Hi everybody, it is good to be back.
My name is Hayley Nixon and we are going to be joining Shona Hendricks from CoachParry.com
So today we are discussing what's often seen as quite a taboo subject and that is, does
your menstrual cycle or your period change the way you train.
It's not something that's discussed often and we're really excited to to get down into
some content about this subject.
It's really, really important for our female athletes.
So do enjoy the conversation with us today.
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to discuss.
So Shone, the next question we really wanted to get into today was whether your menstrual
cycle and your period does actually change the way you should train or you do train?
What are the thoughts at the moment on this?
So Hayley, it's interesting.
Coming from my sports science background, The jury's really out on it.
A lot of the research that is out there says that you know, perhaps a female's menstrual
cycle might change, more specifically for an endurance athlete as opposed to necessarily,
that effect might be more than endurance athlete as opposed to a strength athlete.
But, you know, a lot of the research that's currently being done perhaps, I think we've
mentioned this before in previous videos, it's problematic with some of the research
and it's just not being done properly.
And so I think the reliability of that research is in question.
We see it all the time with athletes that yes the menstrual cycle does affect their
training, I mean, personally, for my own training, and with athletes that we work with, you would
have seen it as well, you know, there are just days where you're down and struggling
with motivation, energy levels and so it does affect the way you train.
That's why it's really, really important to just kind of avoid this blanket approach,
you know, to your training or, you know, copying a cut and paste kind of program.
Just really being a bit more specific about around what you're doing.
Yeah, absolutely, I agree.
And I just think it again, what makes it complicated, like we've said before, is it's just so individual
specific.
You think you're getting it right that you starting to work out as a coach, how you should
be training your female athletes, but then there's always an anomaly or one of your athletes
has no sort of symptoms of their period, doesn't notice that it comes and goes easily.
Whereas your other one, as you say, has got such emotional drops and lows or has so much
pain from the discomfort that that that really hinders them.
And I remember as a young athlete, being warned by my coach, like, I don't want to hear that
you having your period on race day.
So make sure you do something about skipping that.
And it's things like that where there's just so much misinformation so it's quite hard
to manage individuals unless they're willing to talk about it and be open about it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you're touching so many points.
It's one, breaking breaking that tabooness, which we spoke about in previous video.
As coaches having that relationship with your athletes so that you can understand where
that athletes at, but exactly making that an individualized sort of concept or plan
for that athlete, you know, we work quite generically I think in general principles
of coaching and, you know, building up and recovering and, you know, just makes sense
then that we should be doing that specifically for female athletes.
When your female athletes cycle from person to person is going to differ anywhere from
21 to 35 days.
And within that, then there's going to be different symptoms experienced, different
side effects physiologically, and that is definitely going to have an effect on your
training.
I think whether you're, you're just a runner or if you're running or doing strength training,
you know, you really want to make sure that you're timing those things properly to optimize
everything that you're doing.
Yeah, I think one thing we must maybe also remember is even within those athletes where
if people are working on 21 day cycle, different females are in different forms of contraception
and I'm sure we'll cover those topics in later videos as well.
But it really just calls for an individualized approach because it definitely does affect
the way we train.
And are we right and seeing that that research does like to talk about the phases of your
menstrual cycle possibly benefiting different ways of training?
I know there are apps is there's lots of apps out there where you can track your cycle,
you can track the phase you're in and if you're in luteal phase, you do X, Y and Z and I mean,
I'd like to think that there is merit in that, but again, unless you are as athlete and the
coach, you are trying a system and putting it into place for three to six months.
You could just be copy and pasting, like you said before, and it may not actually be having
a difference.
Yeah, you're spot on.
I mean, the research that's exactly right is talking around two phases, you know, your
follicular phase and your luteal phase and, and for the most part, the research refers
to the start of a cycle as the first day of mensies or of bleeding and so that's important,
but a lot of what the research says and where we see the mistakes coming in is the way they
measure those different cycles and you can measure it by bloods, you can measure it by
temperature and a lot of the research methodologies are using different ways to do that for the
same kind of study.
And again, you would have to do the same measure every day, at the same time of day, because
that's the way the body works.
It's quite methodical like that.
And so, I think the research is, it's moving towards a place where we, you know, it is
getting a bit more reliable, but it's challenging research to do, and it probably costs a lot
of money and so it's not being done or it hasn't been done extensively.
And so, yes, I think there is merit in understanding how your body is responding to those different
phases.
And really monitoring a lot of that in terms of how you as an athlete are responding or
if you're a coach monitoring how your athletes are responding to different phases.
And so then you would perhaps start moving some of your high intensity sessions, you
know, too late.
phase where you perhaps have a little bit more energy and, you know something we'll
discuss a little bit later on is a little bit around nutrition and how that affects
those different phases as well.
And I think that's, you know, once you as an athlete can start monitoring yourself and
picking up your own trends, you can start putting things in place to sort of combat
those side effects and optimize your training.
And I guess as we've discussed in videos before, that becomes like, the pivotal difference
between male and females.
It's like, it's just more complex and nutrition, the way we fuelling the way we training, the
way we recover is so based on our hormones, on our menstrual cycle, which is something
our male counterparts don't have to deal with, which is what separates us.
So we should be empowered, as you say, to try and get this information and make the
best of it.
And certainly if we're going to get the best results from us as females and from my athletes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's so different to the male physiology and then again, just trying to avoid a blanket
approach.
So it's an individual approach.
For each individual female as well, so, you know, it's one big dynamic bringing down into
many other smaller dynamics and exactly that empowering the female athlete to figure out
her own physiology and the way she responds to that, I think is where the magic happens
there.
Yeah, for sure.
So I think really just, you know, in answer to our original question is that yes, we believe
that it does change the way we train, it does change the way we possibly react to training
stimulus.
But our quest really is still to try and make it as individual as possible, to not have
a blanket approach to every female, you know, just because they're different to a male.
Yep, exactly.
That's spot on.
Thanks Hayley.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us.
It's awesome to have these conversations.
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