Should we, as women, consider a different training schedule for different times of the month? Well, maybe! A lot will depend on your life stress level and your hormone fluctuations.

Some women don’t feel much change throughout their cycle and other women feel like they become a completely different person. With this in mind, experimenting could be a great idea!

I’ve noticed with my clients healing from diastasis and pelvic floor issues that the subtle cycle changes can affect the springiness of their tissue and they may feel like they had a setback, but really it’s just the week before their period or maybe ovulation giving them a hard time. I promise you’re not going crazy, laxity does seem to change throughout the cycle.

All the more reason to get in touch with your body’s natural rhythms. I’d like to second Adam’s advice to keep a journal and report how you feel. If you normally cut back on exercise during your period because you feel bloated and tired, try increasing gentle exercise or go for a brisk walk and see how you feel. You might be surprised at how much moving helps! If you feel all-over-the-place loose and your pelvic floor feels vulnerable during this time, be sure to cut back on exercises that increase intra-abdominal pressure (heavy lifting or impact exercise) on those particular days. It’s not all or nothing, so think submax weight instead of beast mode.  Moving vs not moving is generally better for the pelvic floor as long as you’re managing pressure well.

I’d like to turn this article over to PCES student and coach Adam Willis. He’s a male coach who goes all in when it comes to helping his female clients. Not only is he learning through the Pregnancy and Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist Course, but he’s done extensive research to help his clients. Most male coaches working with women never take the time to learn about the differences between training women versus men. Thanks Adam, for being one of those exceptional coaches and for sharing your knowledge on hormones.

Article was written by: Adam Willis

A lot of coaching and programming time is spent managing different stressors that clients encounter on their fitness or athletic journeys so they can effectively train, recover well, and make great progress despite these obstacles.

There is, however, a highly impactful stressor that is often overlooked when it comes to women’s training— the stress caused by the menstrual cycle.

As a male coach, I didn’t speak about this subject with my female clients for years through naivety (and most likely also through immaturity).

This naivety tends to be due to:

• Not following a training program with a tendency to change lots of exercises, sets and reps each week, resulting in never noticing a decrease in training performance (as there’s nothing to compare one week of training to the next.)
• Not tracking their cycle days, where they are in their cycle, or how they feel during it so they aren’t aware of patterns occurring when compared with their training.
• Not noticing if any negative effects are experienced and when noticeable changes in training happen. If any do, they often are just chalked up as normal and something you just get on and deal with, rather than seen as an issue.

If you’re looking to maximize your training results, then having a better understanding of the potential physical, psychological and hormonal fluctuations during your cycle can be really important.

Your first port of call then is to track your cycle and other metrics that may be affected. This will allow you to see the effects on your training during the various phases of your cycle.

You want to track:

• When the first day of your menstrual bleeding occurs (start of Menstrual Cycle) and how many days it lasts.
• How much weight you can lift for key exercises during the duration of your cycle (from the start of one menstrual cycle to the beginning of the next one). This will highlight to you if your lifting strength increases or decreases in any phase in your cycle.
• Your RPE, or Rate of Perceived Exertion (how hard an exercise feels on a scale of 1-10) for your key lifts and also for any cardio, HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or finishers you perform. This will show if any cycle phase affects how you perceive your exercise exertion. Especially during the menstrual phase, a woman’s perception of pain can change.
• If possible, track your heart rate during your cardio, HIIT and finishers and even your recovery periods as well. This will highlight if you fatigue faster during these training approaches, how you recover, and if your heart rate is elevated more than normal, which can be common during the menstrual phase due to an increase in body temperature.
• Any other fluctuations you may notice during your cycle.

Once tracking brings you a greater understanding of how and when your cycle may affect you, you can potentially choose a more suitable approach for your programming structure so that it works WITH the undulations of your cycle rather than against it.

Before we delve into the programming approach,  let’s break down the phases of the Menstrual Cycle and highlight a few potential issues that may occur.

Phase 1 – Menstrual Phase (Days 1-5 of the cycle)

This phase starts from the first day of menstrual bleeding and will typically last anywhere from 1-5 days.

• Potential decreases in strength due to fatigue during menstrual bleeding phase (Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017).
• Blood loss may affect performance physically (Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017)
• Higher levels of muscular fatigue experienced compared to Follicular and Luteal Phases (Julian, Hecksteden, Fullagar & Meyer, 2017; Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017).
• Potential increases in pain sensitivity (this may cause an increase in RPE experienced) (Hooper, Bryan & Eaton, 2011; Máximo et al., 2015).
• Some dysmenorrhea pain experienced (varies from person to person) (Máximo et al., 2015).
• Potential increases in psychological stressors  (Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017).

Phase 2 – Follicular Phase (Day 1-14 of the cycle)

The Follicular Phase lasts from the first day of menstrual bleeding to ovulation, which is typically about 14 days. However, for the sake of this article, we’ll be categorizing the Follicular Phase as the post-menstrual period leading to ovulation.

• Potential performance increases in strength and endurance due to an increase in oestrogen and noradrenaline leading to potentially higher, more forceful muscle contractions (Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017).

Phase 3 – Luteal Phase (Day 15-28 of the cycle)

The Luteal Phase is the final phase of the cycle, lasting from ovulation to the start of the new cycle.

• Strength and power is rarely affected in this phase (Julian, Hecksteden, Fullagar & Meyer, 2017).
• Potential decreases in aerobic and glycolytic performance can sometimes be experienced due to increased body temperature limiting prolonged exercise capabilities (Julian, Hecksteden, Fullagar & Meyer, 2017; Pallavi, Souza & Shivaprakash, 2017).

As you can see, many potential factors to consider for maximizing your training results.