Current sports performance and player well-being strategies in female sport are often underpinned by evidence derived from male athletes or male talent development environments. While there are some good practices that can be derived from a male context, in some instances we may be failing to consider the requirements of the female athlete as highlighted above. When aiming to either develop applied sport science practices, adopt an evidence-informed approach, or undertake future research, the first step is to appraise and evaluate the current available evidence. Acknowledging that limited research studies have investigated female athlete cohorts in comparison to male athletes, this may lead to simply identifying the “best available evidence.” For the practitioner, this may mean that the evidence is useful to support decision-making or indeed the findings may not be suitable to translate into practice, due to inherent differences (e.g., talent development systems in male youth soccer vs. female youth soccer).
In Fig. 1 (adapted from Hanson et al. [13]), we propose the considerations required when aiming to develop an evidence-based approach to practice in female sport. The figure highlights how it is important that the current evidence base is evaluated against (a) the female athlete and (b) the female sporting environment, in addition to the typical scientific scrutiny applied to published research literature. This can be used to both apply the current evidence into policy and practice and indeed conceive future research projects specific to the needs of the female athletes, which has direct translation into practice.
For example, there is a strong body of research evaluating the match demands of male rugby league [14], but at present limited research exists evaluating the match demands of female rugby league. Following the considerations presented in Fig. 1, by establishing that the female athlete (e.g., rugby league player) is different to the male rugby league player (e.g., male vs. female rugby league players 20-m speed; 3.66 ± 0.26 vs. 3.09 ± 0.12 s [15, 16]), it is unlikely that the match demands research from male rugby league players can be applied to female cohorts. Furthermore, rugby league is professional in England and Australia for elite males and amateur and semiprofessional for elite females; thus when considering the female sporting environment and it’s context, this further corroborates the conclusion that match demands research form male cohorts have limited application to female cohorts.
Acknowledging that the effective translation of research findings is not solely determined by the efficacy of the intervention [13], there is a clear need to consider the “context” and “environment” of female sport, acknowledging that what occurs in the male game may not be most appropriate for the environment of females. For example, despite the increased professionalism of female sport, factors, such as insufficient training time and lack of resources and equipment in comparison to male athletes, may limit the ability of practitioners to apply such intervention-based evidence to practice. For example, within this context, professional medical staff may not be present at all training session, or qualified sports science/strength and conditioning practitioners, given the limited funding at present in some female sports.
The application of established research models, considering the female athlete within context, is likely a useful starting point. Bishop [17] provides a framework for undertaking applied research, progressing from “descriptive research” (e.g., what do they do) to “implementation studies in real sporting settings” (e.g., can we improve current practice). Jones et al. [18] also proposed a research model, emphasizing the need to co-construct research questions with policy-makers and practitioners to increase the usefulness and adoption of the research findings into practice. Adopting such approaches to research as described by Bishop [17] and Jones et al. [18] with considerations for the needs of the female athlete and the context of female sport will increase our understanding of the current context (i.e., physical qualities of players, match characteristics, recovery profiles, etc.), which, for a number of reasons discussed above, may be different to that in male athletes within the same sport. These studies are arguably more valuable at present than more advanced scientific studies (e.g., laboratory-based randomized crossover design studies). The challenge for the researcher is that this may be seen by journal editors and academic hierarchies as lacking “originality,” given the potential methodological repetition of male research in a female cohort. While this may be true for the advancement of scientific methodologies, it is an essential first step in the research process to understand the context of female sport and the female athlete. Even within male cohorts, a call for research reproducibility has been made [19]; thus the need to replicate studies from male cohorts in female cohorts is required.
