Before Sports Science: How Women Athletes Trained Through the Decades
- Linda Herron
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Written by Linda Herron | Founder, Women Sports USA®
Today’s female athletes train in a world of strength coaches, nutrition plans, recovery programs, wearable technology, sports medicine, and performance data.
But generations of women competed long before any of that existed.
They trained on grass fields, dirt tracks, gymnasium floors, neighborhood roads, and wherever else they could find space. They learned through repetition. They watched teammates. They listened to coaches. And often, they figured out what worked through experience.
For many women, there was no specialized training program designed around the female athlete. There was simply the desire to get better.
The history of women’s sports is filled with stories about breaking barriers and earning opportunities. But the history of women’s sports training reveals another side of that progress—how female athletes prepared, adapted, and competed long before sports science caught up with their ambition.
Early Women Athletes Trained With What They Had
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, organized athletic opportunities for women were limited, and ideas about what women should physically be allowed to do were even more restrictive.
Exercise for women was often encouraged for health and recreation rather than competition. Vigorous athletic activity could be viewed as inappropriate or even dangerous.
Still, women competed.
Early basketball players ran the court in long skirts and restrictive clothing. Tennis players competed in outfits that would be unimaginable for today's athletes. Runners and other competitors trained without modern footwear, engineered surfaces, heart-rate monitors, or detailed conditioning programs.
Training was straightforward.
Run.
Practice the skill.
Repeat it.
Rest when you could.
Then do it again.
There were no GPS watches telling athletes how far they had traveled or recovery scores suggesting they needed an easier day. Athletes learned to understand their bodies largely through experience.
The 1920s–1940s: Competition Began Moving Faster Than Training Knowledge
As women gained greater access to competitive sports during the early decades of the twentieth century, athletic performances improved.
Training knowledge, however, remained limited.
Many athletes relied on coaches whose methods had been developed primarily through experience rather than scientific research. Conditioning often meant running laps, performing calisthenics, practicing sport-specific skills, and repeating drills until they became instinctive.
Strength training for women was uncommon and sometimes discouraged.
The prevailing belief was often that women should remain lean and graceful rather than become physically strong.
Women athletes challenged those assumptions simply by competing.
Every race they finished, every game they played, and every record they broke provided evidence that women were capable of far more physically than society had once imagined.
The 1950s–1960s: Training Became More Serious
By the middle of the twentieth century, competitive women's sports were growing, although opportunities remained far from equal.
Training became more structured.
Athletes ran timed intervals. Coaches introduced conditioning drills. Teams practiced longer and more frequently. Repetition remained one of the primary tools for improving performance.
But many resources available to today's athletes still did not exist.
There were few dedicated strength coaches.
Sports nutrition was in its infancy.
Recovery programs were limited.
Athletic trainers were not universally available.
Research specifically focused on female athletes was scarce.
For many women, training meant showing up, working hard, and learning from the athletes and coaches around them.
The body itself was often the training monitor.
Sore? Keep going if you could.
Tired? Get some rest and come back tomorrow.
Something hurt? Ice might be the answer—if ice was available.
The sophistication of today's sports medicine environment was still decades away.
The 1970s: More Opportunity Changed Everything
The 1970s became a turning point for women's athletics in the United States.
With the passage of Title IX in 1972, educational institutions receiving federal funding could no longer discriminate based on sex. Over time, opportunities for girls and women in school and collegiate athletics expanded dramatically.
The impact of Title IX continues to shape educational and athletic opportunities for girls and women across the United States.
More athletes meant more teams.
More teams meant more coaches.
More competition created greater demand for better training.
Yet many female athletes competing during this era still trained under conditions that would seem basic today.
Practices could include long-distance running for conditioning regardless of the sport, repeated sprint drills, calisthenics, scrimmages, and hours spent developing fundamental skills.
Weight rooms were not always considered places for female athletes.
Strength training programs specifically designed for women were rare.
Female athletes were entering competitive environments faster than the science surrounding their training was developing.
They became, in many ways, part of the generation that helped change what athletic training for women could become.
The 1980s: Train Hard Was Often the Philosophy
By the 1980s, women's sports had become increasingly competitive at the high school, collegiate, national, and international levels.
The decade also brought historic breakthroughs in women’s endurance sports, including the first Olympic women’s marathon in 1984.
But training culture could still be remarkably simple.
Run harder.
Practice longer.
Do another sprint.
Repeat the drill.
Push through.
Athletes developed tremendous resilience through these environments, but there was also far less understanding of concepts that are commonplace today.
Recovery was not always considered part of training.
Sleep was rarely discussed as a performance tool.
Nutrition advice could be basic.
Mental health support for athletes was uncommon.
Strength programs were improving, but access varied significantly between schools and sports.
Female-specific considerations—including hormonal health, menstrual cycles, bone health, and differences in injury risk—were rarely part of everyday coaching conversations.
