In February 2020, the Chelsea Women’s Football Team formed a partnership with a sports science company named Orreco, who has developed the FitrWoman app, looking to improve the players training and recovery by monitoring their menstrual cycle.
The app, which was co-founded by elite runner and research scientist Dr Georgie Bruinvels and product development manager Grainne Conefrey, keeps track of the players cycle, as well as their symptoms throughout the month and training activity.
In return, the manager Emma Hayes and her staff can use the app to tailor their programme to each individual player around the phases of their menstrual cycle in order to enhance performance and cut down on injuries.
The app divides the menstrual cycle into 4 phases: menstruation, pre-ovulation, the time between ovulation and premenstrual symptoms and the premenstrual phase itself. Each of them requires a different diet, workout and recovery time based on what information the players input about their bodies.
Hayes, along with her staff and management team, encouraged the players to download the app, and with their consent Chelsea’s coaches access this information and tailor their training schedule to optimize the performance and overall well being of the players.
Now, almost three years later after the partnership took off, both the players and the staff talked about how important it is to know more about the menstrual cycle: “Female athlete health was not necessarily an area that I was super well versed in before coming to Chelsea and working with Orreco,” said Jessie Fleming, a star player for both Chelsea and Canada. “It was interesting to get to know myself better, learn what my cycle looks like and how I can optimize what recovery strategies I use to allow me to be at my best regardless of what day of the month it is.”.
“These players are going to be the first generation of women who are well educated about their menstrual cycle and they will spread that knowledge as far as they possibly can and we hope that becomes a culture within every football club in the world, so everybody can cope better with their menstrual cycles”, said Emma Hayes after seeing first hand the results of the club’s partnership with Orreco.
Another major benefit that comes with period tracking is the opportunity to decrease the number of injuries throughout the season, especially soft-tissue injuries like anterior cruciate ligament damage, which has been linked to menstruation. This type of injury, popularly known as LCA injuries, has become common in women’s football leagues around the world, affecting dozens of players such as Alexia Putellas, Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema.
In an interview to Inside the WSL, from Sky Sports, the female health specialist Dr. Emma Ross explained the connection between menstruation and injuries: “We know female athletes are up to six times more likely to have a non-contact ACL injury than their male counterparts. But what we do know about the menstrual cycle and injury is that the changing hormones across the cycle can impact the physiology and biomechanics of the body. For example, when oestrogen is elevated in the menstrual cycle, and that happens in about the second week, it can affect the stability of joints. It can interfere with the collagen in our joints and it can create looser, more lax joints. A loose joint is therefore less stable and more inclined to injury.”
Chelsea were one of the first football clubs in the world to introduce a menstrual and female health expert, but another team had also proved a year before that it could be the key to success. The U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), a four-time world winning champion used the same app as Chelsea on their road to victory at the 2019 World Cup.
The initiative made by Dawn Scott, the then high-performance coach for both the USWNT and the NWSL, was one of the many things that led the star-packed team to victory. According to Scott, the team had posters throughout their lodging during the month-long World Cup in France reminding them of the different phases and how to treat themselves accordingly.
It is needless to say that the benefits of keeping track of menstrual cycles, especially among womens football teams, outweighs the initial discomfort and embarrassment. Just look at the last exceptional years Chelsea has been having. But it is important to point out that every woman and menstruating non-binary and trans person can benefit from this habit.
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The article above was edited by Clarissa Palácio.
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