Saudi Women's Football: The Training Behind the Rise

Aljowharah Hassan is 24 and plays as a quick, direct left-wing attacker, the kind of forward who tries to shape a match through both goals and assists. According to Arab News, she started with informal neighbourhood football in 2019 and worked her way up through the university and club game, treating resistance and doubt as motivation rather than a reason to stop.

A path built one competition at a time

Her route is worth reading because it is ordinary in the best sense: steady progress across real competitions. Arab News reports that she played for SABIC Sharq from 2020 to 2024 and was named the best player in the 2024 SABIC Sharq tournament. In 2024 she also turned out for an Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University side that won its internal league and finished third in the Jubail varsity competition, and in one match she filled in as goalkeeper and kept a clean sheet in a 3-0 win over Princess Nourah University. In 2025, with Al-Muttahad, she scored 3 goals and set up 6 more across five consecutive matches and finished first in a Royal Commission competition. Every one of those details comes from her Arab News profile.

What the women's game asks of your body

You do not need to be Aljowharah to train the way the sport demands, but it helps to know what those demands are. Sports-science analysis from Science for Sport describes football as a stop-start game: players change action every 4 to 6 seconds, roughly 1,300 times a match, moving between standing, walking, jogging and short bursts of high effort. The aerobic system supplies more than 90 percent of the energy for all of that, which is why an engine built on steady cardiovascular work sits underneath everything else.

The sharp moments matter just as much. Most sprints in a match cover less than 10 metres, so acceleration, deceleration and change of direction count for more than raw top speed, and forwards like Aljowharah tend to do the most sprinting on the pitch. Science for Sport groups the essentials into four qualities: aerobic capacity, strength and power, speed with change of direction, and the ability to repeat high-intensity efforts. A sensible plan touches all four rather than chasing any single one.

A simple way to think about training for football

• Build the engine. Regular intervals and steady runs develop the aerobic base and the repeated-sprint fitness the game runs on.
• Get strong and springy. Lower-body strength and power protect the knees and hips through all those stops and turns, and put more behind each sprint.
• Sharpen your movement. Short acceleration and change-of-direction drills mirror the under-10-metre bursts that decide matches.
• Practise the skills. Passing, dribbling and finishing only improve with the ball, ideally in a team setting.

How to start, wherever you are

The best first step is the least glamorous: move consistently and build a base you can play on. A structured gym routine covers the strength, conditioning and mobility a footballer needs, and working with a coach shortens the learning curve. If you are new to it, a session or two with one of GymNation's personal trainers can map out a plan around your level, and our ladies-only spaces make it easy to train comfortably before you ever set foot on a pitch. Regular high-intensity workouts build the engine the game runs on, while the exercise library is a good place to learn the movement patterns. From there, look for a school, university or club team; the Kingdom now has more places to play than at any point in its history.

A game growing fast in Saudi Arabia

Aljowharah's rise sits inside a much bigger story. According to Al Arabiya, reporting on a NEOM 'Pioneering Change' study and Saudi Arabian Football Federation data, about 77,000 girls now compete in the annual Girls' Schools League, up from around 48,000 a year earlier, and there are more than 1,000 qualified female coaches. Regional training centres for 6 to 17 year-olds have grown from one to six, the number of professional female players has surged by 195 percent, and more than 1,500 players are now registered nationwide. The Saudi Women's Premier League has run with ten clubs, more than 200 players and over 20 nationalities. It is all framed as part of the Vision 2030 push to get more people active, and for women and girls who want to play, it means the door is genuinely open.

Train for the game at GymNation

Whether you are chasing a place in a club side or simply want the fitness to enjoy a weekend kickabout, the work starts the same way. Ready to take the first step? Fill in the enquiry form and the GymNation team will help you find your starting point.

Sources:
arabnews.pk
scienceforsport.com
alarabiya.net

The opinions shared in the GymNation blog articles are solely those of the respective authors and may not represent the perspectives of GymNation or any member of the GymNation team.