Female Athlete Load Monitoring

Hey Just Tri babes!

If you're new here, the Just Tri Performance mission focuses on and invests in female athlete development. Ultimately, the aim is to inspire the next generation of females and empower them with knowledge and tools they'll need to be successful in and out of sports. You will always find Just Tri exploring the boundaries and pushing to understand more in the fields of research, application, preparation, and performance. Hopefully this blog gives you a little insight on the new supportive trends for female athlete development across sports.

Player load management is very specific to the environment that you play or coach in. Training environments should provide a safe level of physical stimulus to produces maximal roster availability (by reducing risk of injury and sickness) and adaptability. Players, coaches, and parents must buy into the philosophy. It is super important to have everyone that is involved in the player's development on the same page. There is so much that still needs to be done in terms of performance support and research across female youth sports but having an understanding of these three (3) topics is a great place to start.

Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) of the Female Player

What is LTAD? A coach's job is to positively contribute to an athlete's journey by giving them what they need, when they need it. Regardless of the developmental stage, the coach's influence needs to be seamless and progressive in order to help the athlete achieve their dreams and aspirations, and equip them with the tools that will solidify their foundation and lead them to success within their chosen sport.

Coaches need to make sure the players can tolerate the loads of training in order to maximize their capacity and availability long-term. With injury rates are on the rise, youth players can miss out on crucial development periods when they're sidelined. In America, most youth athletes play multi-sports or are members of multiple teams. They play school sports, club, and have private coaches. Establishing open lines of communication and sharing information will help your coaches make informed and more impactful decisions within load monitoring. It will require working as a team (coach, player, and parents) to minimize injuries and assist in long-term development and success. 

There are three (3) important components to consider when working with youth athletes: growth, maturation, and menarche.

- Growth is defined as an increase in the size of the body or it's parts. It's quantified by a change in stature. It's most rapid phase often occurs between the ages of 11-12 years old in girls (aka Peak Height Velocity).

- Maturation is the progress towards the biologically mature adult state. The action and process of maturing.

- Menarche is a girl's first menstrual period. It usually happens around the age of 12.

This is a pivotable time in their development, not only from a load capacity and recovery perspective, but it can be very frustrating for the player. She may feel disconnected from her body. She might not understand menstruation or why her body composition is changing. I refer to this developmental stage as the "baby giraffes" because they're transforming and growing so quickly that their coordination and balance (i.e. motor controls) need time to catch back up. 

So what can you do? Be patient and accepting during this time. Encourage them to talk with their coaches, parents, friends, and anyone they trust about these changes. And in an effort to combat some of the coordination and balance setbacks, the player should spend more time with the soccer ball to maintain technical skill levels.

RED-S

RED-S stands for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. The condition was originally termed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) back in 2014, previously known as the Female Athlete Triad. The IOC explains that the syndrome is a result of "relative energy deficiency that affects many aspects of physiological function including metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis, cardiovascular and psychological health." Ultimately, it's a decline in hormone function due to inadequate nutrition (failure to meet nutritional requirements for a given amount of physical exercise). Through improved research and understanding of its detrimental affects on almost every system of the body, the IOC adopted the new name, RED-S, because its symptoms can impact both female and male athletes. 

If this is the first time you've heard about it, you're not alone... Women can succumb to low energy availability (LEA) - with or without an eating disorder - very quickly so it's important to be in tune with your body and aware of your daily food intake and energy expenditure. LEA often stems from a lack of awareness and education around nutrition. Nutrition should never be compromised or neglected during a busy schedule. In these situations, it becomes even more important. A great place to start is to eat every 3-4 hours and snack around your training (before and after). Consuming carbohydrates and high quality proteins will fuel your training efforts and support recovery.

One of the main indicators of RED-S in female athletes is absent or irregular menstrual cycles because when the body is in a chronic LEA state it tries to conserve energy by inhibiting this natural process.

Having regular menstrual cycles is normal and healthy (aka eumenorrhea). Not having regular menstrual cycles or an absence of a cycle is a cause for concern and considered unhealthy (aka amenorrhea). Menstrual irregularities can be broken down into these 4 categories:

- Amenorrhea - the absence of menstrual cycles lasting more than 3 months

- Primary Amenorrhea - the absence of menarche by the age of 15 years old

- Secondary Amenorrhea - the absence of menstruation for 3 or more months in females with past menses

- Oligomenorrhea - irregular/less frequent menstrual cycles (>40 days)

If you're naturally cycling and experience any of these, you should speak to a medical doctor because your body is in a state of stress. In order to properly recover, consider a multi-disciplinary (i.e. sport coach, dietitian, strength coach, doctor, etc.) approach to develop a plan to increase nutrient availability and manage training volume and intensity.

If you're curious about knowing more, I've written another blog titled "The RED-S, White and Blue" that dives deeper into the subject. 

Managing and Programming for Youth Female Athletes

Now let's bring everything together. First, you need to address are the game demands, specific to position/team/club style. Movements, actions, and demands associated with each position are different and should be viewed as such.

Focus on these load aspects in order to create a safe and progressive way to develop and prepare for players for game days:

- Heart Rate (HR) - players must be exposed to increased HR moments

- High-speed running volume

- >90% maximal velocity - important for hamstring injury prevention - speed of contraction

- Intense accelerations and decelerations - neuromuscular load, force production and absorption (learn how to stop)

- Technical skill - functional, tactical, and positional

- Positional/formation themes

You do not need fancy GPS monitoring or HR monitors to understand the demands of your training and develop a periodization model.

Start by breaking down your sessions and understand the demands within each exercise/drill. Intensity increases in smaller spaces, with less numbers. The demand is greatest on players in 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 exercises. When you expand your training area to medium and larger sizes, the intensity drops but the total distance and opportunity for high-speed running volume increases.

Take it a step further and measure internal and external load. These four (4) methods are commonly used:

- Cardiovascular - total distance, HR data, etc.

- Neuromuscular/Mechanical - high speed distance, acceleration/deceleration, and change of direction

- Cognitive - technical touches, opponent interactions, etc.

- Subjective - RPE scale

If you don't have access to HR monitoring or GPS, use the subjective evaluation method.

In order to calculate a subjective training load multiply RPE x Session duration to get a load unit. A player's highest load units should be experienced during a game. As you plan your microcycle (i.e. 1-week), you can manage load by using subjective evaluations filled out by the players.

It's important to note that you should always know your player's readiness state prior to training and games. Readiness is an acute accumulation of their fatigue status, soreness, stress, sleep quality, mood, and previous 2 night's sleep hours. The higher their readiness score means they have a greater capacity of training, absorbing stress, and recovery.

Readiness and RPE Awareness are pillars to the Just Tri Performance protocols. If you or your club are interested in learning how to implement these player load monitoring protocols (no GPS or HR monitoring tech needed) into your environment, reach out to Lindsay directly at [email protected].

Thank you for taking some time to read this week's blog :)

I hope you have a great week! Have fun and be safe! And as always, Just Tri!!

Yours in Sport,

Lindsay

P.S. Help support and grow my business by following the Just Tri Performance social media pages on Instagram, TikTok, and subscribe on YouTube!!

Instagram: @just_tri365 | TikTok: @justtri_performance | YouTube