positive response and mitigate an adverse response.

This article was first published by Leaders Performance Institute