Health and Fitness for the Female Football Player PDF

Playing faster, better and safer

The sixth FIFA Women’s World Cup™ in Germany will mark an important milestone in the development of the women’s game. It will offer today’s best players a stage to showcase their ever-improving skills to the world and hopefully motivate thousands of girls and women worldwide to play “the beautiful game”.

Playing football is not only passion and a school of life, it is also a very healthy fun activity that helps

what level, you protect yourself from all the diseases that come from an inactive lifestyle such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Furthermore, and this is particularly important for women, playing football helps to protect your bones from osteoporosis.

gains resulting from regular play, it is important that you do not suffer injuries that keep you away from the pitch. Unfortunately, in FIFA’s elite women’s competitions at senior and youth level, we have

observed a continuous upward trend in injury frequency. The increased speed and dynamics of play

fully explain it. In any case, it is not something we should simply accept but work against.

While risk is part of the game, there is a lot you can do to protect yourself and other players from

getting injured. FIFA’s injury prevention programme, the “11+”, has been shown to reduce overall injuries in women by a third and severe injuries by a half, provided that you make the exercises your routine warm-up prior to training.

It is just as important, however, that you observe fair play and adhere to the Laws of Game. According

to the technical report on the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup 2010, fewer yellow and red cards were

issued than during earlier U-19 and U-20 Women’s World Cups. At the same time, a previously

unknown high proportion of injuries was caused by foul play in the subjective opinion of the team

physicians who documented the injuries.

In the end, injuries are caused by a multitude of factors, and therefore we must also use a multifacetted approach to prevent them. We hope that in alliance with players, coaches, referees and team physicians, this trend towards more injuries will be reversed so that you can stay on the pitch to perfect your skills and tactics.