Identifying performance barriers specific to women and enabling the implementation of female-specific strategies
Sports physiology, performance and injury prevention specific to the female athlete is a unique and specialist area of research This applied research allows evidence supported, female specific practices to be implemented into both the individual female athlete and female sporting teams. Women in sport is a key area of research for Griffith University, allowing Griffith researchers to form remarkable industry partnerships with state and national institutes and academies, professional sporting teams, national sporting bodies and Australian representative teams.
Female sports performance
For several years now, we have maintained an important focus on the unique responses to exercise and adaptations to training in women. Our findings in the area of female athletic performance have gained momentum and recent attention from elite sports teams. We are currently examining the effect of natural (natural menstrual cycle) and synthetic (hormonal contraceptives) female sex-hormones on the response to exercise and training, elite performance, injury prevalence, and recovery. Our research group is committed to identifying performance barriers specific to women, and enabling the implementation of female-specific strategies. Our projects in the area of female sports performance have brought together new, and strengthened existing, collaborations between our research groups and other university and industry partners.
Preventing lower limb injuries in the female athlete
In the largest study of its type ever conducted, we are leading a stream of research directed at understanding risk factors for lower limb injury and optimising injury prevention programs for female team sports.
With support from Sports Medicine Australia and VALD Performance, we are currently conducting a large-scale prospective study led by PhD candidate Tyler Collings to explore the association between lower limb strength and performance and subsequent injury in the professional AFL Women's and W-League competitions (involving >400 elite female athletes).
The identification of risk factors for lower limb injuries represents the first step towards designing effective injury prevention and rehabilitation strategies. However, despite a significant amount of research in men’s football there is almost no data relating to risk factors for lower limb injuries in the women’s competitions. Further, there is no data on lower limb strength values for female footballers of different ages, nor is there any data exploring how strength may be altered as a consequence of prior injury. The proposed study aims to fill these gaps and provide team medical and S&C staff with an evidence base from which to develop strategies to mitigate the risk of future injury.
Our research team has travelled around Australia to conduct testing and we utilise Griffiths’ suite of sports science equipment including NordBord, ForceFrame, ForceDecks and HumanTrak.