- Eoin Clarkin, Fran Silver and Rose Glendinning (Arsenal FC)
Working in female football: opportunities to improve as a medical and performance practitioner.
Women’s football is experiencing a period of rapid growth. While attendances, commercial partnerships and television deals are better than ever, the scale of the game is still relatively small in comparison to men’s football. However, this is by no means a negative take on the current situation. In fact, working in an elite environment that demands success with sometimes-limited resources can be hugely advantageous for practitioners keen to turn any so-called challenges into opportunities for growth and development. In this piece we’d like to describe how working in female football has improved us as practitioners in a medical and performance team.
Opportunity one – exposure to numerous programming challenges
With the professional game in its infancy, female professional footballers will have had varied levels of specific strength and conditioning training experience, differing levels of access to specialised training facilities and enter the sport with wide-ranging levels of physical conditioning (Pitchers & Elliot-Sale, 2019). Additionally, the UK has fewer professional clubs, fewer academies and a smaller talent pool of young athletes competing for a career as a footballer. This results in young female footballers being subjected to fewer ‘filters’ in comparison to their male counterparts, whose ‘talent’ is identified using numerous physiological, psychological and sociological factors (Unnithan, et al., 2012). In fact, there is a paucity of data regarding ‘talent identification’ and the associated physical determinants in female football (Datson, et al., 2019). These factors result in cohorts of professional female footballers with wide ranges of physical attributes - both potential and realised.
With some athletes of low training age, we must plan for long-term athletic development as well delivering the shorter-term, fixture-to-fixture high performance that first team football demands. Designing and delivering a successful medical and performance programme for an elite football team is a challenge at the best of times. Having two (sometimes conflicting) contexts within which decisions are made emphasises the need for a slick, multi-disciplinary approach and high levels of individualisation within the programme.
In addition to the contrasting approaches of long-term athlete development and short-term game-to-game success, female athletes are subject to monthly physiological variations as a result of the menstrual cycle. With athlete cycles occurring at different times and of varying lengths, we are presented with an ongoing, monthly challenge/opportunity to tailor an athlete’s programme. Research in this area is far from conclusive and decision-making is improved by including the athlete in the process. This highlights the importance of fluid and honest communication (discussed separately).
These factors combined give short, medium and long-term contexts to our processes. As practitioners we have developed the ability to ‘zoom in’ or ‘zoom out’ on the outcomes of our practice and self-reflect wherever we can to fine-tune our programme. We must show humility and not be afraid to highlight our failings in order to learn from them. We aim to make each element of the programme as efficient as possible to allow us to spend the time needed to treat every athlete as an individual with diverse and dynamic training needs and responses. These skillsets allow us to understand each other’s input in a multi-disciplinary team with somewhat blurred lines between roles, thus preventing us from becoming siloed in our specialities.
Opportunity two – becoming a generalist versus a specialist
Working at the top level of female football, our roles demand attention to detail and high specialisation in our practice. With the women’s game in its infancy, the number of medical and performance staff is far lower than in its male counterpart. Therefore, whilst it is important to have depth in our practice, we also require breadth - i.e. the ability to deliver the wider components of an elite programme. You may find ‘data scientists’, ‘rehab fitness coaches, ‘performance therapists’ (to name a few) in the men’s game. In the women’s medical and performance team it is advantageous to have an insight and understanding into each of these areas.
Specializing in such distinct areas is often associated to greater expertise. However, our individual expertise has developed through being generalists. Having an insight into a range of roles adds depth, variety and creativity to our work. It provides us with a broader toolkit to adapt to different scenarios, allowing us to find solutions when our own specialised approach with an athlete may no longer work. Being a generalist also enables us to overlap or interchange our roles across a player’s rehabilitation or performance pathway. This fosters a cohesive team environment, where we have a clear insight into how our piece of the puzzle (e.g. a pre/rehab exercise) fits into the bigger picture (e.g. their athletic profile or style of play). This clarity in the process filters down to the players, generating ‘buy-in’ and trust; two highly valuable commodities in the female game.
