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Club life October 2, 2026 10 min read EN

What sport does for women's health, and what it still owes them

What sport does for women's health, and what it still owes them

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month: the Brustkrebsmonat of the Swiss Cancer League, Think Pink’s campaign in Belgium, and in France Octobre Rose, coordinated by the association Ruban Rose (Octobre Rose and Ruban Rose are its trade marks). Ruban Rose opened its 2026 campaign on 30 September with a line every club can use: « Se faire dépister, c’est déjà rebondir ! » (getting screened is already bouncing back). The local committees of the French Ligue contre le cancer explicitly invite sports clubs to run actions during the month.

The subject is close to home for any club. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. France recorded 61,214 new cases and 12,765 deaths in 2023. In Switzerland, about 6,800 women and 60 men are diagnosed each year. Belgium recorded 11,636 new diagnoses in 2023. Every week, your club sees female players, mothers on the sideline, volunteers and coaches.

This article does three things. It sums up what the research really says about sport and breast cancer. It gives practical ideas for acting at your club this month. And it opens a less familiar subject: the health of women athletes themselves, which sports science has long studied on men.

Sport does not replace screening. That is the first message of the 2026 campaigns. If only one message gets through at your club this month, make it that one.

What physical activity changes for breast cancer

Before: a slightly lower risk, not protection

The major reviews agree, and the effects are modest:

  • The World Cancer Research Fund judges that physical activity “probably protects” against breast cancer after menopause, and vigorous activity before menopause. Vigorous activity is linked to a 17% lower risk before menopause and a 10% lower risk after; total physical activity to a 13% lower risk after menopause.
  • The review behind the 2018 US Physical Activity Guidelines found, for seven cancers including breast cancer, relative risk reductions of about 10 to 20% in the most active people compared with the least active (McTiernan 2019).
  • In France, the International Agency for Research on Cancer attributes 1,620 post-menopausal breast cancers in 2015 to insufficient physical activity, 3.8% of those cancers.

“Sport prevents breast cancer” would be wrong. “Moving regularly lowers the risk a little” is right.

During and after treatment: proven benefits

This is where the evidence is strongest, for quality of life:

  • An international consensus from 2019 concludes that exercise is generally safe after cancer and that every survivor should “avoid inactivity”. Moderate aerobic exercise, at least 3 times 30 minutes a week for 8 to 12 weeks, improves anxiety, depressive symptoms, fatigue, physical function and quality of life. Adding strength training twice a week gives similar benefits (Campbell 2019).
  • The French National Cancer Institute reports about 25% less perceived fatigue, up to 35% for breast cancer (INCa 2017).
  • The same report notes that supervised arm exercise does not worsen lymphoedema: the old advice to stop using the arm on the operated side no longer seems justified.

On survival, large cohorts observe about 40% lower mortality in people who are active after diagnosis (breast, colorectal and prostate cancers). INCa itself says this causal link still has to be confirmed by intervention trials. It is a strong signal, not yet proof.

Welcoming a member back after cancer

A member returning after treatment does not need a speech. She needs a setting that makes room for her. A few useful markers:

  • Exercise on prescription exists. In France, any doctor involved in a patient’s care can prescribe adapted physical activity (APA), and 581 Maisons Sport-Santé help people with a condition find a suitable practice. In Switzerland, the cantonal cancer leagues run cancer sport groups.
  • Some federations have programmes built for this. The Dragon Ladies of the French canoe-kayak federation gather about fifty dragon boat crews, mostly women who have had breast cancer surgery. The French rowing federation’s Avirose programme offers indoor rowing in trained physiotherapy practices.
  • The member decides what she shares. Health information has no place in a WhatsApp group or on an attendance sheet. If she tells you, ask what she needs, and adapt the session as you would for any other return.

