By Rachel Woodland, Lottie Wright & Sarah Evans

There needs to be more support for practitioners, coaches and others working in sport when it comes to better understanding women’s health.

That is the consensus across our Women’s High Performance Sport Community, from ongoing conversations to a recent mini survey conducted during our latest Community call, where the focus turned to education for staff.

We were joined by Dr Natalie Brown who is a Research Fellow working as part of a collaboration between Sport Wales and Swansea University with the Welsh Institute of Performance Science [WIPS].

Brown leads the Sport Wales Female Health & Performance Team, which has grown to seven members and is responsible for supporting all staff at Sport Wales in their journeys towards better understanding women’s health.

Brown’s own reasons for her specialism in women’s health stem from her time as a performance scientist with Welsh and British Swimming. She wanted to know more about what she didn’t know and to support the female athletes as best as possible to optimise their performance. It was an early nod to the relevance and interconnectedness of women’s health for practitioners.

Support for female athlete health at Sport Wales

In Brown’s time, Sport Wales’ approach to female athlete support has progressed from being wrapped around individuals to three areas of focus:

1. System level support
2. Individual athlete support (and support for practitioners too)
3. Sport-specific support

There are also three key themes that span everything Sport Wales do: athlete development, health & wellbeing, and athlete environment. Where once Brown worked alone, she now oversees a multidisciplinary team of seven, with specialisms in physiotherapy, physiology, medical, nutrition, strength & conditioning. The work has gone from focusing on the menstrual cycle to include puberty, relative energy deficiency and more to fully encompass female health support.

It is critical for those practitioners to be a good fit and Brown’s team was put together by grouping those who had an interest and the drive and motivation to work in this area of sport. Across the Welsh system, it enabled a network of voices to be created, rather than a single voice; making it more embedded and more natural.

The team work both in overseeing projects and research into specific areas of women’s health and in supporting the athletes, practitioners, coaches, and sports in applying knowledge to their performances. As Brown said, “we’ve got a knowledge development, but we’ve also got application and those two things run in parallel.”

Their efforts to speak to athletes help them to better understand areas where there was suitable support and where there was not. It enabled the sports science and medicine teams to adapt their athlete support. Concurrently, Brown and her colleagues captured all this information to help inform their progress.

Surveys to better understand ways of working

Seven years ago, Brown’s team circulated a survey for all of Sports Wales’s sports science practitioners. It asked:

1. Did practitioners have conversations about the menstrual cycle in their sports, with their athletes, with the coaches?
2. How confident are they talking about the topic?
3. What is their knowledge level?

The survey was circulated at a time before women’s health proliferated as a topic of interest. It identified gaps, highlighted the steps needed to effect change, and what practitioners were requesting. And so the team came together that now works within Sport Wales.

Having a dedicated Female Health & Performance Team allows planning around how to move forward in support of both female athletes and performance practitioners; and as staff members have changed, so Sport Wales has continued to survey its people. They continually assess people’s comfort levels discussing multiple topics within female health and the factors that influence that comfort.

Brown was also particularly interested in whether or not practitioners know where to go to seek further support. The figures are startling. “20 percent still say no, which is too big,” said Brown. That 20 percent is therefore part of her team’s plan. All practitioners need to know that the Female Health & Performance Team is there to support them, and also direct them to other resources and, just as importantly, emphasise that the whole of a team behind a sport need to have this information shared with them.

A more recent survey enabled Sport Wales to better understand how it can support its system’s network of coaches and practitioners. Indeed, there is a growing cohort that see the relevance of a female health lens in addressing issues such as injury risk and performance improvements. This information has helped Brown’s team ask for additional resources and support. It also helps build the full story and picture.

The emergence of a common practice

Sport Wales conducted the survey, put together a team, worked across its sports, and what has emerged are common practices that help to embed female health as a topic within the Welsh sport system.

For example, as Brown said, “across the three themes [see above] there are always at least two people from the team asking how does that apply from a female perspective? Have we considered XYZ from a female-specific angle?”

The current approach is praised for creating an open culture. The Female Health & Performance Team have worked with the sports to normalise conversations around women’s health and how it relates to performance.

Potentially the most interesting piece to emerge from their most recent survey was around knowledge improvement and how the team want to receive information. The two highest reported options were athlete stories & experiences and resources to read. This has led to a shift in how Brown and the team are supporting practitioners and prevented them from heading down the wrong route. It also means that Sport Wales can also think about how to use the stories and experiences to support wider practitioner development. For example, what would it look like for a new starter?

It’s standard practice for all Sport Wales projects to be evaluated as they happen, which means that check-ins keep the team challenged and relevant, as well as aligned to organisation’s wider aims. Their purpose and rationale remains clear.

Another positive consequence is that Welsh sports proactively approach Brown and her team to request help and support. There’s also now an induction for any athlete joining Great Britain’s World Class Programme. It looks across all areas of female health and includes screening from an MDT approach, which then means specific areas can be addressed for the individual, as well as from the perspective of their sport. The overall goal is to ensure that female health considerations aren’t an extra thing or a tick-box exercise that’s added on but are standard, truly embedded and normal practice for providing individual holistic support.

Compared with how things were done previously, one of the biggest changes for Brown has been planning ahead and thinking about how you upskill practitioners and how to engage with sports, as well as identifying which elements are sport-specific and require different support or consideration; and how to provide those resources for athletes, coaches, and practitioners. This is all with the key moment in mind: ‘the doing of it’.

In monthly meetings Brown’s team create scenarios and engage the practitioners in conversations around topics such as energy deficiency or puberty. It provides the space to address meaningful questions as part of the conversation, such as ‘how does that apply in practice?’ or ‘what does that mean?’ This space has potentially been the most impactful development, according to Brown.

Beyond the work that she and her team are completing, they’re linking in with the other parts of the Welsh network across other universities supporting WIPS and Sport Wales, as well as the other Home Nations of the UK. “So in terms of staying ahead of the curve, it’s always a challenge, especially with the pace at which female sport is currently moving.”

How to make female health a performance priority at your team:

• Invite people external from your female health and the performance team to come in and join the conversations, raising different questions.
• Balance individual needs versus sport specific challenges with whole system support.
• Specialist areas need to consider the female specifics as normal, for example nutrition is thought about with that lens too.
• If you’re working as a lone ranger in this space, consider how things are being embedded, knowledge is being passed on, and progress to creating a team is happening.
• Language is a really important area too. Don’t exclude anyone, but also correct. Underpinning language with evidence has been effective. Language can also be the key to confidence to talk about the topics and roll it out with athletes.
• Consider behaviour changes and the role of psychology in female health.
• Always provide the evidence of why behind knowledge, advice, support. Especially considering the volume of information, including misinformation, being shared around these topics at the moment.

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By Luke Whitworth

In the modern landscape of high performance sport, we often here the phrase ‘everything that is managed is measured’.

Such is the desire to show impact and return on investment, we are indeed measuring much of what can be measured.

Nevertheless, it can be difficult to measure the impact of areas such as coach development work or, as discussed in a recent Virtual Roundtable for Leaders Performance Institute members, mental skills work.

