Matatū part of research to unlock potential of female athletes

Researchers are shedding new light on how menstrual cycles impact high-performing female athletes with Super Rugby Aupiki runners-up Matatū at the centre of a groundbreaking study.

The season-long study, a collaboration between Matatū, the University of Canterbury and High Performance Sport, required extensive buy-in from the players who had to be honest and vulnerable with their symptoms throughout their monthly cycles.

Lead researcher Rebecca Attwell said for a long period of time female athletes had been "trained like small men".

"There's not that much research on female athletes and most research is trying to prove we don’t need to train women differently."

Attwell, a doctoral student, has been supported by High Performance Sport NZ (HPSNZ) women's health lead Dr Sue Robson, who says it is important the research looks at women and female athletes "as they are".

Every day throughout the Super Rugby Aupiki season, each player did a wellbeing survey via a tailored app, as well as providing saliva samples to measure hormonal fluctuations.

"The salivary analysis allows us to do daily samples instead of being limited by blood work to see how can we do this better," said Robson.

Players wore Whoop bands which tracked their sleep and physical activity trends 24/7.

Prop Pip Love said considering menstrual cycles would not have been a thing when she first began in high performance sport more than a decade ago.

"We wouldn't have even talked about it or even considered it against our performance."

Flanker Marcelle Parkes said the study had been good for her mentally.

"When it tracks our sleep and our menstrual cycle, if you think you've had a bad sleep, but the watch says you haven't, you come to training and have a mental switch to work harder."

Matatū general manager Sarah Munro said the study sparked some interesting and enlightening conversation within the squad.

"Data is power and they've been able to truly understand a little more behind how their own bodies work, how their cycles work, heartbeat variability and just being able to understand and monitor their sleep and see the power that has to performance."

Attwell hoped her research would be the start of providing female athletes with the correct wrap-around support to manage their health and performance capacity proactively.

"I think it’s going to be too hard to have tailored training in a team environment but to say, 'hey, you feel like this at this time in your cycle, this is what your hormones are doing, here's some recovery metrics and things you can do to support yourself so you can show up your best on any given day'."

The research, due back later this year, would be shared with the Global Affiliation for Female Athletes, which HPSNZ recently joined.

Robson said the organisation was looking to work together to improve support.

"There's been such a gap for a while, so how can we get together and put many minds in one room and move things forward at a bit of an expedited rate?"