Guided by trust and pushed past the limit: Retired elite female athletes’ narrative accounts of coaching, voices and menstrual health

Abstract

Coach-athlete relationships are central to athlete development, health, and performance in elite sport. This study explored how retired elite female athletes retrospectively narrate their coaching experiences, with attention to how these relationships intersected with female-specific health concerns, training autonomy, and psychological support. A biopsychosocial perspective informed the interview design, focusing on how physical, psychological, and social factors coalesce to shape athletes’ experiences. Using a qualitative interview design and thematic narrative analysis, interviews were conducted with eight retired Norwegian elite female athletes. Participants reflected on relational dynamics across their careers, including trust, silence, vulnerability, and how topics such as menstrual health and low-energy availability were addressed or ignored, in their coaching environments. Two narrative trajectories were constructed. The first described relationships characterised by long-term trust, emotional availability, and openness to female-specific concerns, which supported athletes’ willingness to share bodily cues and collaborate on adjustments. The second trajectory depicted more distant and rigid environments, where health-related concerns were overlooked, and athletes gradually learned to withhold concerns, often normalising silence as part of the high-performance culture. Across both trajectories, the narratives highlighted how coaching relationships shape athletes’ sense of safety, autonomy, and capacity to voice physical and psychological needs. The findings suggest that a female-informed relational approach (brief state checks, explicit validation, and proportionate adjustments) may help foster more open dialogue about body-related cues. These insights may support the continued development of coach education programmes that integrate biopsychosocial awareness to create more responsive and sustainable coaching environments for elite female athletes.