Physical Preparation in Women’s Football: Lessons from the Elite Game

Editor – Carolyn Kent Women’s Football Hub

In the latest episode of Women’s Football Hub, host Carolyn Kent sits down with sports scientist Andrew Wiseman for a detailed conversation on preparing female footballers for peak performance.

Andrew’s career spans work in both men’s and women’s elite football, in the UK and internationally. He’s been involved at senior and academy levels, has overseen strength and conditioning programmes, collaborated with coaches and physios, and is currently completing a PhD in organisational health and wellbeing, with a focus on mental health in football.

This episode explores how physical preparation in women’s football has evolved, where we’re getting it right, and where there’s still a gap between research and reality.

From Laps to Science: How Preparation Has Evolved

Twenty years ago, “physical preparation” often meant running laps with a stopwatch and keeping an eye on heart rates. Today, it’s a multi-faceted process combining:

Sports science for monitoring and analysing performance data
Strength and conditioning to build resilience and power
Rehabilitation and return-to-play specialists
Medical teams including physiotherapists, sports therapists, and nutritionists

This shift has been driven by better understanding of game demands, thanks to research from the early 1990s onwards. But the professionalisation of the women’s game has happened so fast that, in some cases, load has increased before the support systems have caught up.

Andrew warns that if you double training sessions from two per week to four, you double the load – but not necessarily the player’s capacity to handle it. Without the right foundations, that extra structure can contribute to increased injury risk.

Male vs. Female Athletes: Same Game, Different Realities

Andrew is quick to point out that football is fundamentally the same sport regardless of gender. The rules, tactics, and objectives don’t change. But the context often does:

Injury patterns in the WSL show 45% occurring in matches and 55% in training – the reverse of typical male trends.
Part-time contracts, dual careers, and less access to specialist staff still affect many female players.
Biological differences such as hormonal fluctuations can influence factors like recovery, mood, and perceived exertion – even if there’s not yet strong evidence to prescribe training strictly around menstrual cycle phases.

One of Andrew’s key points is that it’s not about building completely separate programmes for men and women, but about understanding the individual athlete in front of you and the demands they face.

What a Typical Elite Training Week Looks Like

Andrew outlines a “classic” British in-season training week:

Monday: Recovery or light technical work for players who featured at the weekend; conditioning for non-playing squad members.
Tuesday: The heaviest physical load, often involving high-intensity small-sided games (1v1 to 4v4) and isolated conditioning to hit key speed thresholds.
Wednesday: Rest day.
Thursday (Matchday -2): Tactical work in bigger spaces with maximal speed exposure to help maintain hamstring health.
Friday (Matchday -1): Light tactical preparation ahead of the match.

The rhythm is – recover, load, taper – but applying it to squads with international call-ups, travel fatigue, and varying fitness levels requires adaptability.

Sports Science: Data with Context

Modern football is awash with data: GPS metrics, heart rate tracking, wellness questionnaires. But Andrew emphasises the importance of context:

A manager might see a player’s low output and assume they underperformed, but the true reason could be something personal – like starting their menstrual cycle – that doesn’t show up on GPS.
Wellness questionnaires can be valuable, but only if used meaningfully. Asking for daily scores at 8am often yields unhelpful “everything’s fine” answers.
Numbers are only part of the picture. The real insight comes from combining data with conversations and knowing the player’s baseline behaviours and responses.

Recovery: Sorting the Science from the Sales

Recovery is a billion-pound industry, but Andrew is sceptical of tech and gadgets sold without evidence. He advises starting with a simple question: What are you recovering from?

Metabolic fatigue (sluggishness) → Active recovery, light aerobic work, mobility drills.
Mechanical fatigue (muscle soreness) → Cold water immersion or other modalities to reduce inflammation.

Andrew also warns that wearable devices can have a nocebo effect – players feeling anxious or “unfit” because their device gave them a low score, even when they feel great physically.

Long-Term Athlete Development: Starting Early

Girls mature earlier than boys, meaning they should be introduced to strength and conditioning at a younger age – sometimes as early as nine. Without this, players entering elite academies can be underprepared for the demands of training, leading to higher injury risk during trials or in their first seasons.

Andrew has seen adolescent female players arrive at clubs with no prior exposure to gym work, making them more vulnerable to breakdown under new loads. Specialist youth coaches in the women’s game are still rare, but investment here would pay off in better-prepared senior players.

Individualisation: Ideal vs. Reality

The gold standard in elite sport is individualised programming – tailoring training, recovery, and conditioning to each player. Some WSL clubs now have enough practitioners to assign 8–10 players per staff member for close monitoring.

But for many environments, Andrew says, this isn’t realistic yet. Resource limitations mean practitioners often work alone with entire squads, forcing them to prioritise and adapt. Collaboration between staff – physios, sports scientists, S&C coaches – becomes even more important in these situations.

Final Advice for Practitioners

Andrew’s message to anyone working with female footballers is clear: Do your homework.

Learn the research, but also the lived experiences of your players.
Understand their training history, injury history, and the demands they face off the pitch.
Avoid blindly applying elite-level protocols to youth or semi-professional players without considering their context.
Keep collaboration at the heart of your work – a unified, respectful backroom team gets better results than siloed specialists.

Women’s football is growing fast. That growth brings opportunities – more professional contracts, more research, more participation – but also challenges. If coaches, practitioners, and support staff can combine evidence-based practice with player-centred care, the next generation of players will be better prepared, healthier, and able to perform at their peak for longer.

This blog was created with assistance from ChatGPT and then reviewed, edited, and approved by the podcast host.

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