Vodafone partners with Wales women’s rugby team to track periods and performance

Vodafone has teamed up with the Wales women’s Rugby team to track and research how the menstrual cycle impacts performance, wellbeing and recovery.

Vodafone, who is a founding principal partner of Wales Women’s and Girls rugby, has added menstrual cycle tracking to their PLAYER.Connect platform, which aggregates data from athletes’ wearable devices.

The platform gathers data on players’ performance, menstrual cycle phases and mental and physical wellbeing, by combining data from wearable devices such as GPS trackers in real time.

This is in addition to input from the players themselves, via daily ‘morning monitoring’ – a series of questions answered by the players on arrival at training.

The Wales Women’s team is the first female team to try out the tracking feature.

“Despite 93 per cent of female rugby players reporting menstrual cycle-related symptoms and 67 per cent believing these severely impair their performances, there is limited guidance available on how players can best manage this,” says Alex Skelton, PLAYER.Connect head of performance.

“Being able to directly link each athlete’s menstrual cycle stage to their performance data provides a massive advantage in how we can begin to tackle this issue, by allowing coaches and analysts to move away from ‘catch-all’ solutions and provide genuine tailoring of diet, training and preparation for each individual player.

“Combined with a long-term research study using our PLAYER.Connect data, this will allow us to make huge strides in how we help female athletes of all levels better understand and manage their cycle.”

Joanna Perkins, Welsh Rugby Union’s national women’s physiotherapist, says the platform is already having a significant impact on the players’ training and preparation.

“PLAYER.Connect gives us information in real time, and is far more user friendly,” she explains.

“That means we can quickly implement strategies, inform change, avoid injuries, and help players reach their peak preparation ahead of each fixture.”

Wales Women prop, Cerys Hale, says the PLAYER.Connect technology has improved her performance this season.

“It’s given me a greater awareness of things I need to do away from the field, so for example I can monitor any soreness, be more aware of how I’m recovering and then look at what I can do before training to help manage injury prevention.

“This includes tips on how I can change my nutrition during each of the phases of my cycle, how I can reduce my symptoms, and it’s just given me more confidence that I’m putting my body in the right place to be able to perform.”

Vodafone is also working with Cardiff Metropolitan University on a research study to further investigate the impact of the menstrual cycle by using the data gathered from PLAYER.Connect.

The ambition, the company says, is to provide information that can help all female athletes of all levels better manage their performance and wellbeing in the future.

“We are committed to using our network to find innovative ways to support the growth of women’s rugby in the UK from the grassroots up,” says Vodafone’s UK chief commercial officer, Max Taylor.

“We are only in the early stages of a long partnership with the WRU and we’re looking forward to working with the team in the coming years to deliver on our ambitious plans.”