The Energy Tank

If you fuel according to the work you’re doing, this is the result you’ll get.

Fitness, sports, exercise, what comes to mind? If I had to guess, probably a slim, lean physique that gives an edge in competition, builds confidence, and enhances your career, health, and relationships. If that’s the goal, you’ll need to increase your physical activity via working out. To keep up with this increased activity, the body will increase its nutritional and energy demands. That means consuming more macro and micronutrients to make gains, adapt to exercise, and prevent injury and illness. Makes sense, yet proper fuel and nutrition is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for many recreational and professional athletes. 

It may be a surprise to learn that many elite female athletes at the top of their game lack adequate fuel for performing at a high level. These women commonly experience irregular menstrual cycles that negatively impact their training and performance. A recent study that examined the energy and nutrition of female soccer players found that 88% of these athletes were not meeting their daily nutritional needs. These are some of the best athletes on the planet, why aren’t they meeting the nutritional needs that their body’s require to perform at a high level? (1)

Society’s fixation to “look” a certain way is an issue.

Part of the problem is based on society’s fixation on what women should look like: leaner is better. If I didn’t have those five pounds, that guy would have been into me. If I didn’t have those five pounds, I’d feel better in my own skin. If I didn’t have those five pounds, I would have made the team. There’s nothing wrong with desiring a leaner figure, but the way we get there can undermine our efforts. The societal pressure to “look” a certain way, rather than focus on “are you eating enough” can promote chronic dieting and eating disorder behaviors that come with drastic negative consequences. (2)

Dieting is one of the easiest pitfalls to fall into if not done correctly. On paper it makes sense; eating less carbs will cut down on calories so you don’t get bigger and lose weight. But when combined with regular exercise, restricting the number of calories you consume actually puts the body in a potentially harmful energy deficit. You should actually be eating more.

If you eat more, you can train more and work harder. If you train more and work harder, you grow faster and stronger, and stay at the same weight!

It sounds almost counterintuitive, which is why so many people operate in the belief that less is more. Either they continue to eat the same amount as they did before they started working out, or they eat less while working out because they’re afraid of getting too big. Sometimes people just can’t keep up with other factors at play in their lives. Family/work obligations getting in the way, not enough time, lack of room in the budget, exhaustion from balancing an already full plate. Who’s got time to cook? (3)

The issue of under-eating to maintain a specific physique isn’t just limited to weekend warriors or yogi’s. This problem affects athletes at all levels; even some of the best female athletes in the world.

After under performing in the 2016 Tokyo Olympics, Rowing New Zealand conducted a health study in 2018 with their female rowers. Because of the prevailing belief that “lean is fast” and “ideal race weight”, they found that many of their athletes were under-fueled. (4)

In an interview with Outside magazine in 2020, elite rock climber Beth Rodden explained the consequences of under-eating as she believed a slim figure would give her an edge in competitions. “Losing weight worked for my short-term performance goals but was extremely harmful in the long run… Tendons, ligaments, bones - they all started to collapse after 15 years of deprivation. My climbing cascaded from elite to elementary in a matter of months.” (5)

Multiple studies across over forty different sports found that 50 percent of female athletes struggled with energy deficiency in their sport. A culture of weight reduction to achieve a slim physique, “what a woman should look like,” to gain a performance benefit has been cutting women off at the knees, at both the professional and recreational levels. 

Your body needs fuel.

Humans need to consume a certain amount of food each day to meet the body’s daily energy demands. These daily tasks include breathing, eating and digesting food, pumping blood, going for a walk, watching netflix, taking a nap. Adding an increase to physical activity via working out further increases the body’s daily energy demands. Without the proper fuel and nutrition, the body won’t adapt, recover, or perform during exercise.

For women, there’s the extra consideration of maintaining a healthy menstrual cycle which regulates estrogen and progesterone levels. The primary function of these hormones are supporting a woman’s sexual development and pregnancy. But these hormones have secondary roles that directly impact her body’s adaptation, recovery, and performance to exercise: improve brain function, support the pelvic floor, maintain bone density, support the immune system, and improve blood pressure. If her period has been ghosting her, her body likely is stressed from not eating enough. These necessary secondary functions have shut down to support primary functions and other essential bodily functions. 

Are you eating enough?

