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Hi Coaches and Parents, My name is Dr. Sonja Halsey and I’m the founder of EmpowerHer Health & Performance. Four years ago, I started teaching Performance Physiology workshops for USA Hockey National Girls Player Development Camps, which gave me the initial inspiration to create EmpowerHer. In these workshops I teach female hormone physiology and how it connects with important foundational aspects of health and sports performance for teen girls. I offer a range of services de

Perimenopause is finally having its moment. We are talking openly about hormones. We are validating sleep disruption, mood shifts, metabolic changes, body composition shifts, and injury risk. We are recognizing that female physiology is not something to ignore, it is a biological system to understand. This progress matters. But while we are advocating for women in midlife, we are still overlooking the decade that lays the foundation for it: puberty. For girls in sport, puber

For decades, sports science has been built largely around male physiology. Yet female athletes are not simply “smaller male athletes.” Hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle influence energy availability, strength, coordination, recovery, injury risk, sleep, mood, and stress resilience. When girls understand this, both health and performance change. Research shows that nearly 47% of female athletes ages 15–30 do not meet adequate energy availability, increasing