Personal trainers, cycle syncing workouts - is it legit?

If you are excited to learn about this cycle syncing, hormone balancing quote unquote trend, and wanna learn the science behind the menstrual cycle, fitness and nutrition, go ahead. If you don't know me yet hello, my name is Omega. I am an exercise scientist and menstrual cycle educator and founder of one of the first hormone balancing certifications for personal trainers.

Watch the full video from this transcript right here - https://youtu.be/Kod5lf1SgNc

So we are going to get into it, but first I wanna share one of my clients here who started her first four part miniseries for corporate clients using everything she learned in the Confident Menstrual Cycle Coach Academy. So if you are also interested in incorporating hormone balance and hormone optimization into your client's lives, go ahead and apply. Yes, it is an application only certification. Go ahead and apply using the link and the description below. So let's get into it. What is Cycle syncing and who popularized it? Who named it? Cycle syncing? Cycle syncing is a term coined by Alisa Vitti, who is a pioneer in hormone health and she wrote two books on it and she is absolutely amazing. But is Cycle syncing science back? And how do cycles syncing workouts work cycle syncing workouts work? They work by having you do higher intensity in the first half of your cycle and lower intensity in the second half of your cycle.

And something popular amongst people who do cycle sync their workouts is that they do strength training in the first half of their cycle. And things like yoga, Pilates and body weight workouts in the second half of their cycle, is that part science-based? I do not know, there is no science, no research papers saying that lower intensity workouts are best for your luteal phase, nor are there scientific articles saying yoga and Pilates are best for your luteal phase. So what does the science actually say? I wanna give you this as a resource so that you can use it for your clients and for yourselves as well. First things first is we're just gonna take you through a science-based workout

Journey for hormone optimization. So the first article that I wanna bring up is an article by Romero Parra and this article was on delayed onset muscle soreness throughout the menstrual cycle. And in this article they found that delayed onset muscle soreness was more prevalent in the bleed phase of the menstrual cycle. So if you don't know anything about the different phases of the menstrual cycle, I might throw out some jargon. I'm gonna try to make it completely understandable. But if you wanna know about the different phases of the menstrual cycle and the basics, watch this video here. I will link it in the description below as well. Okay, so delayed onset muscle soreness in the bleed phase slash menstrual phase. Why does this happen? I believe that it happens because hormones are their lowest during this phase. The important hormones that we're talking about when we talk about the menstrual cycle are estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.

And because important hormones for muscle growth and muscle healing, estrogen and testosterone are so low in this phase, we cannot heal the muscle tissues as efficiently as we can in the other phases. Now that being said, does it mean that your clients can't train or can't train hard or must stick to yoga and Pilates in this phase? No ma'am. No sir. No, they them, it does not. It means that we must observe our clients better during the different phases of their cycle. So two things are true here. One, your client may have lower energy in their bleed phase or they might have lower energy just at the end of their luteal phase. So that's right before they start to bleed. And so our job as trainers is to look and see what the actual trends are for our clients. I like calling them actual body cues.

What are the actual body cues for our clients? Are our clients having trouble recovering towards the end of their menstrual cycle or towards the their actual men wait towards the end? Yes, that's what I meant towards the end of their menstrual cycle, which would be the late luteal phase right before they start bleeding, or in the beginning of the menstrual cycle, which would be the bleed slash menstrual phase. If you're like, my clients don't have trouble recovering at all, I don't believe you and I think you should do more research and ask more questions. Okay? So that is what we know for the, for the menstrual phase is that there could be more delayed onset muscle soreness. Another article showed us, this is not the only article that talks about this, but this is a really good one, a really well written one that I recommend you all read. It is about fat oxidation and carbohydrate glucose glycogen oxidation throughout the menstrual cycle. And what they found was that we have more glucose oxidation, glycogen,

Carbohydrate, whatever you wanna call it. We oxidize more sugars more efficiently after our bleed phase for about two weeks. So that's our follicular and ovulatory phase. And then after that, we actually oxidize more fat more efficiently in the second half of our cycle. So what does that mean? It means that strength, capacity, power, capacity and aerobic capacity might be greater in the first half of our cycle. That's the bleed follicular and ovulatory phase. Whereas towards the end of our cycle, we are going to be oxidizing more fat more efficiently. So that means aerobic training and lower intensity weight training might be easier for our clients. So that being said, periodization is already what you do. And so if you can learn how to periodize for the menstrual cycle, which is one of the main things that I teach in the confident Menstrual Cycle Coach Academy, and you can apply for it using the link below, then you can do wonders not only for hormone optimization, but I believe this is my belief, getting your clients to their goals even faster while balancing and optimizing their hormones.

