A Strength Routine for The Menstrual Cycle
Wondering how to build your strength routine to match the 4 phases of your menstrual cycle…and still get yourself or your clients goals. By the end of this blog post, you will understand exactly how to do that.
My name is Omega, I am an exercise scientist and menstrual cycle educator. And I lost and kept of 10 pounds in 4 months when I started working out with my menstrual cycle.
If you’re a personal trainer, you know about the concept of periodization. It can be defined as, “an exercise design technique that promotes long-term performance improvements. Coaches implement this technique by modifying variations of exercise intensity, volume, frequency, and specificity within certain training periods or cycles. Typically using linear or nonlinear programming, modifying these variables can help optimize performance gains, decrease risk of injury, prevent overtraining.”
So we as trainers or fitness buffs can adapt this tried and true periodization technique to cycle our workouts with our menstrual cycle and it’s actually proven to work!
Cyclical Periodization:
In your bleed phase, you can safely be in the maintenance phase of the periodization plan if you intend to workout. And as this article recommends 2-4 sets of 6-8 reps.
But if you’re a personal trainer or fitness buff, you know that that rep range actually uses more glucose, which isn’t readily available in the bleed phase of your cycle. + if you do do a low rep load and higher weights, your body doesn’t have enough estrogen and testosterone to recover.
So my suggestion is to modify this rep range and go for 15-20 reps at 50-70% of 1-rep max. And if you don’t know what you or your client’s one-rep-max is, that’s okay. Just go 50-70% of your capacity.
Myself personally, I do low intensity body weight sessions or even yoga during this phase of my cycle. But you may want to lift, and if you do more power to you!
If you’ve been watching my last few videos, you’re well aware of this 2021 research article by Romero Parra et. al article enlightens us on strength loss and DOMS in the follicular phase, after our period.
How we adapt this with periodization training is doing a 5-7-day endurance phase. Because both strength and muscle endurance is lower, we would benefit from low to moderate intensity lifting, around 10-15 reps. With ample rest time in between sets.
You can make sure your muscles get extra time to rest by doing cross training like a set for glutes then a set for abs, or actually taking 60-90 second rest periods.
Since muscular endurance and strength is lower here, my personal routine consists of a day of light lifting + yoga usually followed by a day of yoga + walking.
The week around ovulation is where training can get fun. The recommendations for the next phase is going to cover the 2-3 leading up to ovulation and about 3-4 days after ovulation when estrogen and testosterone are at their highest levels.
This 2004 study by Joo and colleagues showed that estrogen provides a protective effect to muscle damage.
Putting this all together in the periodization model shows us that strength and power based intensity can ultimately be supported best in our ovulatory phase.
Putting this all together in the periodization model shows us that strength and power based intensity can ultimately be supported best in our ovulatory phase.
If you’re training or you are an athlete who wants to set a P.R. focusing on near maximum intensity for 1-3 reps is ideal.
But if you are training a regular person who just wants to get strong, training at 75%+ of maximum capacity for a rep range of 2-5 can also improve gains.
In the late luteal phase, clients would best be supported by de-loading, as suggested by the 2021 research article by Romero-Parra et. al.
Also important in this phase of the cycle, is knowing that the female body uses more fat for fuel as showed in this 2021 research article by Willet et.al., so doing a higher rep range with less weight supports the female body’s natural metabolic process.
My suggestion is that after the 3-4 day window post ovulation, that you start considering increasing the rep load and decreasing the weights slowly. A rep range of 10-12 with 60% max in the mid luteal phase and a rep range of 12-15 at around 50% max in the late luteal phase would be supportive not only to the client’s strength goals, but also to the natural hormonal and metabolic process that the body is going through.
If you’re a personal trainer who wants to become confident in the science of cyclical periodization so you can get your clients even better results by addressing their hormones, apply for the Confident Menstrual Cycle coach Academy. The application process is simple, all you need to do is click this link to book an application call. On that call, we’ll discuss where you are in your training career and where you want to go and we’ll both decide if working together is a fit for both of us.