New Female Athlete Health Resources Launched
A new survey of Scottish Gymnastics performance gymnasts has revealed statistics that have led to the development and launch of resources for female athlete health.
In the suvey, almost two thirds of respondents experience urine leakage. The research was carried out after some gymnasts showed visible signs of incontinence during a competition. Of those who completed the survey, 63% said they experienced small or moderate amount of urine leakage following training.
Scottish Gymnatsics performance manager, Wendy Purdie realised the need to do something thanks to her knowlegde of the challenges of the disciplines she manages, and took the lead to speak with performance staff at the sportscotland institute of sport. The institute is currenlty working to bring togetehr a female athlete health group to tackle issues in this area. Wendy also contacted Dr Mhairi Kell at British Gymnastics who has been working with GB elite performance gymnasts, supported by the UK Institute of Sport.
Together, they discussed to pelvic health in general and what each organisation was doing about female athlete health issues. This led to the Scottish Gymnastics team creating a questionnaire with a sports and exercise medicine doctor, physiotherapist, and nutritionist from the institute of sport.
The questionnaire was sent to the 200 female gymnasts in the Scottish Gymnastics performance programmes in May. When the findings came in, it was clear they have little knowledge about pelvic floor health nor understanding of how simple exercises could help. The next conversations were about how to plan a year’s education to cover a variety of topics, not just for athletes, but for all women and girls.
The result is a programme of education resources covering different topics. The first series is exclusively available to all Scottish Gymnastics members from late August.
The performance team is continuing to work with performance nutritionist Suzie Oliphant to help improve knowledge of this topic. The next phase is delivering education to performance athletes, coaches and parents later in the year.
Wendy Purdie said: “It was quite frightening to find a high percentage of our gymnasts experience urine leakage. Do they know where to find out about it? How scared are they when it first happens? Do they tell anyone about it?”
“As a mum of two daughters, I felt this is such an important subject to open up about and discuss. It is something that is seen as a taboo subject, like talking about periods. We need to break down those barriers and have these open conversations.”
“Along with the support from the institute of sport, we have worked with British Gymnastics and the UK Sports Institute to produce and share a series of infographics. These are available to all our members, not just performance athletes as we feel women and girls of all ages can benefit from the learning. We are grateful to our partners for these essential resources.
“We’ll have more female education coming including breast health. However, it is not just about women and girls. We have opened up the conversation to male gymnasts and found that men also experience urine leakage. So our next move is to do a wider survey of gymnasts to find out more about the extent of incontinence to help us understand and create further resources and education to help.”