Implementing a Female-First Approach to Performance Training and Data Collection

Introduction

The Washington Spirit, have pioneered a female-first approach in elite sports. Rejecting a one-size-fits-all model, the club established a Performance, Medical, and Innovation (PMI) department in 2022—staffed by experts in physical and mental training, female health, data science, nutrition, and medicine.

In the off‑season, strength, speed, and conditioning are customized via TeamBuildr, enabling position-specific and individual athlete programming. Workouts are tailored to each player’s physiology, menstrual health, readiness data, and tactical demands.

TeamBuildr’s platform supports this vision, allowing coaches to craft individualized plans, monitor wellness, and adjust loads with precision.

This case exploration reveals how the Washington Spirit utilize TeamBuildr to elevate athletic development, maximize availability, and champion overall female health and safety.

Challenges

Before PMI, the Spirit lacked female-specific strength protocols—most programs were derived from male athlete models. This led to gaps in injury prevention, health monitoring, and performance optimization.

Coaches struggled to scale individualized off-season training across athletes with differing positional demands and biological cycles. Manual programming was inefficient and risked overlooking female health variables such as menstrual phase, recovery needs, and hormonal impacts on performance.

Ensuring athlete safety while ramping off-season intensity required a system that integrated wellness inputs and allowed dynamic adaptation by position and individual.

Solution

To address these challenges, the Washington Spirit embedded TeamBuildr into their PMI infrastructure for off-season programming:

Individualized Position-Based Off‑Season Workouts

• Strength coaches design block‑periodized programs tailored to each position
• Each athlete accesses her own plan via the TeamBuildr Strength app, ensuring alignment with tactical roles and readiness levels.

Integrating Female-Specific Health Data

• Daily wellness entries via TeamBuildr questionnaires include menstrual cycle status, energy availability, sleep quality, and joint aches.
• Coaches synthesize these self-reports with wearable data (e.g. acceleration/deceleration thresholds), adjusting load through the app to address cycle phase or symptom fluctuations

Collaborative Multi‑Disciplinary Platform

• Strength, medical, nutrition, and sports science staff integrate through TeamBuildr; notes, data trends, and training adaptations are logged centrally.
  

Athlete Ownership & Education

• Transparent programming empowers athletes: the app explains exercise intent, progression, and health rationale.

Injury Prevention & Load Management

• Baseline screens and ongoing tracking within TeamBuildr allow early detection of fatigue or imbalance.
  

Through this systemized ecosystem, TeamBuildr facilitates a true female-first, data-backed strength platform—not just workouts, but a holistic off-season performance and wellness approach.

Results

Since implementing TeamBuildr-driven female-specific programming, the Washington Spirit have realized significant gains:

• Improved Player Availability: Fewer off-season muscle strains and soft-tissue issues, especially among midfielders and defenders.
• Injury Mitigation: Pre-season screenings show a downward trend in pre-season overuse niggles. Strength-to-weight ratio benchmarks improved 15–20% across the roster, correlating with fewer pre-season setbacks.
• Enhanced Performance Metrics: Speed and power tests reveal 10% gains in 10-meter sprint times and 8% increase in jump height in several position groups, including forwards and wing‑backs.
• Athlete Well‑Being & Satisfaction: Surveyed athletes report greater understanding of their bodies and appreciation of cycle-sensitive training.
• Cultural Shift: Empowered athletes, guided by individualized TeamBuildr plans, enter camp confident and prepared. 
  
  Overall, TeamBuildr hasn’t merely digitized workouts—it’s catalyzed an innovative, female-specific performance paradigm, aligning with Spirit’s broader mission to “train women as women” and redefine elite women’s soccer conditioning.