Andy Devaney
If your club claims it’s optimising female athlete performance, but can’t reliably track the menstrual cycle or support athletes through it, you’re not optimising anything — you’re improvising. A new global study from Kitman Labs, the human performance intelligence company, puts hard numbers on a problem women’s sport has been politely side-stepping for years: widespread awareness, very little infrastructure, and an uncomfortable silence where a proper system should be.
The research draws on responses from practitioners and athletes across football, rugby, basketball, hockey and more, spanning Europe and North America. The broad takeaway is simple enough to fit on a locker-room whiteboard: the menstrual cycle is widely believed to affect performance, recovery and availability — yet many elite environments still operate as if that physiology is background noise, not performance data.
Awareness is high. Action is not.
The study’s headline numbers read like a team meeting where everyone nods gravely and then changes nothing on Monday:
| Area | Key stat | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness of MC impact | 88% of support staff | 88% of support staff in professional settings say they’re aware the menstrual cycle can affect performance. |
| Tracking MC data | Only 49% track | Only 49% say their organisations systematically track menstrual cycle data. |
| Suitable systems | Just 26% satisfied | Just 26% of practitioners report using systems they consider suitable for assessing menstrual-cycle effects on health and performance. |
| Athlete support | 86% get no support | 86% of athletes say they receive no menstrual-specific support or interventions in their sporting environment. |
| Policies & protocols | < 1 in 5 staff | Fewer than 1 in 5 support staff report any formal policy, protocol or workflow for menstrual health. |
| Communication gap | 71% vs < 50% | 71% of support staff rate menstrual-cycle communication as “very important” — yet less than half of athletes say those conversations actually happen. |
- 88% of support staff in professional settings say they’re aware the menstrual cycle can affect performance.
- Only 49% say their organisations systematically track menstrual cycle data.
- Just 26% of practitioners report using systems they consider suitable for assessing menstrual-cycle effects on health and performance.
- 86% of athletes say they receive no menstrual-specific support or interventions in their sporting environment.
- Fewer than 1 in 5 support staff report any formal policy, protocol or workflow for menstrual health.
- 71% of support staff rate menstrual-cycle communication as “very important” — yet less than half of athletes say those conversations actually happen.
The barriers, according to respondents, aren’t mysterious: cultural discomfort, stigma, and a lack of confidence. In other words, the usual suspects — the things sport is brilliant at ignoring until injuries, burnout, or missed competitions force the issue.
The blind spot in the high-performance machine
“This study puts numbers behind what practitioners have been telling us for years,” said Anne Makinen, Lead Author and Performance Strategist. “Even though many seem to understand that menstrual health has an impact on athlete performance and injury risk, most organisations still can’t see it, measure it, or manage it. The result is a blind spot in athlete care and competitive performance.”
That phrase in the report — “impact without infrastructure” — lands like a thud because it’s so recognisable. Plenty of staff believe menstrual health matters. Plenty of athletes feel it matters. But belief without measurement is just vibes, and vibes don’t hold up when you’re trying to manage training load, recovery timelines, selection decisions, travel schedules and injury risk.
Researchers also point to what they call the gendered sporting context — the legacy reality that modern high-performance sport was built through male-defined systems, male-based research and coaching models, and then copied-and-pasted into women’s programmes as if physiology were a minor detail.
It isn’t.
When menstrual dysfunctions such as amenorrhea or heavy bleeding go unnoticed or unmanaged, the consequences can show up where teams least want them: elevated overuse injury risk, chronic fatigue, poor recovery, inconsistent availability and reduced performance. And if staff don’t have the structure, confidence or policy to address it, they’re left making high-stakes decisions without a vital piece of physiological information.
A competitive advantage hiding in plain sight
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: women’s sport is growing fast — investment, visibility, and professionalism are accelerating — but many performance environments are still running on inherited templates designed for someone else’s body.
That’s not an ideological point. It’s a practical one.