A number of environments on the call were already in the process of measuring their mental skills work, some to a high success level, whereas others were closer to the start of their journey.

In any case, it is fair to say that there are no teams with all the answers, but here are some points to consider.

Measuring the success of your mental skills work

While it is easy to jump into the measuring process, it is important to first build some pre-requisites.

We can’t be trapped into the tendency to measure for measure’s sake. Have you defined and discussed what you are measuring and why? Is it and will it impact performance outcomes? On the roundtable, some members suggested positioning mental skills as a development tool to impact performance; it presents a more positive and forward-thinking narrative.

Make sure you are capturing the data and insights in a valid and reliable way. Also, make time to debrief and discuss results to understand how stake holders are interpreting data.

Does trust exist in the environment between staff, players and the coaches? When we think of the success of effective mental skills or sport psychology support, trust is a cornerstone of a well-functioning approach. Build up the trust before jumping into the measurement or else the data or insight you collate may lack purity. Involve the athletes early in the process as well – working with the athlete on a version of self-evaluation that can be trusted.

Additionally, how can you work through your coaches to get athlete buy-in while garnering their feedback on the athletes’ growth and improvement?

How to capture the impact of mental skills more effectively

Separate the process from the outcome. There is a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in all evaluations of outcome or impact.

One member shared that they combine goal-setting information gleaned from their athletes and ‘progress’ notes within their athlete management system. As part of this process, there have group evaluations centred around athlete makeup twice a year.

Athletes need to have personalised baselines and, therefore, baseline profiling can enable teams to identify the individual’s unique characteristics. Athlete profiling can entail a battery of behavioural observations and group debriefs, which allow you to crowdsource your staff members’ insights into the key areas in which you are trying to measure impact. Psychometric tests may also prove a useful tool. A member at the roundtable outlined how their organisation has started to ask their coaches to provide feedback and rate their mental skills programme.

If you can identify patterns, then your programmes will be much easier to scale. An organisation at the roundtable, an environment with a large number of multisport athletes, has developed a custom in-house tool that enables them to highlight performance gaps, opportunities and focus areas.

By Luke Whitworth & John Portch

Remember: innovation doesn’t necessarily mean the introduction of new technologies but can also be simple changes to existing methods.

In high performance sport, there is increasing pressure on expenditure and efficiency of resource, but innovating within a constrained budget isn’t about cutting costs indiscriminately, it’s about strategic allocation of resources.

The topic was discussed at length during a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable and has long been on the agenda for members of the Leaders Performance Institute.

Here, we draw on those discussions to bring you six ways to sustain innovation on a budget.

1. Set realistic targets and align with strategic objectives

Prioritise initiatives that directly contribute to your mission and long-term success. You should evaluate existing projects and programmes rigorously. One programme whose members joined the roundtable spoke of the value of simple and consistent performance planning using a ‘plan, do, review’ approach. You can also set realistic timelines for identifying trends that enable you to cut through the white noise and better support internal decision making.

2. Leverage existing resources creatively

Evaluate your projects rigorously. An attendee at the roundtable explained they are looking into efficiencies around athlete monitoring and tracking. It speaks to the constant challenge of optimising the efficiency of data inputs, with several members highlighting the collaboration within their teams of different departments around data capture and assessment. It has led to a clearer way of leveraging information and influencing delivery across coaching and other elements of their programmes.

It calls to mind Richard Burden’s presentation at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance last September at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. “What can you do with information that you already have?” he asked an audience of Leaders Performance Institute members. From his position as Co-Head of Female Athlete Health & Performance at the UK Sports Institute [UKSI], he discussed the notion of rethinking existing evidence and spoke of the UKSI’s drive to centralise all blood screens across the British high performance system. It enabled that information to be used in a more informed and impactful way for Great Britain’s athletes.

3. Measure, prioritise and adapt

You need to continuously monitor the impact of your innovation efforts. Use data to assess progress, adjust strategies, and reallocate resources as needed. This has been the approach in climbing, which is a new Olympic sport for Paris 2024. Budgets are small and creativity is a must. Representatives from the climbing world spoke on the roundtable about their key focus being the identification of impactful performance metrics and a more highly attuned understanding of the sport’s demands. It is important to identify projects that have the potential to create significant value or solve critical problems. The roundtable raised the question of coach development support, a “cornerstone enabler of our programme”, as one attendee put it, in environments where money is more constrained.

Similarly, an organisation in cricket on the roundtable spoke of the introduction of small-sided training matches. Though the training ground had to be modified, cricket is notorious for players in training environments inadvertently left standing around. By tweaking the design of training, players in that environment are better engaged.

4. Collaborate and share

Partner with other organisations, universities, or research institutions. Collaborative efforts can pool resources, share costs, and, ultimately, accelerate innovation. On the coach development question, an attendee at the roundtable spoke of collaborating with an academic institution with a speciality in that field. It requires less investment and all sides are reaping the rewards.

This approach has been of benefit to numerous organisations, including British Rowing, whom Burden spoke of during his presentation in Manchester. They worked with Manchester Metropolitan University and the UKSI to ask: how is the menstrual cycle influencing British Rowing’s ability to deliver training and what impact is it having on internal load, competition and the performance of athletes?

“It’s their question – it hasn’t come from research or a university – it’s come from the sport,” said Burden of the project. “We’re there to provide some of the research and innovation expertise to help them formulate the question and work out a path to answer it.”

5. Meet your people where they’re at

This goes for so much more than innovation. You have to tap into the creativity of your coaches, athletes and staff – they will often have valuable insights and ideas. Several roundtable attendees, particularly at talent pathway level, explained how they have taken steps to better engage and support their athletes, enabling them to thrive.

It called to mind the recent efforts of the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA]. Last year, Kate-Warne Holland, the Under-14 girls’ captain at the LTA, told the Leaders Performance Institute that UK pandemic restrictions compelled them to host the majority of competitions in the midlands of England where all players and coaches could travel with relative convenience. The LTA has kept these tournaments due to their transformative performance and development benefits.

“They were so valuable and they were encouraging the private coaches to be there and coach on court,” said Warne-Holland. “It provided an opportunity for the coaches to develop the players right in front of them. So they weren’t on a balcony, watching four matches, and then going home and working on it. We allowed and encouraged them to sit on court so they were able to impact on the player immediately.”

And it’s not just athletes. Performance programmes can be so much more effective when the leaders understand their people’s motivations and how they are doing away from the practice facility. Innovations can emerge from all quarters through the right levels of challenge and support.

6. Fail cheaply and learn fast

Instead of large-scale, resource-intensive projects, focus on failing cheaply in lower stakes environments and learning quickly. As a roundtable attendee suggested, you could have small cohorts of people testing and working on projects safe in the knowledge they have not been tasked with finding the ‘perfect’ solution prior to testing.

By John Portch

When Mike Anthony, the Head of High Performance at New Zealand Rugby, spoke at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Melbourne in February, the new All Blacks Head Coach, Scott Robertson, was sat in the audience.

