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

1. “Menstruation in Girls and Adolescents: Using the Menstrual Cycle as a Vital Sign,” Committee Opinion no. 651, Obstetrics and Gynecology 126, no. 6 (December 2015): e143-46, https://doi.org/10.1097/AOG.0000000000001215 .

2. Hope C. Davis and Anthony C. Hackney, “The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Ovarian Axis and Oral Contraceptives: Regulation and Function,” in Sex Hormones, Exercise and Women, ed. Anthony C. Hackney (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 1-17.

3. S. N. Kalantaridou et al., “Stress and the Female Reproduction System,” Journal of Reproductive Immunology 62, no. 1 (2004): 61-68, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jri.2003.09.004 .

4. M. J. De Souza et al., “High Prevalence of Subtle and Severe Menstrual Disturbances in Exercising Women: Confirmation Using Daily Hormone Measures,” Human Reproduction 25, no 2 (2010): 491-503, https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dep411 .

5. M. L. Rencken, C. H. Chenut, and B. L. Drinkwater, “Bone Density at Multiple Skeletal Sites in Amenorrheic Athletes,” JAMA 276, no. 3 (1996): 238-40, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1996.03540030072035 .

6. Kathyrn E. Ackerman et al., “Bone Microarchitecture Is Impaired in Adolescent Amenorrheic Athletes Compared with Eumenorrcheic Athletes and Nonathletic Controls,” The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 96, no. 10 (October 2011): 3123-33, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2011-1614 .

7. Asa B. Tornberg et al., “Reduced Neuromuscular Performance in Amenorrheic Elite Endurance Athletes,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 49, no. 12 (December 2017): 2478-85, https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000001383 .

8. Johanna K. Ihalainen et al., “Body Composition, Energy Availability, Training and Menstrual Status in Female Runners,” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 16, no. 7 (March 9, 2021): 1043-48, https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2020-0276 .

9. Donna Rosato, “What Your Period Tracker App Knows About You,” Consumer Reports, January 28, 2020, https://www.consumerreports.org/health-privacy/what-your-period-tracker-app-knows-about-you-a8701683935/ .

10. Belinda Thompson et al., “The Effect of the Menstrual Cycle and Oral Contraceptives on Acute Responses and Chronic Adaptations to Resistance Training: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” Sports Medicine 50, no. 1 (January 2020): 171-85, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-019-01219-1 .

11. Eunsook Sung et al., “Effects of Follicular Versus Luteal Phase-Based Strength Training in Young Women,” SpringerPlus 3, 668 (November 11, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-3-668 .

12. Kirsty J. Elliott-Sale et al., “Methodological Considerations for Studies in Sport and Exercise Science with Women as Participants: A Working Guide for Standards of Practice for Research on Women,” Sports Medicine 51 (2021): 843-61, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-021-01435-8 .

13. Kieran Pender, “Ending Period ‘Taboo’ Gave USA Marginal Gain at World Cup,” The Telegraph, July 13, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-cup/2019/07/13/revealed-next-frontier-sports-science-usas-secret-weapon-womens/ .