Hello, and WELCOME! We're officially here!
It’s so good to finally say that out loud, and launching this during the same month as National Girls and Women in Sports Day feels perfect because women’s sport and training are having such a moment right now, with women’s sports health positioned to influence the trajectory of the women’s sports industry in 2026. Need I say less. More women are lifting, marathon-ing, run-clubbing, triathlon-ing through all seasons of life than ever before.
As a back story, this idea has been floating around my head for 3+ years (quite literally - ask my friends and family they’re probably bored of me by now 🫠😅). Women’s sport and exercise is finally getting the funding and research it deserves. Yet still too often the work is gatekept behind paywalls in science journals or lost amongst a sea of online overwhelm and misinformation.
My whole personal and professional life has pretty much always been focused around sports and health. I grew up “the athlete girl” (hence the name 😜)… but I know I’m one of the very few girls and women fortunate enough to have played and stayed in sport. It wasn’t until I retired from elite gymnastics and started working in professional sport that I truly experienced what the gender health and sports gap looked like.
I’ve now spent over a decade working in hospitals and professional sport, have a Masters in Sports Medicine, Exercise and Health and I’m currently undertaking a PhD focusing on women’s running health, REDs and knee surgery, as well as working with the British Journal of Sports Medicine where I turn sports medicine research into social content.
And at every sports medicine conference I go to, the same discussion always comes up:
How do we get research to athletes?
How do we translate science into practice?
How do we educate people better?
And progress is slowly happening. Women's professional sports coaches and performance staff are receiving better education and research than ever before. But sitting in those rooms, I always think… this is amazing, but what about the rest of the girls?
Because I’m still an athlete girl. And my friends are athlete girls. And most of us do not have professional support teams to guide our training and health. Instead, we have jobs, schedules, relationships, life admin, and sometimes kids. And we’re trying to live and train well around it all.
So when we have an injury, or feel lost about how we should be fuelling or monitoring our hormones, or why training suddenly feels harder than it should…
We turn to Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, or podcasts. Because online is where most of life happens now… for better or worse.
The current system assumes science and women’s health information filters down to us, but most women training who aren’t professional athletes don’t have access to support systems. And although there's a surge of online content being produced for other professionals or online modules and in-person courses designed for women themselves, nobody really wants to sit through an hour-long lecture after a full day of work and a training session.
Even clinicians who do work in this space often don’t have the funds to access the latest peer-reviewed journal articles (they’re $$$), often leaving women with outdated advice and treatment approaches. We need credible and relatable content that actually fits into our lifestyle, not more homework.
And so, athletegirl was created!
✨ The vision… ✨
Is for this to be a home for every active girl. For those playing sports, signing up for qualifiers, joining run clubs for the first time, lifting, training for triathlons, or just aiming to get stronger in her everyday life.
In my mind, an athletegirl cares about her health and performance, as well as conversations on style and culture that resonate with her. She wants evidence-based information without it feeling like school, gear advice that works, and conversations about injuries, recovery, hormones and training she can relate to.
Most importantly, I wanted to create a space to meet women and girls where they're at. Because training happens around the daily stress of work, relationships, sleep deprivation, busy weeks, travel, injuries, confidence dips, motivation waves, and everything else real life throws in.
Unsurprisingly, this project is a personal one.
I grew up as an elite gymnast and trained through years of injuries before retiring far earlier than I should have because of REDs (then diagnosed as female athlete triad syndrome), long before most people were talking about it. Since then, I've journeyed through bone stress injuries, surgeries, myocarditis, POTS, pregnancy, postpartum and learning how to return to sport again in different seasons of life.
In every one of those chapters, I remember looking for information that felt credible yet relatable…and dare I say it 🆒 🥲, and mostly finding either academic papers or creator misinformation.
After 2+ years of social listening and market research, there's still nothing out there that feels like it was truly built for women and girls actually living an athlete girl lifestyle. And so... athletegirl is the space I wish existed for younger me, and current me too!
So this is us hard launching! 🍾
For the girlies taking their training seriously with or without a support team behind them. With women’s participation in sports and exercise exploding, and more women than ever caring about their performance and health, the next generation of sports media has to meet us how we actually train and live, without wellness fads or misinformation.
More than anything, we want to create content you’re craving so please drop us a line to say hellloooo and share any ideas in the comments and we’ll get right on it ✍🏼
We can't wait to build this community and get the conversations going!
— Connie