Think of a calorie deficit like a bank account, with calories acting like dollars. To make money, you deposit more money than you withdraw. The more money you deposit, the more you meet or exceed your financial demands, leaving room to create a healthy nest egg for future endeavors. You wouldn’t overdraft your bank account with massive withdrawals and not deposit the appropriate amount of money to keep the account even, that would send you into debt. 

Excluding fitness and exercise, men burn on average 2,900 calories a day and women burn an average 2,200 calories a day to stay healthy. Now add a 60 minute workout. In a high-intensity interval training workout, participants can burn an average of 600-800 more calories, substantially increasing the body’s caloric demand. The boys now require an average 3,700 calories and the ladies an average 3,000 calories. 

If you have a baseline requirement of 2,200 calories a day, and you add a 60 minute pilates class on top of that, you've increased your body’s caloric demand to 3,000 calories. To meet this caloric increase, you need to eat more to deposit more calories into your body. But if you choose to continue to eat the normal 2,200 calories a day, you're 800 calories short of your body’s energy demands. Let's throw a diet in there as well because it’s “the trend,” and you choose to eat 500 less calories per day. Now you're 1,100 calories in the hole, giving your body only 1,900 calories, well short of the required 3,000 calories. 

That might not seem like a big deal, but it will compromise your health. If your body requires 3,000 calories a day to stay healthy while working out, over the course of one month your body will need to burn an average of 90,000 calories. If you deprive yourself those 1,100 calories a day, your body will only burn 57,000 calories in a month, meeting only 63% of your body’s energy needs. Would you accept a 40% loss of income every month? What would that do to your bank account in a month? A year? Five years? 

Your body isn’t like your checking account.

You can’t fix this issue by simply pouring in more money. When the body feels stressed from the lack of fuel, it switches to conservation mode by diverting nutrients and calories from nonessential functions to support essential functions. For female athletes, the pituitary glands and hypothalamus discontinue hormone production, creating menstrual dysfunction. The adrenal glands produce more cortisol, increasing stress levels. the body begins storing more fat, burning fewer calories, and increasing hunger. Your body knows there’s a problem and it’s telling you it can’t sustain this kind of activity with this level of energy deficiency. (6) 

This imbalance can also produce menstrual dysfunction and impaired bone health in women, both which impact long term health while reducing short term gains (7). Even eating a normal or reduced diet that meets just your daily energy needs while increasing exercise isn’t enough either. Luteinizing hormones, an important hormone for ovarian function, are suppressed, further increasing the risk of injury and illness during exercise. However, those ladies that increase calorie intake for exercise prevent hormonal disruption and perform better (8).

The Female Athlete Triad

To better educate women and their coaches about the need for proper fuel and nutrition, the International Olympic Committee redefined their safety standards to ensure the safety of female athletes. Commonly known as ‘The Female Athlete Triad’, the committee updated this medical condition in 2014 to identify three symptoms that most negatively impact the health of female athletes, leaving them prone to debilitating injury from undereating and overtraining : Energy Deficiency, Menstrual Dysfunction, and Impaired Bone Health. (7)

Each one of these symptoms are a result of under-fueling, forcing the body to divert resources from nonessential functions. Female athletes begin to experience declines in coordination, reaction time, endurance, muscle strength, and poorly respond to training and working out. “Women can be left feeling drained, and tired all the time and stuck in a cycle of stale training and performance, which can lead to overtraining and burnout.”

Along with experiencing an increase in depression, mood swings, impaired judgment, there is an increased risk of injury such as bone stress injuries and fractures. Impaired bone health from a lack of energy availability increases a woman's risk by 4.5 times more likely to develop early onset osteopenia (lower bone mineral density than normal) and osteoporosis (a bone disease that weakens bone strength and increases the risk of fractures). 

When female athletes are under fuel, hormone levels are thrown off balance. Without the regular stream of estrogen produced from a healthy diet, it increases the risk of weaker bone tissue, low bone mineral density, and can alter bone shape and structure. (9)

Don’t skip out on a snack

It’s important to eat regularly throughout the day and not skimp out on snacking either. Recreational and professional female athletes that spend too much time in an energy deficit unknowingly suppress their estrogen levels and metabolic rate, even if they meet the daily total nutritional needs. This lack of fuel results in higher cholesterol levels and triglycerides. The blood has a harder time dilating, leading to high blood pressure and increased potential of coronary heart disease. If under-fueled, athletes' blood work can be postmenopausal. (10) 

Choosing to skip an apple and a couple scoops of peanut butter will add up. It may be only a few hundred calories, but over the course of a year, it would be like choosing not to eat for a month.  