Opportunity three – developing emotional intelligence
Females have a greater desire to create and maintain close relationships (Cross, et al., 2011). The female athlete empowers the practitioner to improve their ability to create deep and meaningful relationships based on trust and genuine care. These close relationships are crucial given the role that cohesiveness plays in successful female teams. (Carron, et al., 2002). A strong coach-athlete relationship is the heart of athletic training and female athletes prefer the coach to be approachable and act as a guide rather than ruling with authority, which can be perceived as overbearing (Norman, 2014). Thus, nurturing a democratic and positive coach-athlete relationship is an effective strategy to improve female perception of performance sport and is essential to develop buy-in and trust (Norman & French, 2013).
Trust is something that can take time and must be earned. Trust is developed by caring, which takes very little effort and will only strengthen the coach-athlete relationship. By recognising trust as a vital component of the high-performance programme we have developed our ‘softer’ skills such as communication, emotional intelligence and awareness. We have learnt the value of taking the time to understand the motivations and aspirations of our athletes as people as well as performers. We have learnt that empathy, authenticity and selflessness are just as important as technical know-how and qualifications, and as such, our communication strategies should reflect this.
The power of why
The challenges/opportunities presented in this article and the qualities they result in are not isolated to female football. However, we believe that our experiences in the game to date have fast-tracked our understanding of their importance. This is in part due to the increased likelihood that the female athlete will ask “why?”. This has challenged us to rationalise our methods and to clearly communicate these prior to a new task/activity in order to improve athlete engagement and progression. This simple word ‘why’ can be so effective. It offers a simple level of scrutiny and encourages honesty and self-reflection in our practice. In this sense, the female athlete empowers the practitioner to justify ‘why we do what we do’ with open, two-way communication. By embracing this challenge, we have simultaneously improved ourselves and our athletes.
Working with female athletes we have benefitted from numerous, multi-faceted programming challenges that are often outside of the scope of our speciality. We have learned the value of emotional engagement when delivering our interventions and have been kept honest, self-reflective and empathetic through the simple and frequently asked question of “why?”.
Eoin Clarkin is a Strength & Conditioning Coach from Dublin, Ireland. He is currently the Lead S&C coach for the Arsenal Women’s team as well as the Ireland U21 men’s football team. He previously held similar positions with Dundalk FC, UCD AFC and the Kilmacud Crokes Senior Footballers. This article was produced by Eoin and two of his colleagues at Arsenal FC, Fran Silver and Rose Glendinning.
Many thanks to Eoin, Fran and Rose for this fantastic contribution. Please get in touch with your views. To check out more of Eoin, Fran or Rose's work you can follow them on social media - @eoinclarkin90 (Instagram), @fransilverpt (Instagram) and @physiorose (Twitter).
References
Carron, V. A., Colman, M. M. & Wheeler, A., 2002. Cohesion and performance in sport: a meta analysis. Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology, Volume 2, pp. 168-188.
Cross, E. S., Hardin, E. E. & Gercek-Swing, B., 2011. The what, how, why, and where of self-construal. Personality and Social Psychology Review, Volume 2, pp. 142-79.
Datson, N. et al., 2019. High-intensity endurance capacity assessment as a tool for talent identification in elite youth female soccer. Journal of Sports Sciences, pp. 1-7.
Norman, L., 2014. The coaching needs of high performance female athletes within the coach-athlete dyad. International Sport Coaching Journal, Volume 2.
Norman, L. & French, J., 2013. Understanding how high performance women athletes experience the coach-athlete relationship.. International Journal of Coaching Science, Volume 7, pp. 3-24.
Pitchers, G. & Elliot-Sale, K., 2019. Considerations for coaches training female athletes. Professional Strength and Conditioning, Issue 55, pp. 19-30.
Unnithan, V. et al., 2012. Talent identification in youth soccer. Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(15), pp. 1719-1726.