Are female footballers trained differently from male footballers?

Hello Mika Biber

Thank you very much for your interesting question about training programmes in men’s and women’s sport. You’ve raised an issue that coaches in elite sport, in particular, are increasingly asking themselves. Before I answer your question, I’d like to briefly explain the academic perspective from which I’m speaking. I am a sports sociologist and sports educator, and my research focuses on gender differences and gender stereotypes from a social science perspective. Thanks to my degree in sports science and my work in teacher training, I also have a sound grounding in exercise and training sciences. To expand on my answer below, you could also contact a training scientist or a movement scientist. You might also ask coaches who work with high-performance athletes. Perhaps you could also get in touch with Swiss Coach.

But now to my answer:

Major differences in training between recreational and elite sport

I’d like to start with your second question, namely the differences between the training of elite athletes and that of recreational athletes. Generally speaking, it’s worth noting that the differences here can be quite significant in some respects. This applies to the volume of training, the training methods and, above all, the level of systematic training planning, which is often carried out in advance over half a year or even a whole year. Due to the high volume of training, consistent and systematic recovery phases are also required, and in elite sport these are frequently accompanied by treatment from physiotherapists. Nutrition, sleep and so on also play an important role.

It can be summarised as follows: As performance levels rise, training planning and methodology also change.

If you are looking for information on this, you will find it in fundamental works on training science, such as this one:

Ferrauti, A. (ed.). (2020). Training Science for Sports Practice: A Textbook for Study, Training and Teaching in Sport (1st ed. 2020). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58227-5

Recognition of women’s football as a sport

Now to your key question, namely the differences between training female and male footballers.

Fundamentally, it can be said that in sports science, the question of whether different training approaches for men’s and women’s sport are or would be appropriate was not even raised for a long time. This was primarily because women’s football was not recognised as a fully-fledged sport for a long time, and the focus was on men’s football (this was also true of other sports!). Research into, for example, training methods and ways of optimising performance focused on men’s sport, and the findings were applied directly to women’s sport.

Gender Data Gap

In the late 1990s, female sports scientists – primarily from the English-speaking world, and in particular from the USA, Canada and the UK – increasingly called for research that took into account men’s and women’s bodies. They drew – and continue to draw – attention to the so-called Gender Data Gap, i.e. a gender-related data gap in the knowledge and research available on women and men in sport. This data gap is found not only in sport, but in many fields of research, for example in medicine. (The University of Zurich now has a Chair in Gender Medicine dedicated to addressing this issue.)

With regard to sports science, researchers have noted since around the late 1980s that the studies carried out almost exclusively included men as test subjects, i.e. as participants in investigations. So, for example, when the research question was posed as to how injuries could be prevented even under high levels of stress at training camps or during major tournaments, studies on this topic were conducted exclusively on men’s bodies. Female players in women’s football (or other sports) were not studied; consequently, the question of whether women’s bodies react differently to training or training loads could not be answered on that basis.

A research project that addressed this issue systematically for the first time in the German-speaking world, with a focus on sports medicine, was carried out at the German Sport University Cologne by Ilse Hartmann-Tews and Bettina Rulofs. You can read about the key findings in the following text:

https://chooser.crossref.org/?doi=10.1515%2Ftranscript.9783839422694.241

It should be available via open access.

A decade of research

Against the backdrop of the criticism levelled at the research and in response to calls for the systematic inclusion of women in sports science studies – for example, on training methodologies – – I would say for about 10 years now – sports science research into, amongst other things, training methods and performance optimisation has increasingly turned its attention to women’s sport. This means that women’s teams have been studied and/or research has been carried out that takes both men and women into account. You may have heard of what is known as cycle-based training. This is currently a major trend that was initiated some time ago – to my knowledge, initially by the US women’s national football team. Research in this area explores the question: how does the menstrual cycle affect athletic performance and physical wellbeing in people who menstruate?

There are also studies which, for example, not only examine susceptibility to injury in relation to specific sports, but also investigate which injuries tend to occur more frequently in women’s bodies and which, if any, tend to occur more frequently in men’s bodies. In Germany, the Federal Institute for Sports Science recently launched a research programme on the topic of girls and women in elite sport, and funding is being provided in particular for projects related to improving training methods. You can find information on this here:

https://www.bisp.de/DE/Forschungsschwerpunkte/FeMaLe/female_node.html

With regard to your question, this means that there is a growing body of evidence on whether and to what extent specific training programmes are relevant and beneficial for men’s and women’s sport.

Caution regarding the perpetuation of stereotypes

As a sports sociologist and gender researcher, I would like to add the following. The research I mentioned earlier is important for designing training programmes that are as appropriate as possible for everyone involved in sport. However, I see the following problems with this:

• The groups of men and women are not homogeneous in themselves either. People are not defined solely by their gender; they also differ in many other respects. Therefore, if we only take gender into account when designing training programmes, this approach falls short. Fundamentally, we must recognise that bodies vary greatly, and this diversity must be taken into account in the design of training programmes in sport.
• Research that focuses on men and women and their bodies runs the risk of seeing only male and female bodies. This overlooks the fact that there are also people who do not identify as men or women, but live according to other gender identities.
• Closely linked to this is the risk that such research reproduces – and thus perpetuates – stereotypical notions of gender, such as the traditional belief that women are not as capable as men. That is why, when conducting research on topics such as performance, training load and training methods, it is important to examine more closely how the study was conducted. What assumptions did the researchers already hold beforehand? Where might stereotypical notions have been embedded in the study design from the outset, and how does this affect the results?

I hope these comments give you some insight into the complexity of the topic you raised in your question. Good luck with your further research!