Robertson then, just as now, had yet to take charge of a match. His first opportunities will come against England in a two-Test series in July, shortly after conclusion of the club rugby season.

“He’s got nine days to prepare for two Tests against England and, obviously, they can start their planning now, but they won’t get those athletes till then,” said Anthony with the tone of a person well-versed in the public scrutiny that greets the All Blacks and the New Zealand women’s national team, the Black Ferns, at every turn in their homeland.

“There’s an expectation on our teams in black that they should win everything all the time.”

This idea was prominent in the minds of New Zealand Rugby when, in 2022, the organisation launched its Strategy 2025. Their aim is for the Black Ferns to retain the Women’s World Cup in 2025 and the All Blacks to continue building towards winning the 2027 World Cup. It’s world domination, but not at all costs.

“There’s an expectation that we will continue to win, so while that’s really important to us, the way we win is critical,” added Anthony.

Strategy 2025 is New Zealand Rugby’s post-pandemic reset and, as their website states, a ‘launch pad to be bold in reimagining rugby – to look at every aspect of the game and ensure it is enjoyable, sustainable and well-positioned for any futures challenges’.

Here, the Leaders Performance Institute sets out what that looks like in practice.

The Rugby Way

As part of Strategy 2025, New Zealand Rugby is promoting Te Ara Ranga Tira, which translates from Māori as ‘The Rugby Way’. Anthony said: “This is how we want to operate as an organisation, not just within New Zealand Rugby but in rugby across the country.”

The Rugby Way sets out four guiding principles that are not just about how the game is played on the field but how it is represented, managed and integrated into the community.

1. Be welcoming (Te pou maioha): rugby is a game for all, regardless of backgrounds, beliefs or identity.
2. Be our best (Te pou hiranga): a striving for excellence on and off the field, driven by a belief that rugby can improve people’s lives.
3. Be passionate (Te pou ihilhi): a belief that rugby builds communities and fosters a lifelong love of the game.
4. Play fair (Te pou tika): this means acting with honesty and integrity at all times.

These all emphasise the importance of respect, unity, passion and fairness, which are fundamental to the spirit of rugby in New Zealand. Underneath those values are Strategy 2025’s four strategic pillars across the sport, namely:

1. Winning with mana: the bringing together of on and off-field support structures to allow for optimal performance.
2. Rugby at the heart of our communities: growing rugby at the grassroots level – its source of strength.
3. Loved game, loved brands: through increased understanding of fans and customers, creating elite sporting experiences and lifelong attachment to teams and brands.
4. Unleashing rugby’s commercial potential: seeking increased investment and developing a sustainable operating model for the future.

Anthony largely focused on the first in Melbourne – winning with mana.

What is ‘winning with mana’?

Strategy 2025 promotes the notion of ‘thriving people, thriving game’; and mana is central to that aspiration. It is a Māori concept encompassing honour, status and spiritual power – and it can only be earned. “It’s something bestowed on you,” said Anthony. ‘Winning with mana’ means winning in a way that enhances the mana of all those involved through actions on and off the field. “We want to be ruthless on the field; we want to be a team that’s feared and respected. But also off the field, that’s the humility piece; how we’re perceived.”

‘Winning with mana’ tends to manifest itself in five ways in New Zealand Rugby:

1. Smooth inductions and soft exits

New Zealand Rugby seeks to induct people in the right way while ensuring their connection to the team endures. Anthony cited the example of the New Zealand men’s rugby sevens, where the co-captains will routinely go out of their way to meet new young players – most just out of high school – at the airport. The other end of the cycle is just as important. Scott Robertson is set to lose players from his squad with more than 150 appearances between them. “How do you retain some of that DNA? What are some of the things you’re retaining in that environment?” Expect All Blacks and Black Ferns alumni to be part of the future picture.

2. Teams rooted in their community

While not all examples are so extreme or prominent, the All Blacks delivered on their commitment to their community following the flooding at Hawke’s Bay in February 2023. They participated in the clean-up efforts and provided both community and emotional support while raising public awareness.

3. Learning, stimulation and fun

While Anthony explained his view that true performance cultures are tough places in which to survive, there is a balance to be struck between learning, stimulation and fun. During a match week, the All Blacks’ schedule will be front-loaded, with intense work and analysis done on Mondays and Tuesdays, before giving way to opportunities to socialise, decompress and eat meals together ahead of the weekend.

4. Learning that goes beyond classroom

Anthony explained that recruits to rugby in New Zealand are not necessarily “students of the game.” It is an increasingly common observation across other sports too. They will do as they are told without necessarily seeking out information. As such, New Zealand Rugby has worked to manufacture more organic learning environments. Anthony is full of praise for the Auckland-based Blues in Super Rugby, who reacted to their empty analysis suite by starting to put laptops in their café. “Players could grab a coffee and something to eat and sit around and you’d just start to talk about the game.”

5. Family voices heard

A Rugby World Cup campaign can mean players spending up to ten weeks away from their loved ones. It is not conducive to stable home environments. New Zealand Rugby invites families into the team environment and sets out expectations and demands. The families can also feed back and, thanks to this process, they now spend a couple of nights inside the camp on each tour.

By John Portch

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In 2022, the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS] began to devise its High Performance 2032+ Sport Strategy. It launched at the end of that year and would align all peak bodies associated with Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games sports in a national high-performance strategy; more than 50 organisations united behind one vision, purpose and mission as Australia builds towards success at the 2032 Brisbane Games on home soil.

Yet six weeks into the development of the strategy, a cohort of Australian Paralympians, past, present and future, approached Matti Clements, the Executive General Manager of Performance at the AIS, and told her they would not commit to the strategy because they felt like an afterthought.

“Our system has been created around able-bodied athletes and they felt they were just a consideration once everything else had been done,” Clements told an audience at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “For them to belong to this, they needed to see themselves as part of the strategy, so we made a very considered commitment to them to ensure inclusive design for all our programmes and frameworks.”

Coaches and their wellbeing were another common afterthought. “Athletes are at the centre of high performance, but it’s coach-led and coach-informed,” said Clements. If Australia is to find, develop and retain their best talent, then coach wellbeing is a prerequisite to performance.

It’s a topic addressed by the system’s Win Well Pledge (a component of the 2032+ Strategy), which aims to create an inclusive and sustainable high-performance sporting system that prioritises both performance and wellbeing.

“Our vision is really simple: we win well to inspire Australians,” Clements added. “People think it’s a) expensive; b) hard work; c) someone else’s responsibility – it’s none of those things – if we can all commit to it, we can all achieve it.”

The AIS has adopted an “ecological” wellbeing model that considers four sets of challenges: the individual, organisational, interpersonal and the wider Australian system. Here, we look at each in turn through a coaching lens.

The individual

Whatever the situation, the AIS is there to help every individual. For example, Australian coaches concerned about their mental wellbeing can use the AIS Mental Health Referral Network. It is a national service where athletes, coaches and high performance support staff can see a mental health professional for free confidential support. It was launched in 2018 primarily for athletes but is increasingly used by coaches. That said, coaches do not necessarily need help with their mental health. It could be a single parent with two children or a coach that needs help to improve their diet, nutrition and lifestyle.

