Bitesize Biohack: Training And The Menstrual Cycle

11:18AM Oct 7, 2022

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Intro

Dr Stacy Sims

Keywords:

perimenopause

angela

week

hormone

recovery

days

ovulation

intensity

cycling

progesterone

training

work

fitness

body

high performance

sharing

myths

exercise

women

longevity

Instead of asking why I feel so lazy, we need to ask ourselves why we need more rest.

Welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host, Angela Foster. The show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance, mind, body and lifestyle.

Welcome to another episode of the High Performance health Podcast. I'm so excited. This is a little teaser clip that I have for you today. on an upcoming episode with Dr. Stacey Sims. I know this has been long awaited, it was hugely popular. The last time that I sat down with Dr. Stacy and talked all about exercising around the menstrual cycle, how it affects perimenopause. And she's done even more research in this area. So you are going to get all the latest scientific research content and practical tips that you can start using in your fitness programme in your fasting in your life in general to really sync with your hormones and upgrade your energy and your longevity. And we're going to be dispelling a whole lot of the myths around this area as well. So here's a little teaser clip. Now if you want more around fitness, let me tell you, I have a very exciting opportunity for you. We have just opened up the female bio hacker collective again to new members. And this month, October is all about fitness. I'm going to be sharing everything you need to know about optimising your fitness routine for longevity, for balancing your hormones. And also importantly, looking at the minimum effective dose because we are all busy people, yes, we're all busy people. And unless it's something you really enjoy, you probably don't have time to work out for hours upon hours a day. So I'm going to be cutting through all the myths and sharing with you the smallest minimum effective dose that you can use to get the body you've always dreamed of, to feel high energy to look after things like your VO two Max and your muscle mass and optimising your metabolic rate and all the lovely things that go with the benefits of exercise in the shortest amount of time possible. And so you can come and join us and get two weeks for free. Yes, two weeks for free. If you head over to Angela foster.me. Forward slash FPC, there is absolutely no obligation to continue. If you like us and love us and you want to stay with the wonderful community we've created over there, then you're free to do so if not after two weeks, and you think it's not for you, you can simply just cancel. But this is an October offer that we are running. So all you need to do is head over to Angela foster.me, forward slash F, B, C, and I'll see you in there. But now let me share this little upcoming clip from my chat with Dr. Stacey Sims. If we're looking at three different sections of the population, so we're looking at women who are in their cycling years, they haven't yet hit perimenopause. And then we have a category of women who are maybe in early perimenopause who are still cycling, but maybe they're having an ovulatory cycles. And they really want to optimise for that progesterone as much as they can. And then you've got women who now this they're experiencing significant disruption disruption, how would you bucket them in terms of that intensity?

So we're looking at someone who's naturally cycling, we know that it's the follicular phase that lengthens and shortens for the most part in in pre menopausal women in reproductive years. And you can leverage intensity in that low hormone state around ovulation and about the five days after ovulation. This is where we start to do more steady state work. Maybe we're upping the reps and dropping weight. But that five ish days before your period starts, we really say let's do. We want to look complete recovery, work technique under the bar work on skills drills, and do everything to really support your body to absorb the hard training you've done before support progesterone production, or good sleep because we have a lot of sleep disruption in that high hormone phase. And then when you get into the low hormone phases of lead phase again, you're ready to hit it hard. If we're looking at someone who is early perimenopause, and they're still having regular cycles following that same pattern is good. And we really want to emphasise that D load. It's the recovery between days that you might find you need a little bit more. Instead of there was a meme that came out I think it was today or said instead of asking why I feel so lazy. We need to ask ourselves why we need more rest. And when we hit perimenopause, there's this this myth that women are always so busy and they're like in a rushing women's syndrome where they're highly stressed. They're tired but wired and yet, they're using exercise to de stress but they're not taking enough rest. So they're always fighting and they're always tired. And I find this in the early perimenopause years because people aren't quite aware that they're in perimenopause. So they're tired, they're wired, they're busy, and they're still trying to do all their training and they're not quite hitting the mark, and they're not getting the adaptations. So it's looking and saying, Okay, well, we need to back down around ovulation, we need to really focus in on that recovery. As we're starting to have immune system changes be more pro inflammatory, we're starting to look maybe having an offer to recycle. So we have less oestrogen production as well. And we have the I have more recovery between days and then that last week, or five days before the period is due to come is really recover D load absorbing. And when we get into late perimenopause, where the cycles are really irregular, where you might have one that's a normal 28 day, then all of a sudden, it's 40 or 50 days, and you're like I don't know, when my period is going to come, we tend to shift it to having two week focus one week D load, but the D load isn't completely off in recovery. We look at it as really super easy doing what you want to do. And if you're training for an endurance or you're training specifically for like a physique build, and you're trying to lose a little bit of body fat, then we can look at doing a super, super easy longer cardio session a couple of times during that week. So people are like, Oh, I can't take a full week off. I'm in the habit. It's how I get my my stress relief, to keep the same days of activity, but we just moderate what you're doing on those days, instead of your bootcamp or your high intensity or your heavy lifting on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we're doing technique work on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Tuesday, Thursday, instead of going for your interval run or, or maybe a road ride or maybe you're trying a new kickboxing class, you're just really dropping it way down to that 50% Mark, you're still having movement and activity, but it's a recovery focus instead of okay, I'm going to hit it hard and then have another dealer. So we try to go that that two week on one week off, because then that sets us up for when we hit that actual post menopause state where we do have a complete changeover and our recovery metrics and the way that our body does recover, and we know that you can handle up to two weeks of really focused block training than you need that week to really recover.

Please know that while I tried to cover as much information to help you as I can on these bite sized episodes, none of things I mentioned should be taken as a substitute for medical advice and before taking any supplements or anything else. Please consult first with your medical doctor.

Thanks for listening. Remember to review and subscribe. You can grab the show notes, the resources and highlights of everything Angela mentioned over at Angela Foster performance.com You can also snatch up plenty of other goodies including the highly helpful Angela recommends page which is a list of everything she personally recommend to optimise your mind, body and lifestyle