It Starts With Attraction
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It Starts With Attraction
Does Your Menstrual Cycle Affect How You Work Out?
Have a question you want answered? Submit it here!
Can your menstrual cycle make or break your strength training progress? Today, we unlock the truth behind cycle-synced workouts and auto-regulation using the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. By examining how sleep, nutrition, and lifestyle intertwine with hormonal changes, we guide you on crafting a personalized fitness approach that navigates the highs and lows of your cycle. You’ll gain actionable insights on tracking your phases and adapting your workouts to maximize effectiveness and support your physical and emotional states.
We also bust myths around exercise during perimenopause and post-menopause. Discover why high-intensity and strength training are non-negotiable for combating muscle and bone loss during these life stages. We delve into strategies for balancing high-intensity workouts with recovery to stay active and healthy. By acknowledging the unique experiences of menopausal women, we present a roadmap for maintaining fitness and well-being through tailored exercise routines. Tune in for a comprehensive discussion that empowers you to embrace your body's needs at every stage of life.
Today's Guest: Dr. Alyssa Olenick
Dr. Alyssa Olenick holds a Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology is a certified sports nutritionist and Crossfit Level 2 Trainer. Alyssa completed her doctoral training in exercise and human metabolism, sex differences and menstrual cycle physiology. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow researching the areas of menopause and metabolism. As a coach she specializes in the areas endurance, strength and hybrid training. She runs her online business ‘Doc Lyss Fitness’ and is a strength athlete, ultra-marathon runner, and all-around fitness lover who is passionate about educating people on science-based fitness to get them into the gyms and on the roads/trails — or often, doing both at the same time! You can learn more about Dr. Alyssa Olenick and her programs at www.doclyssfitness.com
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Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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What are the differences between men and women? Like, how much of a difference does an active menstrual cycle, so women who are premenopausal, how much of a difference does that make in strength training or when they should strength train, or how heavy they should lift during? I mean, is there really that much of a difference?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I always disclaimer guys, don't come for my pitchforks, I'm on your side. The research right now basically has there is no legitimacy to a cycle-synced specific workout and training plan. There's a tiny little bit of research that suggests that maybe in the follicular phase you might have a slight hypertrophy benefit because of the estrogen, because estrogen is actually a very muscle healing and promoting and restorative hormone. I mean I think you can see more of a difference of that, not just in the menstrual cycle, but when you think about the response to postmenopause, when we have that decline of estrogen, you really see how important that is for muscle health and muscle growth and things like that. So there's a tiny bit like when I'm talking about. There's like maybe four or five kind of studies. Half of them are pilot, some of them are single limb. That alludes to maybe like 50% of them say yeah, there's slight benefit to follicular versus luteal phase training, but nothing's concrete enough to say that you should do anything specific around your cycle. People find that their performance might be lower in that late luteal into early menstrual cycle phase. A lot of people's reported symptomology with their menstrual cycle is more strongly correlated than their hormones to declines in performance, and there's some thoughts that this might be tied to more of essentially your hormones are, in fact, impacting your serotonin in your brain and your pain sensitivity, so things might feel heavier, or your RPE rating of perceived exertions might feel harder. Your pain tolerance might be lower, so similar weights or efforts might feel like they are potentially harder or heavier than it actually be relating to shifts and changes in your hormones, and so there isn't some concrete magical evidence, although the internet will have you say you need to change it week by week, change your programs, do this on this day, this on this day.
Speaker 2:What you typically mean, what I recommend for women, is that you need a good strength training program that's progressive and then uses auto-regulation. So auto-regulation is that rating of perceived exertion that I just talked about and that itself, for most people, is going to capture 90% of variations that you have, just not only from hormones and your PMS related symptoms, but also, I always like to say we're more than just our periods. You are a parent, a spouse, you have a job, you have a life, sleep, nutrition, stress all of these things are going to impact your training. It's not like your luteal phase is going to override magically your three hours of sleep and a whiff of air you had for breakfast. You have to think about what other things are you doing to support your body within this process, and I would say that maybe people who take care of their body, that they're sleeping less, they're fueling less like they maybe are feeling more heightened shifts with this, potentially Because a lot of my recommendations for working around the menstrual cycle are going to be like more behavior change or body lifestyle support. But to backtrack, rating of perceived exertion is a scale of one to 10. And it's basically good.
Speaker 2:Exercise training programs are typically going to give you for strength training are going to give you an effort level that you should be working out at. Some people use percentages. Um, I like RPE cause I think it allows for more fluctuation over day to day variance. Your training is going to shift and fluctuate for everyone, like that happens for males too. It's not a menstrual cycle specific thing. But if you are having fluctuations across the month, not only do I recommend you track your actual cycle to see your cycle and your patterns and your windows and your days, because everyone's cycle phase and length and when they ovulate are going to be at different times, so it's hard to say everyone should do this on this day. It's very inconsistent but your patterns month to month might even be different from your strength training performance or your own individual symptomology. But if you track your cycles and use RPE and are tracking your weight to the gym, you might start to notice patterns for yourself and recognize this is normal for me.
