Last week, the Scottish FA hosted a menstrual awareness workshop from the adidas Breaking Barriers Project to educate young players, coaches, and key stakeholders about the menstrual cycle and its relationship to sport.
Delivered in partnership with The Well HQ, the workshop covered key topics related to the menstrual cycle including: tracking the different phases, breaking biases, creating safer sports environments, building healthy coach/athlete relationships, and examining how different sports and cultures tackle menstruation.
By fostering awareness and education, this workshop aimed to help the community take an active step towards eliminating barriers faced in sports due to menstruation and support the adidas Breaking Barriers Project’s ambition to make sport equal for all.
Scotland Women’s National Team vice-captain, Claire Emslie was in attendance to answer questions and share her experience navigating the menstrual cycle throughout her career: “It’s so important that discussions around the menstrual cycle in sport are normalized. Young athletes should feel empowered to discuss what’s happening to their bodies if they want to.
“Coaches and clubs should also be doing everything they can to understand the impact your period can have on performance and what they can do to help. It’s fantastic to see the Scottish FA highlight and facilitate such a vital discussion, and hopefully, it has a knock-on effect on clubs and academies throughout the country.”
Scottish FA Head of Girls’ and Women’s Football, Shirley Martin: “Having adidas and The Well HQ along to speak to our young athletes and coaches has been fantastic. The menstrual cycle is an area that has often been overlooked in women’s sports, so the more that we can do to break down the barriers around topics like menstruation, the more beneficial it will be to our young players.
“Hearing first-hand from national team players like Claire Emslie also helps our young athletes to realize that what they are going through is normal and it’s something that doesn’t need to be hidden. There are so many advances in sports science and tracking in this area and the more we acknowledge perceived barriers, the more likely we are to overcome them.”