Keep your body feeling “topped off.”

There’s too much emphasis in our culture on optimizing performance and dieting to feel happier, healthier. But without the basic principles of nutrition and energy, too many female athletes, recreational and professional, have lost sight of the importance of eating enough. Anytime you operate without sufficient energy to meet physical demands, your body cannot function at its best. Instead, stress levels increase and muscles become inflamed as tissue breaks down and is damaged. 

The desire to look and feel healthy in the mirror, feel confident in our body, sleep better, hike the rim of the Grand Canyon, tackle that 10K, train for that bikini show, or just build a healthy wellness base for the future are wonderful things. But the number one priority to meet these goals is to avoid long periods of time where your energy levels dip. If you keep yourself “topped off” with a solid base of calories, eating, snaking, and fueling yourself properly, your body will adapt better to training. (11)

You’ll perform better in the gym, recover better the day after. Those trail runs will become easier. That spin class will become an insatiable passion. Morning yoga will flow more gracefully and you’ll feel more beautiful, strong, and confident.

Fueling properly is proven to give elite female athletes an edge on the competition. 

In 2019, the coaches of Rowing New Zealand emphasized the benefits of eating well and how proper nutrition gave their female rowers an edge. The results speak for themselves as the team dominated the competition by taking home medals in four of seven women’s events in 2020 Tokyo Olympics. (4)

A study looked at elite female swimmers training regimen and diet. Those athletes that did not eat enough began to experience menstrual dysfunction and their performance declined by as much as 10%. But those athletes that fueled properly by eating enough maintained a healthy regular menstrual cycle and improved their performance in the water. Their velocity in the 400 meters increased by 8%, making them faster in competitions. (12)

The take away: Eat More!

There's a complex relationship between sport, food, and body image. A lack of fuel puts the body in an energy deficit that can negatively alter metabolism and induce conservation mode: conserving fat, increasing stress, and reducing bone mineral density. But if the body is fed, it can relax. When we educate women about their bodies and the benefits of proper nutrition, rather than to conform to what a female athlete should look like, she can train safely and feel good in her body. So let’s embrace the rallying cry of Rowing New Zealand: “Eat More!”

If you fuel according to the work you’re doing, this is the result you’ll get!

Disclaimer

I am not a doctor or certified medical physician. None of the information presented is to be used as medical advice meant to treat, cure, diagnose any disease, illnesses, or ailments. I do not take credit for any research that is presented. The information is purely educational and based on studies completed by professionals and elite female athletes.

If you have questions or concerns, or are experiencing symptoms during exercise, consult with your doctor first.

Sources

1. Samantha L. Moss et al., “Assessment of Energy Availability and Associated Risk Factors in Professional Female Soccer Players,” European Journal of Sports Science 21, no.6 (2021): 861-70, https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2020.1788647 

2. Peiling Kong and Lynne Harris, “The Sporting Body: Body Image and Eating Disorder Symptomatology Among Female Athletes from Leanness Focused and Nonleanness Focused Sports,” The Journal of Psychology Interdisciplinary and Applied 149, no. 2 (2015): 141-60, https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2013.846291 

3. Joseph E. Donnelly et al., “Does Increased Exercise or Physical Activity Alter Ad-Libitum Daily Energy Intake or Macronutrient Composition in Healthy Adults? A Systemic Review,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 1 (January 15, 2014): e83498, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083498.

4. Interview with Jackie Kiddle; Suzanne McFadden, “How Our Female Rowers Ate More and Triumphed,” Newsroom, August 17, 2021, https://www.newsroom.co.nz/lockerroom/how-our-female-rowers-ate-more-and-triumphed 

5. Beth Rodden, “Climbing’s Send-at-All-Costs Culture Almost Ruined Me,” Outside, May 2, 2020, https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/beth-rodden-climbing-body-image/.

6. Lauren M. McCall and Jathryn E. Ackerman, “Endocrine and Metabolic Repercussions of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport,” Current Opinion in Endocrine and Metabolic Research 9 (December 2019): 56-65, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coemr.2019.07.005.

