Let’s talk about your Period.

You period is something very normal but still not really a dinner conversation subject for most woman but still every woman gets a period every month in a certain period of their lifes (if without IUD).  Hormones facilitate that period. The body is works hard to accomplish this, “the natural cleaning”. Some women have a lot of issue with their periods, others flow through them without any issues, but every woman will feel that she can’t perform on the same athletic level as the week before.

How come:

The reason is because a female body works hard in creating female sex hormones to prepare the body for the implementation of an egg. Increasing the level of progesterone & Oestrogen which in return also creates more Luteinizing hormone (LH) and Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) in the blood. This makes that the texture of blood gets thicker, which in turn makes the heart pump harder. That is the reason you have a (f.e.) harder time lifting that same weight as last week of the ground. Or getting through that first Kilometre of running, biking, or rowing. As your body is already under stress and you add an extra stress factor for the body. How does that work?

My story:

Doing sport on a consistent and weekly base I felt that sometimes the weight just felt heavier than the week before. Normally you try to add more weights in your training but if you have trouble lifting the weight from the week before you start to wonder how is that possible. Did I eat correctly, did I sleep enough, got enough rest between the trainings. I tracked my periods also I started to see a link but didn’t know what the link was.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I found an article in German Women Health on training on your hormones. That was my ah moment. It all made sense. I went online to read more about the researcher Dr. Stacy Sims. I order her book “Roar”, saw she taught an online course as well. I was very impatience waiting to start reading that book so started to read online what I could find. Placed my name on the waiting list for the next course.

During the Dr. Sims classes I learned that you need to train with your period not just train every week the same thing. Your body on female hormones dislikes the same thing every week, it benefits more from alternating training. Pushing your body and working on the technic of the exercises.

Peri-menopause

Women in their Peri-menopause or on menopause gets great result with weight lifting, HIIT and Plyo training as they need to find other ways on putting stress on their metabolic system. More coming about that in a next post.

Roar:

Researcher have found that women could make greater strength gains and produce more force when they are train in their low-hormone phase (Quote out of Roar book). Dr. Stacy Sims has done research and still does research on the impact of female hormones on your performance. I have followed her courses with success and implement her strategy in own training. Getting the optimum performance in all ages. If you want to grape the maximum out of your body, contact me, to make the best training plan possible for your body, your trainings goals and of course to learn how to train with your cycle.

Monitoring:

But first thing you can do yourself: Start monitoring your cycles for at least 3 months even if you are in peri-menopause phase. I want all the details you can provide me about your period even if you think it irrelevant. Moods, craving, bloating, backpains, bleeding, sleep, water retention. Prefer getting too much information than less. I want to know how long your cycle is so that  I can make an accurate training plan for your body specific.

Write or call me for more info or help.