Luteal Phase Workout Program Design
Hormone aware personal trainers are waking up to the fact that exercise should change throughout the menstrual cycle. But menstrual cycle fitness coaches understand how the luteal phase hormones change and how we can program design for the three sub phases of the luteal phase to give our clients even better results. So in the first part of this lesson, we are going to do a deep dive into the two luteal phase hormones and how they impact workout, performance and metabolism so that you understand the why behind luteal phase workout program design. And in the second half of this lesson, we are going to go over workout program design for each of the three sub phases of the luteal phase. And I'll show you how you can get access to my free menstrual cycle phase assessment document that you can use in your monthly client assessments or even in your initial client assessment. If you prefer to watch this lesson via youtube, CLICK HERE.
So if you don't know me yet, my name is Omega and I'm the founder of the continued education program, the Confident Menstrual Cycle Coach Academy, where I empower personal trainers to optimize and balance their own hormones and gain the confidence and know how to help their clients do the same through science backed research. This is one of my amazing students, Anastasia, who says, My clients have achieved amazing results. They're more in tune with their bodies, understanding their fluctuating energy levels, consistent and reaching weight loss, muscle gain, endurance and and improved energy goal. She's really had a lot of success and she's started her own live events as well.
So before we dive into the luteal phase program workout design, I want you to have a really solid idea of the hormone fluctuations throughout the luteal phase because that is the foundation of what we're going to cover today. So here's a chart taken from I run far.com of the entire menstrual cycle. And for this lesson we are going to be zooming in on the luteal fee. And as a disclaimer, I know that not everyone has a 28 day menstrual cycle as indicated in this chart. If you don't or your client doesn't,
Don't worry. Everything that I'm about to share still applies. And in either case, a 28 day long or short cycle, you'll have to do some math and tune into your actual body cues to figure out when your hormones change. In the luteal phase, you can clearly see the distinction between the early, mid and late luteal phase. And that's because we are hormonally different in each of these sub phases. And we'll get into how the dominant hormones that's estrogen, the blue line and progesterone, the red line impact workout performance. Now we'll go over progesterone in catabolism the predominant hormone in the luteal phase. Progesterone works to get us ready for potential pregnancy and it does this by using a bunch of lipids and amino acids to thicken the lining of the uterus. But is this 2022 study by Romero Parra and colleagues point out progesterone is also catabolic, it breaks down muscle tissue.
The authors say further anabolic effects of estrogen have been observed in comparison with the catabolic effects of progesterone. Now we'll go over estrogen rise mid cycle. Remember how I was saying that estrogen is anabolic or helps create muscle tissue or tissue in general while estrogen's rise in the middle of the cycle can actually support our muscle building efforts in the second part of the luteal phase. Now, fat utilization, when we talk about the luteal phase, we have to talk about fat utilization because for better or worse, our body is using more fat for energy in this phase of the cycle. This study by Whoglemuth at all shows us that our resting, resting respiratory exchange ratio or our RER defined as the amount of carbon dioxide we exhale to the amount of oxygen we take in decreases. So when our RER decreases, that indicates that we're using more fat for energy.
And if our R E R decreases, that means that we're using less sugar for energy and more fat for energy. And not only that, we have a 2.5 to 11.5% increase and our resting energy expenditure in the luteal phase. All this points to the fact that we're burning more calories from fat at rest during exercise. So now we will go ahead and break down each sub phase in the luteal phase and all share some research based on workout program design recommendations that you can try on yourself before you apply it to your clients.
And as you learned in the first part of this video, progesterone is just starting to rise in this phase as estrogen slowly declines. For this reason, progesterone's catabolic impacts on training and metabolism won't be as severe in this phase. This narrative review by Carmichael and colleagues took over 40 different studies and looked to see how exercise changes throughout the cycle. The paper concluded that aerobic performance gets a little boost in the first part of the luteal phase. And this graph, it was confusing for me too at first, but in this graph, the author authors are trying to describe how exercise performance changes. They say the direction of the arrow indicates the relative reduction and performance outcomes from the phase the arrow originates to the phase. The arrow points to. So this graph is looking at aerobic capacity, but we'll look at strength and anaerobic capacity too.
And you probably remember from your personal training exam, aerobic performance mainly uses fat for energy. And this is consistent with the findings from the research showing that we use more fat in the phase of the cycle too. So workout program design for this sub phase might look like low intensity, long duration cardio, decreasing the volume from strength training or familiar sports conditioning exercise. Now we'll jump into phase number two of the luteal phase and this covers the second four to five day chunk of the luteal phase. And remember that graph that I showed you earlier that shows estrogen slight increase in this phase and you remember that estrogen has anabolic or building up potential for the body, right? Okay, so you got that, You got the other thing. Well, that's all reflected in our strength capacity here too. This study by Carmichael and colleagues showed us that strength performance gets a little boost in the middle of our luteal phase.
And not only that, anaerobic performance could also increase in this phase. Remember, anaerobic workouts are intense short bursts of energy. Mid luteal phase training might look like moderate strength training. And you can also incorporate power workouts too. It could look like doing familiar yet challenging sports conditioning. You might even program moderate intervals as well. Phase three, the final phase of the luteal phase, the phases upon phases. Y'all um, the final phase, phase three of the luteal phase covers uh, four to five days before menstruation begins. And this is when estrogen and progesterone start to to decline. And while some studies don't corroborate the exercise capacity decreases in the twoish weeks of the menstrual cycle, many studies, lots of studies do agree that training capacity, motivation performance does indeed decrease in the late luteal phase when hormones are dropping. And the key here is bio individuality.
We need to keep the client in mind when doing program design. Obviously you know that this study shows that athletes have a decreased performance in the late luteal phase. That's why I always recommend doing a menstrual cycle assessment with each of your clients to get an understanding of how your client responds to exercise in their unique cycle phases. And like I said in the beginning of the video, I have a free cycle assessment PDF that you can use for each of your clients to track their cycle and just sit tight and I'll explain how to get access to that in a moment. So based on my years of training, people cyclically lighter strength workouts work best in the late luteal phase. There is some evidence saying that power workouts do work well in this phase two, but if you're doing the lower intensity, it might look like long duration, low intensity cardio, like a long walk light strength exercises going for about 12 to 20 reps.
Or you could find that your client has the capacity in this phase and you might do the anaerobic workouts, like high intensity training, high intensity intervals, and even go to failure on workouts. That is shown in the studies. You just have to learn your clients. So if this graphic is helpful for you, make sure to screenshot it and save it as a helpful reminder for you as you're training your clients. You can even share this with your clients. So now for the cyclical assessment, this is designed to help you as a personal trainer track your client cycle so that you can plan effective workouts for them all month long. And it even helps you plan for the luteal phase two, would you imagine? You can download that free assessment using the link in the description box below. And if you haven't liked this video already, go ahead and like it. And if you haven't subscribed, subscribe to this channel to be sent new free cyclical education videos weekly. Finally, if you wanna know how to address your client's late luteal phase PMs, which I guarantee most of your clients have, and if you wanna use nutrition and lifestyle, watch this video next. I will see you there.