THROUGH its partnership with Vodafone, Wales Women are leading the way in the use of menstrual cycle technology to inform the way they train and recover.
As founding Principal Partner of Wales Women’s and Girls rugby, Vodafone has added menstrual cycle tracking technology to its revolutionary PLAYER.Connect platform, which has helped the Wales Women’s team analyse how the menstrual cycle impacts performance, wellbeing and recovery.
The platform is currently being used by Wales Women throughout the TikTok Women’s Six Nations 2023 campaign, the first women’s side to do so, and this has already had a significant impact on their training and preparation, with WRU National Women’s Physiotherapist, Jo Perkins saying, “PLAYER.Connect give us information in real time, and is far more user friendly. That means we can quickly implement strategies, inform change, avoid injuries and help players reach their peak preparation ahead of each fixture.”
The mobile-first PLAYER.Connect platform gathers data on players’ performance, menstrual cycle phases and mental and physical wellbeing, by combining data from wearable devices such as GPS trackers in real-time. This is in addition to input from the players themselves, via daily ‘morning monitoring’ – a series of questions answered by the players on arrival at training. A full breakdown of the data being captured is available in the notes below.
By directly linking athletes’ performance data to their menstrual cycle, PLAYER.Connect lets coaches and analysts provide genuine tailoring of diet, training and match preparation for each individual player. This is a major upgrade on existing menstrual cycle tracking technology, which don’t allow for this personalisation or tailoring, and only provide generic, ‘catch-all’ solutions.
93% of female rugby players have reported menstrual cycle-related symptoms, with 67% believing these symptoms severely impair their performances. However so far there is limited guidance available on how players can best manage those symptoms, with only 6% of current sports science research focusing on female athletes.
The Welsh Rugby Union and Vodafone are also working with Cardiff Metropolitan University on a long-term research study using the data gathered from PLAYER.Connect, to further investigate the impact of the menstrual cycle on areas ranging from injury prevention to soreness, mood and sleep. The ambition is to provide information that can help all female athletes of all levels better manage their performance and wellbeing in the future.
Wales Women prop, Cerys Hale, says, “The PLAYER.Connect technology has really inproved my performance this season. It’s given me a greater awareness of things I need to do away from the field, so for example I can monitor soreness, be more aware of how i’m recovering and then look at what I can do before training to help manage injury prevention. This includes tips on how I can change my nurition during each of the phases of my clycle, how I can reduce my symptoms, and it’s just given me more confidence that i’m putting my body in the right place to be able to perform.”
PLAYER.Connect Head of Performance, Alex Skelton, said: “Despite 93% of female rugby players reporting menstrual cycle-related symptoms and 67% believing these severely impair their performances, there is limited guidance available on how players can best manage this.
Being able to directly link each athletes’ menstrual cycle stage to their performance data provides a massive advantage in how we can begin to tackle this issue, by allowing coaches and analysts to move away from ‘catch-all’ solutions and provide genuine tailoring of diet, training and preparation for each individual player. Combined with a long-term research study using our PLAYER.Connect data, this will allow us to make huge strides in how we help female athletes of all levels better understand and manage their cycle.”
Vodafone’s Chief Commercial Officer, Max Taylor, said: “At Vodafone we are committed to using our network to find innovative ways to support the growth of women’s rugby in the UK from the grassroots up. We are only in the early stages of a long partnership with the WRU and we’re looking forward to working with the team in the coming years to deliver on our ambitious plans.”