If you’re serious about female athlete performance, you can’t keep treating menstrual health as a personal issue athletes must manage quietly on their own time. It belongs in the same conversation as sleep, nutrition, workload, injury history and readiness-to-train. Not because anyone wants to pry, but because elite sport already demands precision — and this is part of the precision.
The report’s direction is clear: awareness alone isn’t progress. Progress requires systems: tracking, education, communication standards, medical pathways, and a culture where athletes can speak without feeling like they’re causing a fuss.
What rebuilding the system actually looks like
The study identifies seven support considerations for a Female Athlete Supportive Environment (FASE):
- Education
- Communication
- Training & performance
- Medical
- Wellness
- Resources
- Research
Translated into plain English: stop bolting menstrual health onto the side of the programme like an optional extra. Build it into the programme design.
Start with the basics: a consistent, athlete-led method of tracking; clear privacy rules; staff training so coaches don’t freeze up; and simple workflows that tell practitioners what to do with the data — not just where to store it.
Then do the hard bit sport often avoids: make it normal. Not performative. Normal. A routine part of the high-performance conversation, handled professionally, with a clear medical and performance lens.
“This isn’t about placing blame,” said Stephen Smith, Founder & CEO, Kitman Labs. “It’s about performance risk and organisational evolution. Women’s sport has been forced to rely on male-dominated physiological models and research. If women’s sport is going to advance, its frameworks must be rebuilt through a female lens — grounded in evidence, not assumption.”
The cultural shift is a performance shift
A lot of teams will read these findings and nod sympathetically. The smarter ones will hear opportunity.
Because rebuilding training and care systems around female physiology doesn’t just reduce risk — it improves planning. It turns uncertainty into decision-making. It supports athletes as whole humans, not just bodies expected to behave like the default model used in decades of sport science.
And it answers a question modern women’s sport can no longer dodge: what does “world-class” actually mean if half your athletes are being managed with incomplete data?
“The stakes are clear,” added Smith. “You can’t claim to optimise performance if you’re ignoring the data that defines half your athletes. This is about redefining what world-class looks like and we’re committed to collaborating with our partners to help establish that.”
If that sounds blunt, it should. Elite sport is already ruthless about fractions of a second, marginal gains, and availability on match day. Ignoring a fundamental component of female physiology isn’t tradition — it’s negligence dressed up as normality.
A next-step checklist for teams and federations
If your organisation wants to lead, not follow, here’s what “rebuild around female physiology” looks like in practice:
- Set a menstrual health policy (roles, confidentiality, escalation routes, athlete choice).
- Choose a consistent tracking approach that athletes can control and trust.
- Train staff so conversations are factual, calm, and routine (not awkward, not dramatic).
- Integrate menstrual data into performance planning alongside load management and recovery.
- Create medical referral pathways for red flags (e.g., dysfunction, heavy bleeding, missed cycles).
- Audit the environment — if athletes don’t speak up, assume the culture is the problem, not them.
- Measure outcomes (availability, injury patterns, wellness scores, perceived support) and iterate.
That’s how you build modern female athlete performance systems — not with slogans, but with structure.
Access the full study
The full report — Menstrual Health in Elite Sport: Understanding the Gaps, Risks, and Path Forward — is available to download here.
FAQs
What is the menstrual cycle’s impact on elite performance?
Athletes and practitioners commonly report effects on readiness, recovery, fatigue, pain, sleep and availability — but many teams still don’t measure it systematically.
Why aren’t teams tracking menstrual health consistently?
The study points to stigma, discomfort, lack of confidence, and missing systems/policies — “impact without infrastructure.”
What is FASE?
FASE refers to a Female Athlete Supportive Environment, spanning education, communication, training/performance, medical, wellness, resources and research.
How can teams improve female athlete performance responsibly?
By building policy, tracking, staff education, and workflows that integrate female physiology into everyday high-performance planning — with athlete privacy protected.
