Why Cycle Syncing Fitness Recommendations need an update

In this blog you are going to learn how to update your cycle syncing knowledge.

My name is Omega Zumpano - I’m an exercise scientist and menstrual cycle educator and in this blog, you are going learn science based ways you can upgrade your cycle syncing fitness routine.

The term cycle syncing was coined and trademarked by Alisa Viti. She founded the Flo Living institute and I wanted to show you her article on the Flo Living site. We’ll cover the follicular, ovulatory and luteal phase recommendations that Alisa makes and I’ll share some updates with ya.

Follicular Phase
This article by Alisa says that we benefit from higher intensity workouts in the first half of our cycle in the follicular phase, but this 2021 article showed us that we actually have greater muscle fatigue and more delayed onset muscle soreness in the early follicular phase. So, we actually wouldn’t benefit as much from high intensity workouts while estrogen and testosterone is still low. So my update here would be to not jump from your period to HIIT workouts. Take it slow as your hormones start to rise.

Ovulatory Phase

Alisa Vitti also mention that our basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories we burn) decreases in our ovulatory phase then mentions that HIIT can be a good way to counterbalance a slow metabolism. I take issue with this because that recommendation builds on the old addage “calories in vs calories out” which comes from a pro-diet culture. And now we know that losing weight and staying fit is more than calories in vs. calories out. It has so much to do with metabolism and hormone function.

If I was Alisa Vitti, I might use Cook’s and colleagues 2018 article titled Basal and stress-induced salivary testosterone variation across the menstrual cycle and linkage to motivation and muscle power and talk about how the high ovulatory phase testosterone is linked to more motivation in athletes. Instead of urging us to do more HIIT because because less calories.

Or maybe even use this 2004 study by Joo and colleagues showing that “when estradiol is high (as it is in the ovulatory phase), …free radicals produced by exercise may be easily eliminated.”

Luteal Phase

In the beginning of this article Alisa states that women fatigue faster in the luteal phase, but in fact the article cited to support this point studied heat stress and the menstrual cycle, not soley physical stress. So let’s look at what the research actually does have to say about exercise in the luteal phase.

The same 2021 study by Romero Parra showed that because estrogen stays high in the early luteal phase, we actually have more capacity for strength workouts.

That article also showed that we have more muscle damage potential when hormones begin their journey downward in the late luteal phase as well.

This 2021 study by Willett et. al. researching estrogens impact on substrate utilization (which is just the body using fat, carbs or protein as a fuel source) showed that when estrogen is higher, so is the fat burning potential during exercise. So from this study, we know that around the time of ovulation and just after that in the first few days of the luteal phase, our body is favoring fat as a fuel source.

So all in all my updates would be:

Lower the intensity of your workouts in the follicular phase. Do more reps, less weight or make more rest time in betweeen your sets.

In the Ovulatory phase, tap into your fullest capacity for strength and motivation.

In the early to mid luteal phase, continue doing your strength workouts.

And in the late luteal phase drop the intensity back down again.