7. Elizabeth Joy et al., “2014 Female Athlete Triad Coalition Consensus Statement on Treatment and Return to Play of the Female Athlete Triad,” Current Sports Medicine Reports 13, no. 4 (July-August 2014): 219-32, https://doi.org/10.1249/JSR.0000000000000077.

8. Anne B. Loucks, “Exercise Training in the Normal Female: Effects of Low Energy Availability on Reproductive Function,” in Endocrinology of Physical Activity and Sport, ed. Naama Constantini and Anthony C. Hackney (New York: Humana Press, 2013), 187-99.

9. Ida A. Heikura et al., “Low Energy Availability Is Difficult to Assess but Outcomes Have Large Impact on Bone Injury Rates in Elite Distance Athletes,” International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 28, no. 4 (2018): 403-11, https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsnem.2017-0313 

10. Paulina Wasserfurth et al., “Reasons for and Consequences of Low Energy Availability in Female and Male Athletes:Social Environment, Adaptations, and Prevention,” Sports Medicine - Open 6, 44 (September 10, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-020-00275-6 

11. T. P. Aird,R. W. Davies, and B. P. Carson,”Effects of Fasted vs. Fed-State Exercise on Performance and Post-Exercise Metabolism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 28, no. 5 (2018): 1476-93, https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.13054 

12. Bryan Holtzman and Kathyrn E.Ackerman, “Recommendations and Nutritional Considerations for Female Athletes: Health and Performance,” Sports Medicine 51, no. 9 Suppk. (2021): 43-57, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-021-01508-8 

Period Power

If they tell you you’re fine, you must be fine. Right?

For years, female student athletes in high school and college were told by their coaches and doctors that if you’ve skipped your period, it’s wasn’t a big deal, it’s pretty common among student athletes and recreational athletes post-college. You’re clear to compete. But the fact that this issue is so common among so many women and doesn’t raise any red flags is alarming. This dismissive attitude doesn’t tell the whole story and leaves many active women and girls vulnerable to debilitating symptoms like mood changes, pelvic cramps, nerve pain, anxiety, all of which can leave women feeling cut off at the knees. And yet no one talks about it.

Your could be skipping your period for a variety of reasons. It could mean that you’re pregnant, perhaps your cycle is finicky, or maybe that new medication or health condition you’re working through is throwing your cycle off. Even stress from work, travel, poor sleep, or a break-up could disrupt the delicate balance of hormones playing in your body (3). But for active women, recreational or professional, an absent or wonky cycle is a sign that your body isn’t getting enough energy (1). It’s a warning that you’re overexercising, undereating, or a combination of both (4).

No one brings it up. It’s taboo.

At all levels of sport, from recreational to professional and even Olympic and Paralympic, athletes seek out any and all advantages they can get. From a tweak to nutrition here, an adjustment to post-workout there, the quality of sheets or bathroom routines, no stone is left unturned. But mention menstrual cycle and it’s like the all the air’s left the room. Either change the subject or keep it to yourself.

When asked, the reasons most women don’t bring up their menstrual cycle with their doctors, coaches, or support staff is the fear of judgment, fear that this “weakness” could be used against them and get cut from the team, or doctors and coaches (who are mostly men) simply brush it off and dismiss it. They don’t have an appreciation for the lived experience of hormonal changes, so why bother? And yet for active women, a healthy menstrual cycle is as important a vital sign as body temperature, pulse, breathing, and blood pressure. Your period acts like a canary in a coal mine, letting you know if something is off.

It’s your body doing what it needs to do!

The menstrual cycle begins during puberty and is how the female body prepares for pregnancy. This 21 - 35 Day Cycle waxes and wanes over the course of roughly a month. Starting in adolescence, progressing through sexual maturation, and ending with menopause (12 months without a menstrual period), the menstrual cycle lasts through multiple stages of a woman’s lifecycle. This sequence of monthly rising and falling hormone levels is regulated by the hypothalamus, a region at the base of the brain which controls the production of two important hormones: estrogen and progesterone.

