New EU project HerForm

HerForm is a cooperative partnership of six European and African institutions including TWIN, which will create a gender-specific training hub to support the female athlete’s pathway to high-performance sport.

High-level demands and a multitude of manifold transitions at a young age represent modern performance pathways in sport. The COVID-19 pandemic has further added to this intensity. Clearly, the relevance of coping skills and athlete support has never been greater.

Support requirements: Same same, but (very) different

However, requirements vary substantially across athlete sub-groups. The challenges female athletes face in comparison to men are different; individually, within topics such as identity, self-care, mental health, communication, or vocational development; and institutionally linked to the type of high-performance environments and extent of programmatic infrastructure, especially in team sports.

Research does not yet fully live up to this diversity of support requirements. Neither do practices in place. Programmes in women’s sport are either based on male athlete demands with an ad-hoc translation into the new environment, or are entirely missing. This is where HerForm, a new European project co-designed by Rugby Players Ireland & TWIN, comes into play.

Main objectives

The HerForm partners Rugby Players Ireland (project leader), Asociacion de Jugadores de Futbol Sala, NYSA Sweden, South African Cricketers Association, Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, and TWIN pursue the following objectives:

• Conduction of novel research to examine female athletes’ personal development needs and associated skills as they enter senior high performance environments in sport for the first time.
• Creation of a digital training hub for female high-performance athletes composed of an integrated set of micro-training sessions for skills developments in 5 topical areas.
• Development of a hybrid training curriculum for athlete support service providers on guided skill development for female high-performance athletes by interactively coupling digital training hub resources with on-site workshops.
• Implementation of a pilot training for 100 female high-performance athletes across six different team sports and countries.

Gender specific, evidence based, multi-disciplinary, and digitally supported: Targeting both athletes and service providers, HerForm assists female high-performance athletes to develop the core skills needed in senior high-performance sport as well as to succeed on their long-term personal pathway.