The organisation

National governing bodies are increasingly aware of issues for coaches at home, or indeed abroad. They tend to be away for 16-18 weeks a year and, to compound matters, long haul flights invariably await them. That typical scenario comes with a sense of guilt because families are being left behind but coaches are excited travel and compete. As part of the redress, the national governing bodies of Australian sport started to involve families in discussions around coaching schedules.

The interpersonal

Conversations and connection are everything. Too often Australia’s coaches speak of being ill-equipped to manage the pressures of their role or the isolation they experience. Now, the national governing bodies arrange for coaches to meet and share challenges and experiences in facilitated forums. Bill Davoren, the AIS High Performance Coach Development Manager, who joined Clements onstage to discuss their strategy, spoke of a coach at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, who came under intense media scrutiny following adverse results for her athlete (who nevertheless went on to claim gold). He said: “That coach spoke openly about the support that she got from others through the connections and experiences that she had.”

The system

The system is Australian and, on one hand, that means doing things in a “uniquely Australian way,” as Clements put it, which also means calling upon the nation’s rich Indigenous culture in an effort to emphasise sharing, vulnerability and support. She added: “We have the longest living culture in the world, yet we are white and middle-class and we do not utilise the knowledge of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers about passing on knowledge from generation to generation.”

By Luke Whitworth, Sarah Evans & Rachel Woodland

What does your performance strategy look like for your female athletes?

There is sure to be an element that hones in on female athlete health, a topic that brought together members of the Leaders Performance Institute for a virtual roundtable at the end of February.

While there are gains being made in high performance environments across the world of sport, there are enduring challenges in addressing female athlete health that require more time, resource and expertise.

The first part of the group discussion highlighted five common areas of focus. They were:

1. Antenatal and maternity policy

Policy around pregnancy, particularly in the case of athletes, is an issue that came up in all quarters. One of the primary concerns is that policies are dependent on your context or sport. For example, it is proving challenging to implement a single, coherent policy across the multisport and multidiscipline Olympic or Paralympic system. One attendee made the point that a clear policy provides the basis for education within high performance environments.

2. RED-S

RED-S [relative energy deficiency in sport] is a condition that occurs when athletes do not get enough fuel to support their energy demands. Research has found that if RED-S isn’t treated sufficiently, there can be possible negative impacts on reproductive health, bone health, immunity, metabolism, cardiovascular and psychological health. Insights from the call outlined that the reason why RED-S is a large focus in many sports is the lack of education and expertise within teams to sufficiently support athletes. A number of attendees shared that they are implementing formal screening for RED-S across both female and male athletes – RED-S can also affect the male population – and formal education for both athletes and staff. As well as providing opportunities to learn about RED-S, this approach is beginning to create an environment where people feel more comfortable talking about the topic. Finally, it was not lost on the table that there’s an opportunity to work with younger age groups, to begin education early, especially as they go through puberty.

3. The impact of the menstrual cycle

There is an increasing amount of research into the impact of the menstrual cycle on performance output. People are investing time and resource in data collation to better understand athletes’ cycles. This enhanced understanding then informs athletes’ development programmes and provides better education opportunities for both athletes and, just as importantly, the staff that are responsible for the design and delivery of athlete development programmes.

4. Pelvic floor health

Conversations on female athlete health have tended to focus on the menstrual cycle, which is important, but pelvic floor health has often been overlooked, as some attendees admitted. There is an increase in high performance discussions around pelvic floor health but, given that it has rarely been a focus, some are starting at the bottom when it comes to those conversations and finding opportunities for education.

5. Breast health

While breast health was not discussed in such depth, it remains a cornerstone of female athlete health strategies. One attendee spoke of their environment investing time into bra fitting (taking an individualised approach) and, again, education.

Other factors that impact on female athlete health strategies

Firstly, without sufficient education, we aren’t upskilling everyone in our environments. Foundational health education for coaches and athletes is an important tool for raising awareness, improving understanding and helping people to recognise and act, both in a preventative and proactive manner. Also, we shouldn’t be blindsided by the idea of just focusing on athlete education at the upper end of the pathway. There is an opportunity to embed a clear education strategy throughout an entire pathway.

Secondly, entry screening should be a core component of our programmes in order to provide baseline data and insights where we can tailor opportunities for our athletes over time.

Thirdly, the importance of creating spaces for discussion. Some attendees shared that there are still challenges with pushback from other disciplines, notably coaches when it comes to female athlete health. With this challenge in mind, a number of sports shared how they are trying to create organic, open spaces for both athletes and staff to come together to engage in discussions around topics such as the above in order to make a positive impact.

Environmental and resource-based challenges in female athlete health

Environmental and resource-based challenges persist for female athlete health strategies. Those explored by the table in the second part of the discussion can be broadly divided into three areas:

1. Cultural misalignment

One trend is a lack of openness to engage in discussions around female athlete health in an environment due to insufficient education and alignment. A couple of different sports shared that despite a baseline understanding of the importance of female athlete health, there is still pushback around certain education resources and adapted training programmes. Whilst we were discussing some of the cultural challenges that still remain, it was also noted how improving engagement and breaking down communication barriers are also challenging, particularly in enabling a combination of knowledge and skills training for athletes and staff.

2. Education and guidance

One participant shared that the big question around education for them is how to make knowledge stick and how to know if we are being impactful. This is certainly relevant for athletes and staff, although it was noted that education in their environment is particularly important for staff. It is fair to say that there was an agreement that we are still searching for the best methods of education to make the most impact. As noted above, the wider notion of policy and guidance seems to be proving to be a challenge.

3. Resources and expertise

Many sports are still trying to build sport-specific guidance on female athlete health and best practice. Although research in this space is becoming more apparent, there is still a paucity of clear guidance available, especially due to the specific sporting contexts we are operating in. Another popular response was simply a lack of in-house expertise in our environments – some sports are looking for the right signposts and opportunities to bring experts in to provide continued professional development. Funding and financial challenges are also being felt – that to be ‘doing female athlete health well’, more research, guidance and, in some instances, financial support, is required. In some women’s sport, that opportunity isn’t currently present.

Main image: England Rugby

By John Portch

The Women’s Six Nations begins on the weekend of 23-24 March and England’s preparations, as reigning champions, have long been underway.

In January, the Red Roses’ new Head Coach, John Mitchell, announced a 38-player squad for their first training camp of 2024, which took place at St George’s Park in Staffordshire.

“We had what we call our ‘alignment camp’,” says Robin Eager, the England’s Women’s Athletic Performance Manager, of the week-long camp. “It was an opportunity for our group to reconnect for the first time since November.”

He refers to the end of the inaugural WXV 1 competition, which England won courtesy of comprehensive defeats of Australia, Canada and hosts New Zealand. Mitchell took the reins full-time at the tournament’s conclusion and the team now begins its pursuit of a sixth consecutive Six Nations title.

