Darah-Bree Bensen-Boakes on Why Elite Sport Must Move Beyond Male-Centric Recovery Models

Australian sporting organisations are facing growing commercial and high-performance pressure to modernise athlete recovery frameworks, as experts call for dedicated research models tailored specifically to female athletes.

Speaking on the operational realities of elite recovery, registered psychologist and clinical sleep researcher Darah-Bree Bensen-Boakes highlighted that traditional sports science models have historically relied on male-centric reference values, leaving high-performance programs with significant data blind spots regarding female physiological needs.

“Yeah, I think that it’s yeah, important to note that for females specifically, the physiology can have a impact on sleep, recovery and performance, right?

“So, we can see these impacts varying from person to person,” Bensen-Boakes said.

Overcoming Data Discrepancies and Wearable Tech Limits

As sports organisations invest heavily in wearable biometric tracking technology, Bensen-Boakes warned against relying solely on hardware metrics to evaluate an athlete’s match readiness. Instead, high-performance programs must account for sleep-wake state discrepancy—the gap between objective data captured by consumer wearables and an athlete’s perceived sleep quality.

“We should really take it as more of a sleep estimator than being the hardcore truth because even our devices as amazing as they’re getting these days can get stuff wrong and be at least part to blame for that discrepancy,” Bensen-Boakes noted.

This perceptual gap directly influences match-day execution, affecting confidence, decision-making, and perceived exertion regardless of physiological output.

Commercial and High-Performance Strategy

To bridge these gaps, Bensen-Boakes advocated for a shift toward collaborative, real-world intervention testing and long-term data collection focused on female-specific metrics, including menstrual cycle tracking and training schedules.

“I think that largely we if we’re thinking about how can we better this field of research for female-specific athlete research, it really comes down to a few different things”

“One example could be building some really strong, large female-specific databases of female athletes collecting some longitudinal data, meaning over time, rather than only having these kind of smaller studies or using male-driven reference values, because we know that’s not always applicable,” Bensen-Boakes explained.

Beyond longitudinal data, coaching staff are encouraged to implement structural protocols that facilitate mental transition, helping elite competitors effectively down-regulate from high-intensity environments.

“How can they switch off from that that high arousal, ready to go, high cognitive load activity to actually kind of ending the activity with a wind down, switching out of that mode to create some transition time.”

“I think there’s a big ac applicability for that here in the sports world too, of how can we switch off from sports mode to sleep mode that could be enforced here,” Bensen-Boakes said.

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