Tracking and training with your menstrual cycle helps you dial in your fitness with your physiology.
It’s well known that I advocate tracking and when appropriate adjusting training and nutrition to align with the physiology of the menstrual cycle and the individual’s responses to her hormones. I came to that position over a decade ago from working with elite and professional athletes, and have been refining it ever since based on a wide array of female physiology research findings.
For example, did you realize your immune system has a significant shift at ovulation, moving to a pro-inflammatory response state, and the autonomic nervous system is affected by progesterone, increasing a woman’s sympathetic drive? Both of these decrease stress resilience after ovulation, in particular during the late luteal phase. From a training point of view, it would not be advantageous to push hard/over reach that stress resilience and expect positive adaptations. This is the prevailing pattern I have found during my years of working with elite and professional athletes (and being an athlete myself) and by looking outside of sport science research. I have been refining this style of training as science evolves and more women are open to discussing how their cycles affect them (physically and psychologically).