The Red Roses left no stone unturned at St George’s Park which, in addition to England’s 23 football teams, regularly hosts a range of elite athletes and sports teams at its 330-acre complex. SGP boasts 14 state-of-the-art pitches, which can be configured for a variety of sports, and indoor facilities including a full-size 3G pitch, a multifunctional sports hall, a strength & conditioning gym, hydrotherapy pools and a cryotherapy chamber.

“We could get some early learning done around how we want to develop our game and how we want to play,” Eager continues. “It also allowed us to complete some physical profiling on the back of reviews from the last campaign, which then informed the development plans of individual players.”

He offers an absorbing insight into the world of serial winners. In keeping with others in that bracket, it starts with their environment. “First and foremost, you’ve got to define what you want your culture to look like.”

Eager, who joined the team in June 2022, cites the platform provided by the Red Roses’ values, the specifics of which are kept in-house. “They might not translate to another team but they’re ours that we live by, constantly refer to, constantly judge ourselves by, praise positive examples of.”

The coaches look to create a psychologically safe environment that balances challenge and support. “If we want players to be the best they can be, they’ve got to push themselves to learn. If you push your boundaries then there will be times when you’re going to fail, and if you fail you’re probably going to feel vulnerable. You have to create an environment where players feel like their voice is heard, that it’s OK to feel vulnerable, and they feel safe to push themselves, as this is the only way we will grow both individually and collectively to become the team we aspire to be.”

Eager and his colleagues try to role model the blend of hard work and vulnerability they expect of the playing group. “As a management team, you must demonstrate that you’re also putting yourself in that position.”

Returning guests

The Leaders Performance Institute was at St George’s Park during the Red Roses’ alignment camp. As we strolled through the foyer of the adjacent Hilton Hotel we saw several groups of players and staff relaxing.

“Beyond preparation work, SGP provides a wonderful casual space for socialising, bonding and unwinding together as a group,” says Eager, who is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute on Teams approximately three weeks after the camp.

“We don’t just allow it to happen by accident. A lot of relationships are built on informal conversations – they’re not always built in meeting rooms – you can create environments that allow those incidental coffee and corridor conversations to happen. If you’re in the wrong venue or facility, it can detract from that effort.”

This was neither Eager’s nor the Red Roses’ first time at St George’s Park. They are regular guests and will return in March ahead of England’s first Six Nations match away to Italy. “St George’s Park is a great facility for us because it allows us to put together our best preparation model for how we want to approach a competition. This includes elements such as facilities, flow and food provision, which are absolutely vital.”

St George’s Park, as Eager explains, has a range of training and recovery modalities that satisfies the preferences of an international squad drawn from different clubs. “Having that breadth available so that players feel they have everything they need to best prepare themselves on a week to week basis is invaluable. If you’re used to preparing in a certain way and we can’t provide that then it brings anxiety.

“Ultimately, we want our players to feel like they’re the best-prepared players contributing to the best-prepared team so that when they go out on the field, they can feel confident that they’ve prepared properly to deal with the game when it’s got a bit messy.”

Image: England Rugby

How the Red Roses execute their plans

As Eager points out, in international rugby, there can be relatively large gaps between series and campaigns.

“One of the benefits of international environments is that you have periods where you’re completely on it and you’re executing your plan,” he says. “Then you’ve got time when players are back at their clubs and you can review and plan for the next campaign. We’re continuing to develop how we go about that process and make it as effective as possible.

“Plans enable us to align as a staffing group around what we’re trying to achieve; vision, purpose and clarity. For every session, we have clear objectives and everything in the programme has a clear rationale.”

Events will not always run smoothly but there is a firm idea of the team’s development priorities and so England can pivot swiftly. “Certain sessions can go perfectly to plan, certain other times you have to adjust around what you’re seeing in front of you.” Where appropriate, some elements are gamified. “It is a strategy that ultimately drives energy, competition, intent, memories and laughter.”

England’s plans are aligned to the playing style of Mitchell, who is striving to construct a team capable of winning the 2025 Rugby World Cup and build on the platform bequeathed by his predecessor Simon Middleton.

“We need a clear understanding of how we want to play the game,” says Eager. “Once we define that, what are the key elements that contribute to us playing our best game? For example, if we’re a team that relies heavily on moving the ball, kicking the ball, we’ve got to have the players with the capability to do that. Their passing skills and kicking skills have got to be good. A lot of ball movement comes with a lot more running, so you’ve got to be running fit. So you can see how that starts to layer in.

“From there, we’re able to say where a player’s profile sits from a rugby perspective, a physical perspective, an injury perspective, and ask: is there a gap between where they are currently at and what they need to do in order for the team to perform? And if there is, that ultimately forms their development goals. So there’s a clear link between what we need to do and why that’s important.”

Constant communication

There are key principles in the way England play that enables players to transition smoothly from the club environments to the national team, but equally essential are the relationships the Leaders Performance Institute witnessed first-hand at the Hilton.

“Unless you can connect with people first, your coaching is limited,” says Eager. “You’re never going to have close relationships with every single player, that’s just not possible, but you’ve got to make sure there are some key people within the management group that have relationships so you’ve got most bases covered with most players. You’ve got to take the time to get to know the players as people.”

He cites business professor John Maxwell’s ‘students don’t care how much you know until they know that you care’ and author Maya Angelou’s ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’ as maxims for effective coaching.

Coaches and performance staff will proactively speak to players outside of international camps but, again, there must be a rationale. “There’s a real balance between having contacts and connection with the players at their clubs versus overdoing it,” Eager adds. “That’s their club time, they’ve also got lives to live, but connection is important to continue our growth as a group. We’re fortunate to have a relatively big coaching group, ensuring that there’s always avenues for conversation outside of camp.”

Critically, as Eager says: “you’ve got to be able to connect on a level beyond just a transactional coach-player piece, particularly with the modern player. The players have got to have confidence and trust in you and what you’re delivering because sometimes you’re pushing them to places they may not be comfortable going as part of training. When developing players, you’re pushing them, stretching them and encouraging them to fail so that they can learn. It takes a leap of faith from players to know that they won’t be judged. It’s really important: if you want to stretch players to their maximum potential you work on those relationships.”

Eager has worked with both male and female groups during his career. He notes numerous similarities across men’s and women’s rugby, as well as some subtle differences. “The women’s game is a little bit less defence and kick-dominant. There’s more open play,” he says.

Beyond rugby, some differences are sociological. He is not alone in noting that female athletes tend to ask coaches ‘why?’ more often than their male counterparts. “That shouldn’t be a bad thing. In my role, I’m ultimately responsible for how tired or fresh they feel because I’m the one pushing training loads and physical capacity. I need to make sure that my communication and rationale are on point so that when I’m asking them to go to places where they’re working hard or they’re sore, they don’t lose confidence. They understand the purpose, the benefit, and that it’s going to reap rewards on the back end of tournaments.”

Other differences are physiological, relating to factors such as hormone levels and the menstrual cycle. “That brings differences week to week which shouldn’t be seen as a negative because with that comes huge opportunities as well.

