Training Female Athletes: Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Approaches

Donna Duffy & Louisa Raisbeck

Most coaching systems were never designed with female athletes in mind. Yet, every day, coaches use training programs, recovery strategies, and performance models assuming they work equally well for everyone. The reality is more complicated.

In Plain Terms

Many coaching methods used with female athletes were originally developed using male participants. If you coach female athletes, you are very likely relying on information and data that did not include females in the research. Some of what you implement will work fine. Some of it will work poorly. And more importantly, some of it may be contributing to injury, fatigue, and inconsistent performance, without you or your female athlete understanding why.

Much of sport science was built around male athletes, even though female athletes make up a huge part of sport. Much of what we consider “standard practice” was never built with female athletes in mind. While that is a failure of the research enterprise, it impacts your coaching decisions, every day, in the form of protocols, guidelines, and recommendations that don't quite fit. The fact is, females have historically been excluded from biophysical research due to concerns about how hormonal variability, reproductive risk, and perceived complexity may “interrupt” data and results. As a result, the male body was the focus of the majority of biophysical research and consequently, positioned as the “normative standard” in research design, and by default, the implementation of coaching practices and decisions.

Where the Problem Starts…In the Lab

The implications of females being excluded from biomedical research extends beyond the research lab and onto your court, arena, and field. For years, researchers treated the male body as the default model in sport and exercise research. In simple terms, researchers often chose consistency over representation—and that meant excluding females. This happened because researchers often designed studies around male participants. Researchers often preferred more controlled and predictable study groups, which usually meant excluding females. This bias carried over into human research and eventually into coaching practices. Although policy shifts and priorities have mandated the inclusion of women in funded research, compliance has often been superficial. Consequently, the legacy of exclusion persists. Women remain underrepresented in biophysical research, and even when included, their data are often not analyzed in ways that yield actionable insights.

So, what does this actually mean for coaches working with female athletes every day?

To the Field…

The translation (or lack) of biomedical research extends into sport and exercise science, which is both direct and consequential. Training principles, recovery strategies, and injury prevention protocols have largely been developed using male participants and then generalized to female athletes. This approach overlooks important differences in hormones, recovery, movement patterns, and injury risk. As a result, female athletes are often trained using models that likely not align with their biological and performance needs.

For coaches, this affects performance, recovery, and injury risk every day. When training plans ignore differences in female athletes, the consequences show up in real time: inconsistent adaptation, elevated injury risk, and missed opportunities for performance optimization. For example, a coach might interpret inconsistent performance across a training week as a lack of effort or focus, when in reality it reflects normal body changes. Without that awareness, the response is often to increase load or intensity which can actually make things worse. In practical terms, this means that joint stability, coordination, and recovery can vary across the menstrual cycle. Similarly, differences in strength development, fatigue resistance, suggest that identical training prescriptions may not produce equivalent outcomes across sexes.

From a practical standpoint, applying training systems built mostly around male athletes to female athletes can lead to poor adaptation and inconsistent results. Coaches may mistake normal body responses such as lack of effort or poor conditioning, when in reality the training stimulus is misaligned. In strength and conditioning contexts, this can manifest as inappropriate load progression or recovery timelines. In injury prevention, it contributes to persistent disparities—most notably the disproportionately high rates of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in female athletes, which are linked to biomechanical and neuromuscular factors insufficiently addressed in traditional training models

The implication is clear: “same program” does not mean “equal outcome.” Equality in sport requires precision, not uniformity. Equal treatment does not guarantee equal results. Coaches who rely on generalized data risk making decisions based on incomplete evidence, whereas those who integrate sex-specific considerations gain a competitive and ethical advantage.

Moving forward, coaches must shift from a model of adaptation based on assumption to one grounded in evidence-informed individualization. What does this look like in practice? It starts with small but intentional shifts:

What Needs to Change (not an exhaustive list)

• Recognizing the menstrual cycle and hormones as factors that can affect performance, injury and recovery.

• Adjusting training load, intensity, and recovery strategies accordingly.

• Implementing neuromuscular training programs that address known injury risks.

  
  

Asking whether the research behind a training method actually included female athletes. Ultimately, closing the gap between research and practice is not solely the responsibility of scientists—it requires coaches to become critical consumers of evidence. The failure to do so perpetuates a system in which female athletes are trained on borrowed data, rather than on knowledge that reflects their own physiology.

Call to Action

Coaches should critically examine the evidence informing their training decisions and ask a fundamental question: Does this evidence actually reflect the athletes I coach? A practical starting point is to ask whether a recommendation, protocol, or training model was developed using female athletes or includes sex-specific analysis. If that is unclear—or absent—it may warrant reconsideration before applying that evidence uncritically in practice.

Key Takeaways for Coaches

• A substantial portion of sport and exercise science has historically underrepresented or excluded female participants.

• Training models derived primarily from male-based data may not transfer directly to female athletes or produce equivalent outcomes.

• This mismatch can contribute to suboptimal performance adaptations, elevated injury risk, and poorly calibrated training decisions.

• Even modest, evidence-informed adjustments—grounded in sex-specific considerations—can meaningfully enhance athlete health, performance, and long-term development.

Author Bios

Donna Duffy, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). In her role at UNCG, Donna serves as the Director for the Female Athlete and Brain (FAaB) Project, as well as the Female Athlete Health Initiative. Donna is also the Director of the online MS program in Sport and Exercise Psychology and the Program Coordinator for the Sport Coaching Minor.

Donna is the Editor-in-Chief of the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal (WPSAJ), the only peer reviewed journal solely focused on the girls, women, sport and physical activity. Donna’s research centers on how sex as a biological variable influences the mental health outcomes among female athletes who experience repetitive head trauma. Donna has led several interdisciplinary research projects investigating how female athletes experience and recover from concussions across different levels of play. Her studies employ both quantitative methods (including surveys) and qualitative approaches (such as in-depth interviews and focus groups) to capture the lived experiences of female athletes and their experiences with sport related head injuries. Dr. Duffy’s broader scholarly interests include female athlete development, gender equity in sport science, and the translation of research into applied health education and advocacy initiatives. Her work is grounded in the belief that advancing the health and safety of female athletes requires both rigorous science and a commitment to listening to women’s stories in sport.

Dr. Louisa D. Raisbeck, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). In her role at UNCG, Louisa teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in motor learning, motor control, and learning and performance, while also mentoring graduate students in the Human Movement Science concentration. She is actively involved in research and applied practice related to motor behavior, skill acquisition, and athlete development. Louisa’s research focuses on motor learning and control, with particular emphasis on attentional focus, feedback, practice structure, and the mechanisms underlying skill acquisition and performance enhancement. Her work examines how motor behavior principles can be applied across sport, rehabilitation, aging, and human performance settings to optimize learning and movement outcomes. She has led and collaborated on interdisciplinary projects exploring balance control, locomotion, expertise development, and the translation of motor learning principles into coaching and rehabilitation practice. Dr. Raisbeck’s broader scholarly interests include expertise development, coaching education, female athlete experiences in sport, and the integration of research into practical performance and learning environments. Her work is grounded in the belief that effective coaching and teaching require both scientific rigor and meaningful application to real-world movement and performance contexts. In addition to her academic work, Louisa has an extensive background in competitive swimming as both an athlete and coach. She previously served as a coach at Indiana University and as Head Coach of the Counsilman Center Swim Team. Her applied experiences in swimming continue to shape her scholarship, particularly in the areas of coaching science, athlete development, and evidence-based practice in sport.