Speaker 2:I might be dropping weight this week because I don't feel as good, or you know what? I feel really great, so I'm going to add more weight and I think that that captures if there is benefit to the follicular phase for lifting heavy or if there's going to be impairments of your luteal phase. If you're adjusting based on RPE, you're saying this is what an eight out of 10 is today for me, so I'm going to adjust this. So maybe you know one week you're eight out of 10 is 150 pounds and you feel really good. That was higher for you. And the next week you feel kind of crummy and you're still lifting in an eight out of 10 and you drop down to 140 or 145 on that lift. You are still over time, probably going to still make progress, but you're adjusting to the stress of the day. The load is relative to your body, your body. To some degree it knows load, but it doesn't just know load, it knows overall stress on the system. So people can adjust or auto-regulate to this and this captures not only shifts in your hormones but also all those other shifts in your lifestyle as well, and I think it's a great training tool for most people. So you can strength train across your trial menstrual cycle, you can do cardio across your entire menstrual cycle.
Speaker 2:But what I think that a lot of women make the mistake as is they follow very haphazard, irregular, erratic or non-consistent or progressive good training programs, so it's hard to capture where individual variations are controllable or maintainable, or finding even patterns within themselves. I mean, how many people say, oh, I just cried out of nowhere and I didn't know what was going on, and then, oh, I got my period the next day, and so if you can start monitoring and assessing those patterns versus your training performance, you might start to be able to identify. You know what? Two days before my cycle, every single month, I have the worst training session of my life. So I'm just going to always put a rest day there, or I'm going to put an easy intensity day there, or I'm going to do maybe something more passive there. That feels better to me, and I think that adjusting for your symptoms or your own experience that's not cycle syncing. That's totally fine to do. You have absolute permission to do that.
Speaker 2:If you feel super crummy the first day of your period every single month, plan it to be a rest day. Or if you know, hey, this fourth week, the last three days of my luteal phase, into my menstrual cycle phase, really feel terrible to me. I'm going to put my higher intensity or my heavier days or my more important days earlier in the week, those weeks, and allow myself to either rest, recover or do easier stuff so you can adjust to your symptomology. It's not to say, hey, you know what you feel like crap, you should power through because there's nothing saying that it wrong.
Speaker 2:Your perception is valid, even if we're not having this strong, robust response right now to it being like, yes, it's directly hormones that are changing these things. They likely may play a role and for people who have heightened PMS symptoms, they appear to have greater perceived impairments of these things across the cycle. So it's about figuring out your cycle, what's true for you, giving yourself grace. And then I am very about. Let's use nutrition, sleep, behavioral change, stress support, life management to see if we can reduce some of the symptomology impacts that we're having. So we're actually supporting our bodies in this process, because if you're in your luteal phase and you feel like training's hard and you're underfed and you're not sleeping, it's going to feel extra worse versus if you're well-fed and supporting your sleep and or supporting your training and your programming intelligently.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that you talked about that and I'm so glad I asked that question. I had always heard that the week of menstruation is also the week where your testosterone is highest. So you should like lift heavier that week because you'll, you have the testosterone in your body to do it. And I remember this was several months ago now. But I was like, okay, well, and the programming at the gym that day I wasn't doing CrossFit yet and the programming at the gym that day was like deadlifts or whatever. And I was like, okay, like, I guess, because you know it's, you know it's that time I'll, I'll try to lift heavy. And I almost passed out. I was like I felt terrible. And then I had always heard like, well, even though, like, even if you have cramps or whatever, just work out through it, it'll alleviate it Tried to power through literally like had to go lay in the recovery room just like writhing in pain at the end of the workout. I was like I don't think this works for me.
Speaker 2:I don't think this is what I should do. Yeah, so you know, this is why I sometimes hate these isms, because you get a lot of people who say, well, women are actually the strongest and they perform their best during their menstrual cycle because their hormones are lowest, or you're most like a man, or you should be able to push hard. But for some people that's not true. Some people feel great and fine and can. They're like. You know, I have cramps and I don't feel good, but I like set a PR and that is true.
Speaker 2:Like for some people, that is true, your hormones are actually at their your cycle. But for some people, their symptoms are just horrible and they feel really terrible and they might not feel like you can push yourself or you might just need to adjust for that and that accounts for that and honestly so, the bump in testosterone actually comes a little bit around ovulation and I see people always promote that as like. That's why we should lift heavy and stronger and you're like to some degree. Okay, sure, true, but like the bump in testosterone is not something that's physiologically like we're suddenly like a dude for like a day in our training cycle, Like I think it dismisses the benefit of estrogen itself as actually being more of our superpower hormone, the physiological range of testosterone in women. I mean, it's an important hormone for all of us, but it's not this, like you know, like getting a steroid.
