Load Monitoring Across the Training Week in Women’s Football

Laura Bowen, lead physical performance coach at Tottenham Hotspur Women, shows how her staff use heart rate next to GPS across the microcycle: a red-zone target set from each player’s own matches, HRmax updated in season, and off-feet top-ups for substitutes and returning players.

About this webinar

Dr. Laura Bowen leads the physical performance program for the women’s pathway at Tottenham Hotspur Women. Before that she held similar roles at Southampton FC Women, was a sports scientist with Southampton’s men’s first team and worked at Aston Villa’s boys’ academy. She consults for FIFA and holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham on training and match workloads in Premier League football. With host Jo Clubb she covers what counts as load, how her staff set and update HRmax, how substitutes and returning players are conditioned, two submaximal tests, buy-in, and audience questions on the menstrual cycle, academies and two-match weeks. Recorded on 14 October 2026, about 60 minutes.

What you will learn

• The weekly target Bowen’s staff use: one to one and a half matches’ worth of time above 85% HRmax in the training week, measured against each player’s own match response.
• How to set HRmax from the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 and keep updating it from training and match traces in season.
• Why hitting the GPS metrics in two hours is not the same as hitting them in 30 minutes, and what Bowen changed in the coaching block because of it.
• How substitutes are topped up: 10–15 minutes after the match, small-sided games with MAS runs the next day, and 20–30 minute off-feet sessions with live heart rate in the gym.
• Which two exposures Bowen protects every 7 days in a two-match week.

Practical examples from the recording

1. A match’s worth of red zone in the training week. Players wear heart rate monitors in matches, and that is where their targets come from. For each player the staff count time above 85% HRmax in a match, then make sure she accumulates one to one and a half matches’ worth of that time across the training week, on top of the match itself. The target moves with the player: as she gets fitter, or the playing style or the coach changes, her match response changes and the target follows. The same number sets off-field conditioning and gives an injured player a known amount to reach before she rejoins the team.

2. Setting and updating HRmax. Bowen has historically taken HRmax from the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1, run a couple of times a season; others she knows use the 30-15. She does not assume the test produced a true maximum. Because players are monitored every day, a higher value seen in a hard session or a match is checked as a clean trace and, if real, becomes the new HRmax. Every 85% threshold hangs off that value, so her staff are now researching how best to determine HRmax for their own squad through the season.

3. Coach blocks and open play. The staff meet the week before to plan the next microcycle and review what each drill produced. On the main physiological stimulus day, coaches dropping in and out of play left too much stop-start time, and the heart rate response never resembled a match. They moved to one condensed coaching block followed by uninterrupted open play. Rest between small-sided games is set from how long each player needs before she can reach the intensity again, not from a research paper. A returning player who comes off short of the cardiovascular hit tops up off her feet in the gym the same day.

4. Conditioning the substitutes. After the match, substitutes get 10–15 minutes to chase the external targets they missed. On MD+1 or MD+2 (the first or second day after the match) they play small-sided games with MAS-style running between games, so heart rate stays high from one to the next. Because that still falls short of a match, they also do off-feet sessions a couple of times a week on bikes, ski ergometers and air bikes: 20–30 minutes in a small group, everyone’s heart rate live on an iPad in the gym. Bowen sells it as closing a physical gap, not as punishment for not playing.

Questions answered in the Q&A

Does the menstrual cycle change how Bowen plans the training week? No. Players report symptoms in daily wellness, the performance and medical team discuss them before training, and a player with bad symptoms may take her load later in the week or get extra recovery. Long term, the work is nutrition and pelvic health support. Jo Clubb adds that current research does not support phase-based load recommendations.

How do you set heart rate targets in an academy? Not from the match. Bowen sets an academy player’s target on a first-team player with a similar internal response, or on the quality she needs to build, usually aerobic conditioning, and tracks the central response improving over time.

Do you use heart rate live in training to stop or change a drill? Never to stop one. Coaches ask whether a drill is working, and the live response feeds that conversation: a little longer, a little less rest, or more rest if the aim is to hit the intensity again. Anything missed is adjusted later in the week.

How do you handle a two-match week? Do not underestimate the load on players who do not play but travel, sleep badly and worry about selection. Bowen maintains rather than overloads, periodizes recovery with a clear strategy for each day, and protects a gym loading session and a maximal speed exposure every 7 days.

Who this webinar is for

Heads of performance, sports scientists and S&C coaches in women’s soccer at professional clubs and collegiate programs, and the physiotherapists and return-to-play coaches who work from the same data, who need individual red-zone targets, an in-season HRmax routine and a conditioning plan for substitutes.