“We’re really trying to work with players on an individual basis to understand what works for them and, ultimately, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. At the same time, it’s a team sport, so you try to find the balance of what’s consistent from a team perspective and what flexes from an individual perspective to put people in the best position to perform.”

Image: England Rugby

The return to St George’s Park

The Red Roses will return to St George’s Park for a two-and-a-half-day camp in early March. “We’re constantly trying to layer in the developments in our game,” says Eager. “This camp will have a different theme with regards to what we’re trying to develop from a technical perspective, tactical perspective. Physically we’ve got a slightly different objective as well.

“In the alignment camp, we were looking at doing a lot more profiling and testing whereas now we’re trying to get the girls settled into more of a rhythm for our typical training weeks.

“Physically, it’s week one of eight for us. We’re back into running their athletic development programmes, we’re taking on their rugby development for the next eight weeks whereas the alignment camp was dipping our toe in, giving them some of the early information and getting engaged in where players are at. We’re starting to put the meat on the bones now.”

Eager’s excitement is palpable. “Change initially brings unknowns but it also brings huge opportunities. We’ve got a coach who’s got so much experience and we know that from a staff perspective and player’s perspective that’s only going to make us better. We’re going to learn a hell of a lot but what’s also refreshing is that Mitch recognises he’s coming into an environment that’s new for him as well, having predominantly worked in the men’s game. He’s also learning in that space.

“We’re all really excited to be able to continue to build on our last campaign. We have an opportunity to revisit the purpose of the team, our vision, what’s important to us in terms of our values, and how we want the environment to be. That sets the validation for everything else; training sessions, structures. It’s hugely exciting.”

Crucially, when the players return to St George’s Park they will all want to be there. “You can create an environment so players say ‘I can’t wait to get back in, it’s going to be great, I’m looking forward to these eight weeks’. That’s ultimately what we’re after and what we’re working hard on.”

St George’s Park provides a world-class elite training camp environment for any team or athlete wanting to optimize their performance. To find out more click here.

By John Portch

Champion teams often cite their pre-season work as a determining factor in their success, but Helene Wilson’s Northern Mystics adopted a novel approach.

“We were bottom of the table and we made it to the top by literally changing the way we practised and our environment,” Wilson told an audience at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance.

Wilson, who currently serves as Manager of High Performance Sport New Zealand’s [HPSNZ] Women in High Performance Sport programme, was primarily at the Etihad to discuss her five years as Head Coach of the Northern Mystics, a netball team in New Zealand’s ANZ Premiership.

The Mystics won the first national championship in their franchise’s 24-year history on Wilson’s watch in 2021. They went close again in 2022, her final year, and won a second Grand Final in 2023.

Yet in 2019, as Wilson explained, they finished bottom of the ANZ Premiership. At the time, the Mystics were infamous for their disunity and underachievement.

The talent and potential was there, but Wilson knew it could not be unlocked without an environmental overhaul. She started with one simple question: “how do we create an environment where high performance comes from out-learning your opposition and people are on a journey together to get there?”

Find a suitable framework for addressing performance questions

Central to their transformation was the Mystics’ belief in the Māori concept of ‘Wānanga’. “It’s a word that means coming together and meeting to discuss, collaborate and consider,” Wilson told the Etihad audience. “It could look similar to a team meeting but it can take many forms and Wānanga happens in many ways.”

A fuller account is provided here but, in summary, a Wānanga provides a space for collective, inclusive, reflective practice (‘Rongo’ in Māori) that enables people to reengage with problems in the world beyond (‘Tū’) having formed a consensus on the best solutions.

“There is an energy about it,” said Wilson. “The process and energy is like a coming together and moving apart in a state of clarity, which is collectively built together. The process of ‘Karakia’ – transitioning from one realm to another – takes us from the worlds of Tū and Rongo.”

These Māori concepts and traditions resonated with her staff and playing group, but Wilson emphasised the relevance of the framework rather than its local aspects. Coaches, she argued, should use cultural artefacts germane to their context. “There’s stuff around us everywhere that you can apply in different ways and it’s the framework that is key.”

The players and staff bought into the idea and it meant the team could get to work on what was needed to take them from last to first place in the space of two years.

Improve the quality of your interactions

Ahead of that triumphant 2021 season, Wilson and her coaches convened to establish what it would take for the Mystics to win that season’s Grand Final. They also invited the playing group to do the same.

“We tried to define the standards that we needed to shift to win the Premiership,” she said. “I remember specifically at this time we would Wānanga in the gym and we were talking about the standard of performance that we needed to put down on the court in pre-season to ensure that we could win the Premiership.”

The players and coaches often had contrasting views. “We had all the data and the information and knew what we needed to do, but we had to hold that back and let the players lead it,” she added.

In one particular pre-season Wānanga, Wilson addressed the Mystics’ reputation for throwing away possession cheaply. The players sought a measurement for tracking their improvement but one wasn’t forthcoming. “How do we measure it? How do we know we’re doing well? We couldn’t agree, we couldn’t align, so we had to go out and learn.”

That Wānanga preceded a public pre-season game and Wilson used the opportunity to pose further questions: if you make mistakes on the court what does that look like? How many mistakes is OK? What’s your key role in your position? For example, if you’re a goal attack and your main role is to get the ball to the goal shooter as accurately as possible and you want to throw it from the first phase in the centre, how am I to determine that you will get that ball there? Tell me what you need to do. And they will tell me how they believe they will take this skill and execute it to the level we’d accept, as well as how many mistakes we were allowed. They defined what they were going to put on court and what they were going to get right.”

Each member of the team would set personal limits. “It looks like ‘I won’t make the same mistake twice in a row’. OK then, if you do, then you’re off. You’ll work with the S&C on the side line in front of the public, practising that mistake for two minutes, then you’ll go back on court and we’ll see how you go.”

The continuous Mystics substitutions made the game a strange spectacle. “You can imagine the first half the first time we tried this,” said Wilson. “It was like a yoyo. My opposition coach said to me ‘what the eff are you doing?’”

“There was a lot to unpack in our changing room after that and our psychologist was a great help.” The subsequent Wānanga went on for an hour and a half. One of the key questions was the matter of each individual’s role in the team. “Even if I’m only on the bench how do I still contribute? It was the benchies’ job to pull their teammates up when they weren’t executing the skillset they said they would more than two times in a row. That then formed a drive for individual performance.”

As Wilson said, the Mystics changed the way they practised. “It wasn’t just making an effort to say it – it wasn’t as simple as that – it was the quality of the interaction that happened.”

Increased energy and confidence

At the Etihad, Wilson shared an image of her team lining up backstage ahead of the 2021 Grand Final and noted the sense of “energy and confidence; that they each had each other’s back as they go out and do it.”

She said: “Then we joked we were doing this hard work as people so I could get to drink a piña colada on the bench while I was coaching; knowing I had done my job. I wish I had one, because they were driving the performance on that day.” The Mystics quickly established a two-goal lead over their opponents, the Mainland Tactix, that they never relinquished in a 61-59 victory.