Women were competing at increasingly elite levels while much of the research guiding athletic performance was still centered on men.
The 1990s: Strength Training Changes the Female Athlete
The 1990s helped accelerate another major shift.
Strength training became increasingly accepted as an important part of women's athletic development.
Female athletes began spending more time in weight rooms.
As women’s collegiate athletics continued to grow, training environments increasingly evolved alongside the level of competition.
Coaches increasingly recognized that strength could improve speed, power, stability, and injury resistance.
Conditioning became more sport-specific.
Rather than simply running miles to “get in shape,” training increasingly focused on what athletes actually needed during competition.
A soccer player needed repeated bursts of speed.
A basketball player needed explosive movement.
A field hockey player needed endurance, acceleration, agility, and strength.
Training started becoming more purposeful.
Sports medicine was also advancing. Athletic trainers, physical therapists, physicians, and strength professionals became increasingly integrated into competitive athletic programs.
The athlete was no longer training alone.
A performance team was beginning to form around her.
The 2000s: Data Enters the Training Room
As technology advanced, athletes and coaches gained access to information previous generations could only have imagined.
Heart-rate monitors became more common.
Video analysis improved.
Strength and conditioning programs became increasingly sophisticated.
Nutrition became recognized as part of athletic performance rather than simply something athletes thought about after practice.
Recovery also began receiving greater attention.
Ice baths, mobility work, physical therapy, massage, hydration strategies, and carefully planned training cycles became more common.
Perhaps most importantly, researchers began asking more questions specifically about female athletes.
Greater attention also began focusing on the relationship among fueling, menstrual health, bone health, training, and long-term athletic performance.
How do women respond to different training loads?
Why are certain injuries more common among female athletes?
How does nutrition affect performance and recovery?
How can strength training help reduce injury risk?
Those questions helped move women's sports toward a new era.
Today: The Female Athlete Has More Information Than Ever
Today's athletes can know how far they ran, how fast they accelerated, how much sleep they received, how their heart rate responded to training, and how much recovery their bodies may need.
These advances are part of a much larger transformation in the opportunities available to girls and women in sports today.
Strength coaches can design programs for specific positions and sports.
Sports dietitians can build fueling strategies around training demands.
Athletic trainers and physical therapists can identify movement patterns that may contribute to injuries.
Sports psychologists can help athletes strengthen the mental side of performance.
Researchers are increasingly studying women as athletes in their own right rather than assuming that research conducted on male athletes automatically applies to women.
There is still much more to learn.
But the difference between today's athletic environment and the one experienced by women several generations ago is extraordinary.
What Earlier Generations Can Still Teach Today's Athletes
Modern sports science has transformed athletic performance, and those advances should be celebrated.
But technology cannot replace everything earlier generations understood.
They learned consistency.
They learned discipline.
They learned how to compete without constant feedback from a device.
They learned to adjust when facilities were poor, equipment was limited, and opportunities were uncertain.
Most importantly, they kept showing up.
Today's athletes have resources previous generations could barely imagine.
But the foundation remains remarkably familiar.
Practice.
Commitment.
Teamwork.
Resilience.
And for many women, the lessons and habits developed through sports continue long after competitive athletics end.
And the willingness to come back tomorrow and try again.
The History of Women’s Sports Training Is Still Being Written
The evolution of women's athletic training is about more than better shoes, smarter workouts, or sophisticated technology.
It is another chapter in the larger history of women's sports.
The women who trained without modern facilities helped create opportunities for the athletes who came after them.
The athletes who entered weight rooms when women were not expected to lift helped normalize strength training.
The women who competed through injuries helped inspire better research into injury prevention.
And generations of female athletes who kept asking for more—more opportunities, better coaching, stronger competition, and greater support—helped build today's athletic environment.
Sports science changed the way women train.
But women athletes helped change sports science, too.
Women Sports USA®
Honoring the Past. Empowering the Future.
Every generation of women athletes has moved the game forward. By preserving their experiences—not only the championships they won, but how they trained, competed, adapted, and persevered—we help ensure that the women who built today's opportunities are never forgotten.
Dream. Believe. Achieve.
Linda Herron is the founder of Women Sports USA®, a former Division I field hockey athlete, coach, author, and longtime advocate for preserving women’s sports history. Through storytelling, she celebrates the athletes, coaches, officials, and trailblazers who helped change the game.
This is a compelling look at an often-overlooked part of women’s sports history. By tracing the evolution from simple conditioning and repetition to strength training, recovery science, nutrition, and performance technology, the article shows just how dramatically the female athlete experience has changed. What makes the story especially meaningful is its recognition of the generations of women who trained, competed, and pushed boundaries long before today’s resources existed. A strong reminder that progress in women’s sports was built one generation at a time.