Feminae: an international multisite innovative project for female athletes

Sufficient high-quality studies in sport science using women as participants are lacking, meaning that our knowledge and understanding of female athletes in relation to their ovarian hormone profiles is limited. Consortia can be used to pool talent, expertise and data, thus accelerating our learning on a given topic and reducing research waste through collaboration. To this end, we have assembled an international multisite team, described here, to investigate the effects of the menstrual cycle and contraceptive pill phase on aspects of exercise physiology and sports performance in female athletes. We intend to produce an adequately powered, high-quality dataset, which can be used to inform the practices of female athletes. Our approach will also employ research transparency-through the inclusion of a process evaluation-and reproducibility-through a standardised study protocol.

Automated summary

This article highlights the lack of sufficient high-quality studies in sport science using women as participants, which limits our understanding of female athletes in relation to their ovarian hormone profiles. The authors propose the use of consortia to accelerate learning and reduce research waste through collaboration. They also describe the formation of an international multisite team to investigate the effects of the menstrual cycle and contraceptive pill phase on exercise physiology and sports performance in female athletes, aiming to produce a well-powered, high-quality dataset to inform practices in this field.