“We made seven errors in the entire game,” Wilson continued. “And when we had that Wānanga at the start of the season, the players said they should be able to make 64 errors in a game. We [the coaches] knew they needed to make under 15 [to win the Premiership] and they made seven. It shows how they drove their own performance.”

To further underline how the Mystics transformed their environment, Wilson referred to Grace Nweke, a 21-year-old New Zealand international and one of the rising stars of the sport. She joined the Mystics in 2019 while still at school but, thanks to Wilson encouraging her players to have a voice, Nweke immediately had the platform to speak up when she felt things weren’t working for her.

“She was 16 years old and didn’t quite think her S&C programme was quite right for her and she asked how we could discuss how it might be changed – that’s powerful for an athlete to have that support [especially] when the S&C said ‘well, I’ve been doing this for 20 or 30 years’ – but then it’s also powerful for the S&C to say ‘how are we going to work together to make this better?’”

In the first part, we delved deeper into Helene Wilson’s role in creating a culture that enabled the Northern Mystics to ‘out-learn’ their opponents.

By John Portch

The UK Sports Institute [UKSI] has a well-earned reputation for offering sophisticated medicine, technology and science support to British sport’s national governing bodies.

Though the UKSI is but a small cog in the wheel, the institute’s Female Athlete Health & Performance team has been astute in dealing with the typical challenges present in a high performance system, as Richard Burden, the UKSI’s Co-Head of Female Athlete Health & Performance, told an audience at September’s Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium.

“We don’t have a lot of resource,” he said of his team, which he leads alongside Dr Anita Biswas. They work closely with Dr Kate Hutchings, who leads the UKSI’s female athlete clinic. It is quite an undertaking for a system that serves up to 800 athletes, numerous coaches and a wealth of different interests.

“Between the three of us,” he continued, “we have four days a week to try and do some of the things that we do. That’s a step change – that’s good compared to previous cycles – I’m not complaining. I’m just giving a little bit of context because a lot of the time when people who don’t have experience look at the system we’re in, they think that’s amazing, that you’ve got a tonne of resource, that you must be able to do some really cool stuff.

“The fact is that we don’t have [unlimited resources]. But we’ve got quite good at working with what we do have.”

Part of their success can be attributed to bringing coaches and athletes on what Burden refers to as a research and innovation journey. Too often sports scientists and practitioners fall short on that front.

In June 2023, Burden and Biswas spoke onstage at the Female Athlete Conference in Boston about the “needless tug-of-war” between female athlete sports science and applied practice. They were joined by exercise physiology and nutrition specialist Professor Anthony Hackney of the University of North Carolina. Together they asked an audience of physicians and practitioners who or what they saw as the greatest barriers to research and innovation. “Coaches” was a common response “because of the perception that they lack engagement in research and innovation”. Three months later, at the Etihad, Burden turned that idea on its head.

“Sports scientists and practitioners are really poor for this,” he said. “If a coach doesn’t want to listen to their idea it’s the coach’s fault.”

Burden suggested it could be a problem with how the idea is pitched. “If coaches are suggested as a barrier, what are we doing about that? Do people know why a coach might not engage in science, research and innovation? Are we giving them a reason to change? Are we giving them something they can use that’s actually going to make a difference?”

People often point to the limited budgets in high performance. “Yeah, funding is tight, but it’s probably not going to get any bigger. Maybe we’ll get a bigger slice of the pie but the pie is unlikely to get any bigger,” he continued. “So how can we be more resourceful?”

Time-poor coaches is another suggested issue. Again, it doesn’t wash with Burden. “How can we create more time with what we currently have? Everyone is super busy. We need to get stuff done – so how are we going to do that? And the translation: how can we improve the practicality of doing research and innovation in elite environments so we can actually give out something useful?”

The UKSI Female Athlete Health & Performance team have focused on four areas.

1. The need to bring coaches and athletes on a journey

Any potential innovation has to add value. “There is always an interesting-versus-important question that we ask ourselves,” said Burden. “We can’t just do stuff that’s interesting – we have to do things that are interesting and add value – that’s our sense-check.”

The Female Athlete Health & Performance team answer that question by spending time talking to coaches and athletes with a view to understanding their needs. In 2019, the English Institute of Sport (EIS; the former name of the UKSI) launched their SmartHER campaign to encourage female athletes to speak about their challenges and concerns in a safe setting. It led to a roadshow series where education sessions were provided for coaches and athletes across the UK. “That gave us momentum because it just started conversations,” said Burden. “It was only basic level education but it was things that people hadn’t heard before, and the conversations started to grow within sports and between sports, and back and forth between the UKSI and the sports. Better conversations would happen.”

This opening up of communication lines led to the development of the UKSI’s internal learning platform, known as the Performance Hub, with modules including ‘The Basics of the Menstrual Cycle’ and ‘Additional Considerations for the Female Athlete’. “It’s always available to practitioners in the UKSI so they can upskill themselves on their own time,” said Burden. “It is aimed at giving people more awareness and confidence in their conversations.”

He quickly learned not to assume knowledge. “A lot of this comes from the eyes of a bloke who is quite a lot of the time the only bloke in the room. It is not a given that a female coach will know about bra fit, whereas a middle-aged male coach may be comfortable discussing such issues.”

Increased athlete-coach engagement has eased another common concern from researchers: access to the athletes and coaches themselves. “You have to bring them on a journey,” said Burden. “You bring them along, you increase accessibility. Researchers and academics often complain that athletes are protected, that you can’t access them – but what have you done to try? By doing your research in a lab? They can’t relate to that. Go into their environment, see how they live, see how they train, and co-design the questions.”

2. Co-designed questions, research and innovation

As conversations about topics such as menstrual cycle tracking developed within the British high performance system, it led an increasing number of athletes, coaches and researchers to ask if there was a less invasive alternative to needle and blood sampling in hormone data collection.

In 2021, the EIS trialled Hormonix, which collects hormone data through saliva sampling. The technology was designed in collaboration with Mint Diagnostics. Later, Hormonix was trialled at Manchester City Women, where it has led to further research projects around female athlete health.

Burden also spoke of a UKSI research collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and British Rowing, who had a question. “They called it Project Minerva,” he said. “It’s something they’ve been developing about the influence of training load and the delivery of training on female health. So how is the menstrual cycle influencing their ability to deliver training and what impact is it having on internal load, competition and performance? It’s their question – it hasn’t come from research or a university – it’s come from the sport. We’re there to provide some of the research and innovation expertise to help them formulate the question and work out a path to answer it.”

Co-designed research and innovation can accelerate the UKSI’s ability to provide support to athletes. “Get the practitioners involved, get athletes, get the teams and bring them along with it because if they’re onboard you get easier access to them and you’re going to produce something that’s more translatable, meaningful and applicable to them.”

3. Multi-centre approaches

When the UKSI Female Athlete Health & Performance team proposed a collaboration with the Australian Institute of Sport [AIS] and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee [USOPC], it had never been done before.

“It’s across traditional lines,” said Burden. “When you talk about competitive advantage, why are we talking to the Aussies and why are we talking to the Americans? But that’s not how we’re looking at it. The Aussies have done some really good stuff that we haven’t. We’ve done some really good stuff that they haven’t. The same with the Americans.