The increase and decrease of these hormones trigger specific phases and events that cause the reproductive organs to respond in different ways. There are four phases:

• Menses Phase

  • The first day of your period

  • The lining of the uterus sheds through your vagina if pregnancy hasn’t occurred

  • It’s common for people to bleed for 3 - 4 days

• Follicular Phase

  • Begins on the day you get your period and ends at ovulation

  • It overlaps with the menses phase

  • Estrogen levels rise

  • The lining of the uterus grows and thickens.

  • Follicles in your ovaries grow.

  • During days 10 to 14, one of the developing follicles will form a fully mature egg.

• Ovulation

  • Occurs roughly at about day 14 in a 28-day cycle

  • Increase in luteinizing hormone (LH) causes the ovary to release its egg

• Luteal Phase

  • Lasts from about day 15 to day 28.

  • The egg leaves the ovary and travels through fallopian tubes to the uterus

  • Progesterone levels rise to prepare the uterine lining for pregnancy

  • If the egg becomes fertilized and attaches itself to your uterine wall, you become pregnant.

  • If pregnancy doesn’t occur, estrogen and progesterone levels drop

  • The uterus sheds the lining via your period

During each of these 4 Phases, estrogen and progesterone levels rise and fall, impacting a woman’s overall health and wellness. The benefits these hormones provide can be broken down into two separate categories : Primary Functions and Secondary Functions.

• Primary Roles

  Estrogen

  • Responsible For A Woman’s Sexual Development

  • Supports A Healthy Menstrual Cycle:

    • Builds The Lining Of The Uterus + Sheds The Lining Via Your Period

  Progesterone

  • The “Pregnancy Hormone”

  • Prepares The Lining Of The Uterus For A Fertilized Egg During Pregnancy

• Secondary Roles

  Estrogen

  • Maintain Healthy Cholesterol Levels

  • Support A Strong Healthy Pelvic Floor

  • Improve Mood

  • Support Brain Function

  • Maintain Healthy Bone Density (5)

  • Anti-Aging For Skin + Hair

  Progesterone

  • Improve Mental Health

  • Has A “Calming Effect” On The Brain

  • Support Liver + Kidney Health

  • Retain Bone Density (5)

  • Increase Anti-Inflammatory Agents To Support A Healthy Immune System

  • Reduce Blood Pressure

It’s important to recognize the roles that estrogen and progesterone play in women’s health. If there’s a irregularity in your menstrual cycle (not having a period over a 3 month period or more) then the hormones associated with reproduction aren’t working properly. If these hormones aren’t doing their primary role, then they’re not doing their secondary role.

How does this relate to fitness?

Whether your a marathoner, dancer, gym rat, yogi, body builder, or hiker, all forms of exercise utilizes the principle of progressive overload : gradually increasing the weight, frequency, number of repetitions, or time under tension, to trigger training adaptions. This process stresses the body followed by recovery, enabling the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and circulatory systems to bounce back stronger, making you faster, stronger, more efficient.

But if there’s too much stress from overtraining, undereating, or a combination of both, the body will prioritize the more important systems such as the nervous system, respiratory system, and musculoskeletal system, and shut down more nonessential functions like the reproduction system. This creates erratic patterns in a woman’s menstrual cycle like irregular cycles, extra long cycles, shortened luteal phases, or simply no period at all. A menstrual cycle that ghosts you for a period of three or more consecutive months is a cause of concern. Without the regular blend of estrogen, progesterone, and other essential hormones, female athletes are more prone to stress fractures, early onset osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease (7).

It affects women at all levels.

Studies have found that student athletes who don’t menstruate regularly spend more time dealing with injury and aren’t able to work as hard or consistently vs. athletes who have a normal cycle. Those student athletes who have regular cycles showed improvements in training and performance (8). And this impacts recreational athletes too. The more symptoms a person experiences, the more likely they are to change their workouts, skip training, or quit all together. Left unchecked, these erratic patterns can alter your baseline numbers and have drastic consequences.

Traci Carson, current professor and researcher in Sports Psychology, Neuropsychology and Health Psychology for the University of Michigan, shared that during her collegiate career playing women’s soccer for Michigan, she had skipped her period for several years. Her coaches and training staff deemed it as no big deal, as was the prevailing belief at the time. But when Traci’s doctors looked at her bloodwork, they discovered that her estrogen levels were menopausal. Traci was only 20 years old.