So carbohydrate, oxidation, fat oxidation, they're different throughout the cycle. So adjust training for that. Also, like observe your client's recovery as well during the different phases of the cycle. See what it's different. Again, I come back to like observing the trends that are normal for your client. That's one of the best things we can do as trainers who wanna help optimize our client's hormone. Then there was another study also published in 2021 by Carmichael and colleagues. And this study took I think 40 plus studies and looked at each one to create what is it trends throughout the cycle. And the most interesting thing that they came up with, I think the most interesting thing that they came up with in the discussion section was breaking the luteal phase. That's the second half of their cycle into three parts. And what they found was that anaerobic, aerobic and our, and anaerobic, aerobic and what else and strength changed throughout the luteal phase. They found that as a trend and they, they labeled those as like the capacity for each. So aerobic capacity changes, anaerobic capacity, changes in strength, capacity changes throughout the cycle, throughout the luteal phase of the cycle. So those are interesting things to look at. And I, if you wanna dive deeper into luteal phase training, I made a whole video on that. You can check it that out right here. We'll check that out in the description below. Finish this video

Of course first. But this study, what I thought was most important in this study is that it showed us that in the luteal phase, our training capacity can change and that can go into your periodization as well. So do we have to do yoga and Pilates in the luteal phase? The the screaming blaring answer is no, we don't have to just stick to leg yoga and Pilates in the luteal phase. We can adjust training, adjust strength training, aerobic training and anaerobic training throughout the ludia phase, help our clients get the best results. So I wanna pause right now. If you have a comment or a question or a hilarious remark that you wanna share, go ahead and leave me a comment below and if you're getting something out of this video so far, make sure to like it. So a lot of people ask the question, can I make gains while training cyclically cyclically?

And the answer is absolutely. I have private clients like Leslie here who is able to see muscular changes, she's able to see her abs poking through as she's training cyclically. And I have other clients who've been able to reduce body fat postpartum while training cyclically. And I think it's important that we understand how to periodize cyclically because if we are just going off of cycle syncing recommendations that we learned in your book, we're like, okay, strength training in the first half of our cycle, yoga Pilates in the second half of our cycle. And you know, truthfully, that can be enough for somebody who doesn't have experience in exercise. But if you are a trainer who is coaching clients for like for physique, then you wanna make sure that as you're doing hormone balance and hormone optimization strategies, that they actually dovetail nicely into making body composition changes.

So how do you start implementing this for both yourself and your clients? You might wanna try it on yourself first. And I think that is a great place to start because remember when you started your fitness journey, you didn't start immediately training clients, you got into fitness yourself. So I understand if when it comes to hormone balance, you wanna try this on yourself first, right? You are the best test subject so to speak. So how to start doing this? Number one, know where you slash your clients are in the cycle when you start. And if you don't know where you're at in your cycle and if your clients don't know where they're at in their cycle, you can download the free menstrual cycle assessment guide that I have down below. This works perfect for if you're doing a menstrual cycle assessment with your other monthly assessments with your clients or if you just wanna do a menstrual cycle assessment on yourself first, like I said. So knowing where you are in your cycle is key. And then step two is to start period as periodizing

For yourself and your clients. Period. I periodizing for the cycle, no pun intended, right? And so let's go over the basics of that just one more time. In the bleed phase, observe the energy changes and adjust periodization accordingly. One might have more energy in the bleed phase, that's great. Take advantage of that. If not, don't worry about it. Use it as a deload week. Okay? Then in the follicular and ovulatory phase, increase the training volume in the luteal phase. Make sure to watch the video that I have on luteal phase training. Make a note of it. The description below has the link. Start with the same training volume that you did in the ovulatory phase and then slowly decrease it and then observe at the end of the luteal phase if you have any recovery, quote unquote issues. If you're slower to recover then and observe if you have decreased energy in the late luteal phase or the bleed phase because it's gonna be one or the other for most people.

So that's an easy way to start implementing it. What I like to say to my clients is that cyclical periodization happens on a bell curve, right in the bleed phase. We start low in the ovulatory follicular phase we peak and in the luteal phase we start to decrease. And you can play around with training volume intensity, use the fit principle. I know you know what that is because you use the fit principle in order to periodize your workouts for your cycle. Again, nothing is as valuable as taking your own data and adjusting periodization strategies based on your own data. And there we have, it is cycle syncing workouts rather science-based. I'm not sure that it is, but what is science-based is cyclical training and cyclical periodization. So if you got something out of this video, click that like button. If you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, make sure to subscribe to it using the link below.

And I will put the luteal phase video right here so you can click on it and get a whole idea of luteal phase training. And if you are interested in getting a certification in hormone balance hormone optimization for your clients using science backed research while getting support from me and my curriculum, make sure to apply for the Confident Menstrual Cycle Coach Academy using the link below as well. Yes, it is an application based program only those apply can be considered for it. So if you're interested, click the link and you can get on a phone call. Give me, okay, I will see you in the next video. Bye.