“If we combine resources to stop duplicating effort, because we’ve done educational stuff, the AIS have done some brilliant educational stuff, the USOPC have done some really good educational stuff. We’ve all done the same educational work. What’s the point when we can do it all together and focus on other things?

“I thought I was going to have a really hard time when I took this to the directors. I thought there was going to be some sort of major health event for some of them when I said ‘I want to work with the AIS, I want to work with the USOPC’ but it was actually really easy and we put together a fairly compelling reason why, but it was quite easy because this isn’t about performance advantage, this is about advancing female athlete health and performance.”

4. Rethinking evidence

“What can you do with information that you already have?” asked Burden. To illustrate his point, he referred to the UKSI’s drive to centralise all blood screens across the British high performance system. It enabled that information to be used in a more informed and impactful way.

“The information was being held in UKSI silos, but there was potential if we could aggregate it all,” he continued. “That was a few years ago and it wasn’t the easiest conversation to have with the sports because they had their own suppliers. There was some politicking to convince everyone that it was going to be really beneficial.

“The vast majority of our sports now use the same supplier, which means we have a database of blood screens that is continuously being populated. Because of that, we can start to unpick some of the things that we need to understand.

“We’re starting to understand sport by sport differences, sex differences and, over time, we’re going to be able to start to individualise between sport differences, in-sport differences, individual differences. Being able to do that, we can inform our practices and inform the treatment or our understanding of the biggest health problems in a much more informed and precise way because we’re using what we already have in a much better way.”

In Burden’s view, this pooling of evidence has the potential to lead to the greater individualisation of support services. He contests the perception of case studies as low in the traditional hierarchy of evidence due to them being small in sample size. “We’re in elite sport and I don’t want to generalise – I don’t care what the mean for the whole group is – I need to know why athlete X is different from athlete Y. Case studies are really impactful for us – if you can collect case studies then you start to build an evidence base. When trying to understand things like the menstrual cycle, generalised approaches just aren’t going to cut it.”

By Luke Whitworth

In our penultimate virtual roundtable of 2023, we reflected on the frequently discussed theme of learning and development. The aim of this particular roundtable was to provide a space and platform for Leaders Performance Institute members to share best practice and experiences with one another, centred around the theme of learning.

Two questions underpinned the groups’ conversations on the day:

• What have been the most impactful learning and development strategies you have integrated in your teams?
• Reflecting on your own experiences, what have been the most effective learning experiences you have engaged in and why?

Having a clear philosophy and intent

In summarising all of the responses and suggestions from the group, it became clear that the effectiveness of your approach to learning and development starts way before the actual practicalities. A reflective question for all is whether your team or organisation has a clear philosophy and intent on learning or if it is just a tick-box exercise because you know it is something that generally needs to be done? Put simply: if you don’t have this philosophy and statement of intent clearly mapped out, it isn’t likely to be effective. We also discussed around reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement, of which clear approaches to learning form a large part of this outlook.

Firstly, start off with outlining key principles. Instilling a set of clear principles that sit behind your learning and development work allows you to find the balance between short and long-term focuses. There is a natural tendency in many high performance environments to be reactive, which can minimise long-term growth. Thoughts from the group suggested that your principles should cover both bases so there are clear expectations from the here and now, but also the future.

Be intentional, often less is more. There is a vast amount of learning and development opportunity for staff and also athletes, so much so that it can be overwhelming. So with this in mind, ensure you are intentional with what is being focused on, how much time you are dedicating to it and perhaps most importantly, how will it drive positive change. One of the comments on the call that summarised this point well was the importance of creating the need and desire for change.

Have a needs-based approach. This is a natural follow on from the point above and will support the intentionality of what you or your team engages in. The key element of the needs-based approach is making sure you are participating using the right stimulus.

With any learning and development experience you engage in, do you have a clear commitment to action post-engagement which highlights what you are actually going to do differently or to deepen the quality of that learning?

Finally, how do you think about developing an organisational system that facilitates learning and development? A reflection is that learning can often take place in silos and learning isn’t shared organisation-wide. Environments that create a true culture of learning have clear systems and strategies in place to create opportunities for the sharing of practice. Intention and organisation will also help to elevate the quality of your learning.

Peer group opportunities

When aggregating all of the responses from the group conversations, unsurprisingly the most common response when thinking about effective learning and development strategies were aligned to peer group opportunities. There were a few specific examples of this in how you are able to facilitate these opportunities for staff or your athletes.

• Creating opportunities for regular feedback that focuses on specific topics of analysis. One attendee shared that taking 45 minutes and breaking this up between 15-minute presentations and 30 minutes of conversation has been impactful.
• Having a blend of in-house learning and bringing outside expertise in. How are you leaning into the expertise that is already in the building that can sometimes be overlooked? When the time is right, what knowledge from outside of the environment can be welcomed in to provoke thought and challenge thinking? One environment shared that every Thursday an external thought leader is invited to speak to the performance team leaders. They have even created their own Sport Performance Summit, bringing together a mix of internal and external perspectives on key pain points, combining theory and practice.
• Spending more energy on focused learning versus passive. There was a reflection in the conversations around the amount of passive learning that can take place, whether that be articles, podcasts or other media. This can be valuable, but to shift a change in behaviour, we want to keep learning focused through regular scheduled sessions around key topics and challenges.
• Leveraging the power of peer mentoring every month in your environment has seen high levels of effectiveness.
• Opportunities and spaces to be creative that takes you away from the temptation of day-to-day delivery. Another environment on the call shared how they have implemented creative breakfasts to share ideas.
• Encourage cross-departmental projects. We often hear of the challenges of siloed working. The act of encouraging and facilitating cross-departmental projects or learning opportunities has been incredibly impactful in some environments, not only in helping to develop relationships but to also expand knowledge outside of specific teams and disciplines.

Other impactful strategies

Although a large number of effective strategies aligned to peer-group opportunities, there were also some excellent thoughts and considerations that sat outside of this bucket. Some of these strategies are well-known and utilised well in environments, but it was a good reminder of the impact they can have when focused on consistently and strategically.

Unsurprisingly, experiential learning was identified as a really impactful strategy for learning. To get this right, create a space for the learning experience, mixing theory and practice and then make the learning activity experiential in nature.

There was also a thread of discussion around after-action reviews and debriefing. These tend to be strategies that are not utilised as well across high performance sport, largely due to the fast-paced nature of the industry – it’s often onto the next game. However, one environment shared how much they have gained by having reviews every week on decision-making processes and having this consistent approach has yielded some really positive results. How consistent are you with reviewing?

‘Question-based leadership’ was something the group felt was an opportunity when considering effective learning and development strategies. Question-based leadership refers to the notion of communicating through open, targeted questions more often than in closed statements. In a number of recent conversations across the Leaders Performance Institute, several members have shared how quality questioning is an under-utilised skill in many environments.

Finally, the group also touched on the importance of psychological safety in the environment and celebrating a ‘beginners mind’ to help reduce fear, noise and impostor syndrome.