Running an action at your club this month

You do not need a big event. A session in pink, a dedicated match, an information stand at the bar, a walk among members: all of these count. A few rules to do it well:

  • Check the rules for events on public roads. In France, a timed or ranked race must be declared at least two months ahead, after the federation’s opinion, so for October 2026 it is too late: note it for 2027. An untimed walk only needs declaring above 100 participants, one month ahead. Rules differ by country, so ask your town hall.
  • Collect money through the beneficiary’s own tools. Donors get a tax receipt and every euro is traceable. In France, the Ligue contre le cancer’s fundraising pages pass 100% of donations to its local committees, and Ruban Rose runs its own 2026 collection. In Belgium, Think Pink lets a club create its own action page. In Switzerland, the Swiss Cancer League runs its October campaign.
  • Be exact when you sell pink items. If your club sells anything “for Breast Cancer Awareness Month”, state exactly what share goes to which association. It is the best protection against any suspicion of opportunism.

Clubs are not starting from scratch. The French rowing federation’s 2025 Défi Rose aimed at 27,000 km of indoor rowing in one month. FC Nantes is playing its teams in a pink jersey this October and gives half the profits from that jersey’s sales to two local associations. In Belgium, the French-speaking padel federation is holding two women’s “Pink Padel Ladies Day” tournaments on 17 and 18 October 2026 for Think Pink.

The blind spot: the health of women athletes

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is about breasts and women’s health. In sport, both subjects have a far more everyday blind spot.

Breasts as a barrier to playing

This part is not about cancer. It is about comfort, participation and performance, and it concerns all your female players:

  • in a survey of 540 Australian female athletes competing at national or international level, across 49 sports, 44% reported breast pain during training or competition (Brisbine 2020);
  • among 2,089 British schoolgirls aged 11 to 18, 46% said their breasts affected their participation in sport, more than half never wore a sports bra, and 87% wanted to know more (Scurr 2016);
  • among adult women, breasts are a barrier to physical activity for 17% (Burnett 2015).

What a club can do: put a sports bra on the kit list, like shoes, and mention it plainly at the start of the season.

A science built on men

Of 5,261 sports science studies published from 2014 to 2020, only 6% looked at women alone (Cowley 2021). Much of the training and prevention advice given to female players therefore comes from trials run on men.

The knee and the ACL

Women athletes suffer about 1.7 times more anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ruptures than men across all sports, and 2.2 times more in football (Montalvo 2019). The good news: neuromuscular warm-ups cut non-contact ACL ruptures in women by 67% (Webster and Hewett 2018). And regularity is what makes it work: in the Swedish Knäkontroll trial, the most compliant third of players had a relative risk of ACL rupture of 0.12 (Hägglund 2013).

Keeping teenage girls in sport

In the UK, 43% of girls who saw themselves as sporty at primary school disengage from sport afterwards, against 24% of boys, and 78% of teenage girls avoid sport during their period (Women in Sport 2022). A choice of kit, somewhere private to change, a few period products in the team bag: these cost nothing.

Our training guide covers all of this, figure by figure, with who each study was run on: physical preparation for girls and women. The general rules are on the injury prevention page.

What Paak already does

With Paak Pro, a club turns on the “Physical preparation & prevention” module for the teams it chooses. For a team the club has set as “Women” or “Mixed”, the session builder puts the knee and ACL warm-up first, marked “Recommended for this team” with the reason:

  • in football: FIFA 11+ Kids for under-9s, Knäkontroll for under-13s and under-17s, FIFA 11+ for seniors;
  • in handball: the knee prevention block, at the dose used in the Knee Control trial, from under-13s up.

Every graded prevention warm-up shows who it was studied on, for example “Studied in 4,564 female players aged 12 to 17”. On the team page, a card shows how many sessions a week included a prevention block, against the programme’s target.

What counts is the team type the club chose, never data about a player. Paak collects no information about a member’s cycle, health or history to make these recommendations.

See how to turn the module on, or see Paak for a football club or a handball club.

Three things to do in October

  1. Talk about screening. A message to members, a poster in the clubhouse: that is the heart of the month.
  2. Open a door. A session in pink, a walk, a collection through a cancer charity’s own page.
  3. Look at your women’s teams. A sports bra on the kit list, a knee warm-up twice a week, all season long.

Sport already does a lot for women’s health. It still has to study, equip and protect women as well as it does men.

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