Speaker 1:Supernatural.
Speaker 2:Supernatural steroid injection. I think the benefit more is like, hey, you actually have a lot of estrogen here and that's probably like if you feel good, you can push harder, like you know. I mean like I think that's a fine thing to say and do, but if you feel like, trash your hormones and your, you know your PMS is really impairing you. We have some data that cardio or yoga it's like one study that might reduce these things. We have some studies that showing doing HIIT consistently across the month might actually decrease PMS symptomology. But if you're in the middle of a training session and you feel like you are going to pass out because and but you feel like you're obligated to lift heavy, like I think that's where some of that information makes people feel broken and not heard versus like.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest message that I think I could give people here is you don't need cycle syncing or period-based training to give you permission to rest or pull back if you need to. Like you've always had that permission and everyone's experience of which phase of their cycle impacts them the most is potentially going to be different. You know a lot of people feel worse around ovulation and some people feel fine during their period and other people feel terrible. Some people the luteal phase is the worst week of their life. For some people their training just kind of keeps on keeping on. And it's about figuring out those patterns and what works for you and then thinking about ways you can either support those things so that you can reduce how you feel from those, or just adjusting for what is your, your state or your condition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what about people like women who are postmenopausal?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So perimenopause is a crazy haphazard hormone roller coaster. So that, I think, is again something where learning RPE and adjusting for that is really helpful, because some days you might have a lot of energy and some days you might have a lot of fatigue and feel really crummy. Where post-menopause? For not all women. Some people have symptoms that carry forth into that phase, but once your hormones are kind of, you know they've lowered you're a year past your last period, all of those things. It might be a little bit easier to simply just work with it and you don't need to cycle sync to your perimenopause or menopause, because you're really going to have a heck of a time trying to track that cycle in peri and then you're not having it in postmenopause. So a lot of those skills and tools that I just talked about I think are important across the entire lifespan, but what is important for women across the entire lifespan becomes more important in peri and post-menopause. So if you are not already doing some high intensity training cardiovascularly, plyometrics, jumping and or heavy strength and resistance training designed to gain muscle and or strength that is the best time to start doing it.
Speaker 2:It's really, really important that loss of estrogen leads to a lot of changes in our muscle characteristics. So we become you know, we lose a little bit more of that type two, our output, the fast, powerful muscle fiber typology. That comes both from aging and menopause. It's kind of compounded. That's a normal process with aging too as well. So we can preserve that with some of that high intensity exercise, as well as the plyometrics and jumping, as well as the strength training mixed with. There's then bone loss and the heavy lifting and the jumping or plyometric based training can help maintain or preserve that as well. And these are things that I would love for women to do across the entire lifespan. But it's not too late to be doing it now. Building and preserving and maintaining as much muscle mass or bone mass as possible is so important to metabolic health and longevity and maintaining physical function across the lifespan.
Speaker 2:And so for my peri and postmenopausal individuals, one yes, especially if you're in perimenopause, you're in the heat of it. You're going to have this rollercoaster of fatigue and energy and feeling great, feeling like crap. One advocate for yourself with your doctors if you need support. I can't tell you if you should do HRT or not HRT or what you should do for your symptomology, but advocate for yourself with your doctors, because I know for some people they just need some extra support or help with what they're doing. But the data is kind of mixed on like does exercise actually reduce or remove all these symptomologies? But I do think it's going to help with the negative impacts. Well, it does. It does help with the negative impacts that we see vascularly, muscle-wise, metabolically and functionality-wise.
Speaker 2:So the most important thing you can do at this point in time is to adapt a fitness training routine that has a little bit of intensity in your cardio. Start with little build up. I think people think, okay, post-menopausal women, you need two to three days of HIIT and they're jumping into it right off the bat when they have never trained before. Or you need to lift heavy and hard with a never resistance train. Meet yourself where you're at, do what you need to do, ease into it.
Speaker 2:You might have lower recoverability because of that loss of estrogen. So give your body grace. You might need to space out your high intensity days a little bit across the week with easier days or recovery days. You might need to pull back the overall volume of high intensity that you're doing if you're having issues recovering from it, but you really do want to be doing the strength training and or some jumping and then the high intensity stuff and then filling in of course.
Speaker 2:The rest, kind of similar to what I talked about for the rest of your minutes per week with easy activities. That can be whatever else that you want to do. Usually for menopause I recommend doing your one to two days of higher intensity cardio, doing at least two to four days of the strength training and then filling in the rest of your week with basically being as active as you kind of can and maintain, because a lot of that sometimes inadvertently in the menopausal period potentially we have some early data to suggest that your overall subconscious inclination to move more goes down. You actually just start moving less and not really realizing that your NEAT or your daily activity starts to go down. So just finding ways to stay active and then implementing these things into your exercise training routine become, if not they're not important in your entire lifespan, but they become very, very important now.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this clip from it Starts With Attraction then click here to watch the full episode.
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