Athletes like Traci who deal with debilitating and often painful symptoms often do so in silence. They never raise their hand, complain, or ask for help. We haven’t created a safe space for women to raise their voice. This needs to change.

And it DOESN’T have to limit your activity!

What would happen if we started normalizing discussions, not just about women’s fitness but also around helping women feel more comfortable discussing female related issues with their coaches, doctors, and friends? What if instead of ridiculing or being dismissive, as has been the pattern for the last 400 years, we gave ladies the microphone and actively listen to what she has to say? Imagine the possibilities if coaches and doctors partnered with female athletes and active women to help them be more conscious of their cycles, rhythms, and symptoms to help identify underlying health issues that could be impairing their training and development.

Coaches and doctors, who were mostly men, used to use the menstrual cycle as a means to limit activity as it was seen as a weakness. Some still do. But there is a shift occurring across the cultural landscape, not just in sports and fitness. Instead of limiting you to what you can or cannot do because you have ovaries, new opportunities are opening up for women that were not accessible before. Better research and data analysis are coming to the fore. Studies done by women, for women, are looking at how the unique physiology of the female body, including hormones, affects exercise and athletic performance. And they’re gaining ground.

These studies cover a wide variety of issues. From proper fuel and nutrition for women, sports bra design, to reducing injury and chronic stress fractures in active women. Other studies are laying the ground work for responsible, ethical tracking of menstrual cycle symptoms in adjacent to exercise activity. Using this wellness data, coaches and trainers can make adjustments focused on nutrition, recovery, hydration, sleep, to better optimize training to meet each woman’s specific needs. By helping women pay attention to their body, when do you feel good, when do you feel off, we can teach ladies how to train with their bodies!!

Enter the World Beaters.

Either you know them, you’ve heard of them, or cheered for them at one of their games, the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) is one of the most prolific sports teams on the planet. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’ve undeniably redefined the game of soccer at the international level. And they were the subject of one such study examining how a woman’s period impacts training and recovery for the purpose of improving athletic performance.

In the lead up to the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, the USWNT high performance coach, Dawn Scott, began looking for any adjustments or tactics that could give the team the edge. Her philosophy was “It’s all about margins.” Scott began looking at athletes as a whole, examining training, strength, mobility, recovery, hydration, fuel, and sleep. What tweaks could she make in an athletes development that would improve performance? That’s when she began paying closer attention to each athletes menstrual cycle.

Scott partnered with Georgie Bruinvels, the senior sports scientist at Orreco and the founder of the Fitrwoman App, to create daily wellness reports for each athlete. These reports included training intensity, focus, duration, sleep, fuel, hydration, recovery, and period symptoms. Athletes would report repeat symptoms, severity, when they occurred, and the average length of their cycles. Using this data, Scott could begin to identify patterns or signals for when to increase training activity or back off so players would feel good across the entirety of their cycle.

In interviews, Scott shared the awkward start the team had when she introduced the concept of tracking period symptoms with the players during a team meeting. Ladies pulled their hoodies over their faces. Male staff and trainers walked out. It was complete disaster. But Scott brought the men back in, calmly spoke with the athletes, and explained the relationship between female physiology and performance. If players could reduce individual symptoms while improving individual training, it would improve the overall team performance and their chances for gold. That’s when it clicked.

It taught players to pay attention to their bodies.

Scott created individual symptom management plans for each player. What was so revolutionary about this approach was how so matter-of-factly Scott went about it. It wasn’t this grand proclamation, or a silver bullet that fixed all problems. She just looked at each player as a whole, and the menstrual cycle was just another piece of the puzzle.

Each woman on the team had her own lived experience with her period. Each athlete had her own strengths and weaknesses, her own history of injuries. And each player responded differently to training. Using the symptom management plans, Scott could alert players when they were moving into a cycle phase where they were more likely to experience symptoms and best practices for how to manage those symptoms. Any adjustments Scott made regarding cycle symptoms solely focused on nutrition, recovery, hydration, and sleep. And it worked.

The US Women’s National Team went on to dominate throughout the 2019 tournament in commanding fashion, knocking the Netherlands out 2-0 in the finals to win the teams fourth world championship. Scott understood something that so many others had missed. When it comes to women, fitness, and their athletic performance, their period is an indicator for how their body is responding to training adaptation and recovery (13).

So how can we build off of this?

