5 Final thoughts on coaching female athletes

To what extent do you think it’s important that athletes have conversations with their coaches about their periods?

I think it’s really important for athletes to talk to their coaches. But I think it’s part of a bigger conversation. It’s not just about periods. It’s about the bigger conversation of a coach knowing their athlete. So I think, for any coach, you want to know everything you can about your athlete to be able to coach them effectively. And that-- and knowing about their monthly cycle is just one part of that. And I think I’ve always been really open with the coaches I’ve had. And that’s-- I think, what’s important with that is most of my coaches have been male. But I have still been able to have those conversations with them, just because they have been quite comfortable having those conversations, probably because they coached lots of women before me. But I think that’s really important that we don’t think of conversation about periods as a women-only topic and sending girls to talk to the woman in the club about difficulties they’re having. So I think it’s really important that male coaches have those conversations, just as much as female coaches do.

Yeah, I fully agree. I think it is really important for male coaches to have these conversations as well. And it’s all part of having that-- they need to cultivate that relationship of trust and understanding between themselves and the athlete to allow that to happen.

Yeah, and I think it’s really important, because it obviously varies from sport to sport. But in my sport, most of the coaches are male. And so, if I didn’t feel comfortable talking to male coaches, then I might-- it might hinder my performance. And I think for male coaches, as well, sometimes, they might feel uncomfortable having those conversations. So I think it’s something to be done about educating male coaches to not feel uncomfortable and be able to talk to their athlete about periods, as they would any other aspect of training. So I think, probably, the biggest mistake a coach can make is make assumptions. So you can hear just from talking to the three of us, we’ve all had quite different experiences. And therefore, a coach-- you wouldn’t want a coach to make assumptions about what-- how I might feel at different stage of my cycle and assume that that would be the same as how Candice or Jess is feeling. So I think that’s quite important.