While tracking individual cycles can provide insightful information, it’s not a clear cut solution that provides all the answers. Should you train differently during different phases of your cycle? Do high or low hormone phases affect how you should fuel for different workouts? Could periodizing workouts help prevent injury? In truth, we don’t know.

Most of the research out there is still preliminary. There are no agreed upon guidelines or blue prints on how to best exercise or train with your period. For every study that demonstrates one thing, there’s another study that cancels it out. The field is so new that scientists don’t have an agreed-upon standard yet. And individual women don’t all respond to hormones the same way, or even the same way each month. One person might make gains syncing their training with with cycle, while another might not notice a difference at all. The only thing everyone agrees on is that more studies need to be done to answer these questions (12).

But one thing we do know is that focusing on a person’s overall health and well-being is the ticket to supporting fitness, performance, and quality of life over the long term. And that includes paying attention to and talking about a woman’s menstrual cycle in a healthy, safe, and inclusive manner. The calls for more research and the conversations between female athletes and their trainers are empowering women to continue to break barriers.

Can you train around your cycle?

Remember, there is no agreed upon standard, or one-size-fits all solution. But research does show that there may be benefits to syncing exercise with your cycle. Studies seem to support that estrogen may boost muscle gains during workouts. Which could mean a possible increase in strength increase during the follicular phase when estrogen levels are at their highest.

A study focused on strength training wanted to examine if different phases during a woman’s cycle could have an impact on muscle development. Researchers took a group of 20 women and had them train one leg during their follicular phase and the other leg during their luteal phase. They found a greater increase in muscle development during the follicular phase. So it does suggest gains could be made during the first half of a woman’s period (10).

Other studies looked at the opposite, what happens during the luteal phase. As this is the high-hormone phase, the body conserves carbohydrates, leaving women feeling flat, lacking the motivation to train. Participants stated that exercise felt harder and it was more difficult for their bodies to recover after a workout. So the data is suggesting that it’s appropriate to focus on strength training and high-intensity workouts during the follicular phase and it’s better to back off intensity and utilize effort-based exercises like yoga or low-weight exercises that emphasize restoration and mobility (11).

If you want more information about training with your cycle, click the button below.

“Me-Search”

Women who conduct “Me-Search” (period tracking) by tracking their cycle and individual patterns report feeling more confident in their body and their performance. Knowing your numbers, your baseline, empowers women to make informed decisions about their health, wellness, and fitness. If you typically struggle with recovery, focus on your post-workout routine. If you’re more prone to cramps, look into more anti-inflammatory foods to combat symptoms.

There are a host of apps out there for women to discreetly and privately track their individual patterns if they so choose. Female athletes use these apps to log exercise activity, energy levels, and menstrual cycle symptoms. They can track cycles and symptoms next to their runs, weight lifting sessions, and share this information with their coaches and trainers when training for a marathon or a competition.

Apps like Fitrwoman work for women that want to collaborate with coaches while focusing on their fitness goals. Other apps like Clue and Flo are more individualized and less fitness focused but still incredibly valuable tools for women to better understand their cycles and symptoms (9).

• Fitrwoman

  • Lets you track your cycle and symptoms along with workouts to identify trends and patterns.

  • Can share results with your coach to collaborate on decision making and drive performance.

  Click Here : Fitrwoman App

• Clue

  • Track periods, ovulation & PMS

  • Can log exercise activity.

    Click Here : Clue App

• Flo

  • Focuses more on tracking cycles and pregnancy.

    Click Here : Flo App

By building awareness and educating female athletes about their bodies, we empower woman in our families, our communities, and all over the world to stay active and pursue their potential. The menstrual cycle plays a vital role in a woman’s overall health and well-being, and is crucial for building up her confidence. It has a real impact on the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of all female athletes. But when a woman is in sync with her body, when she knows how to train with period power, there’s nothing she can’t do. So let’s celebrate her strength, her resilience, as she steps up and doesn’t hold back!

Disclaimer

I am not a doctor or certified medical physician. None of the information presented is to be used as medical advice meant to treat, cure, diagnose any disease, illnesses, or ailments. I do not take credit for any research that is presented. The information is purely educational and based on studies completed by professionals and elite female athletes.

If you have questions or concerns, or are experiencing symptoms during exercise, consult with your doctor first.

Sources

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