This post is a more thorough discussion and breakdown of the training adjustment one can try at different points of the menstrual cycle as well as a discussion on the literature I referenced. If you are not interested in the discussion on the literature you can skip forward to ‘Practical Application’.
When searching the literature for the best way to modulate training according to the menstrual cycle I had specific criteria in mind. I wanted studies that observed chronic adaptations to training based around the menstrual cycle and studies that did not include participants on oral contraceptives as it makes it harder to draw conclusions about how the natural fluctuation of hormones across the menstrual cycle impacted the results. This criteria narrowed things down to exactly 3 studies that I will outline and discuss below.
In 1995, Reis et al took 7 women and compared their response to two training programs: a standard resistance training program and a menstrual cycle based program.
The standard resistance training program was where the women performed their workout every 3 days regardless of where they were in their menstrual cycle. The resistance training program designed around the menstrual cycle had the women training every 2 days with the majority of their workouts in the follicular phase of their cycle (The days from the onset of bleeding up to ovulation) and then training once a week in the luteal phase (from ovulation up to the day before your bleed)
So it would look something like this for the Menstrual Cycle Based Training (assuming their cycle was 28 days long):
Week 1: 3 workouts
Week 2: 3 workouts
Week 3: 1 workout
Week 4: 1 workout
Note: Week 1 started from the first day of their bleed.
And like this for the Standard Resistance training program assuming their cycle was 28 days long):
Week 1: 2 workouts
Week 2: 2 workouts
Week 3: 2 workouts
Week 4: 2 workouts
After 8 weeks the researches found that the training program that was structured around the menstrual cycle resulted in greater strength gains.
For this program they performed the same workout from session to session and only used one exercise which was performed for 3×12 reps and that was it for the workout. So, this doesn’t really reflect what your average training plan would look like but what we can take from it is that there may be something to doing less in your luteal phase.
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The next study I considered was Sung et al 2014.
In this study they took 20 untrained/moderately trained women in their 20s (they either didn’t train or participated in sport programs like aerobics or yoga) and had them train one of their legs in the follicular phase and their other leg in the luteal phase over 12 weeks. One leg had eight training sessions in the follicular phases (FP) and only two sessions in the luteal phases (LP) for follicular phase-based training (FT), while the other leg had eight training sessions in LP and only two sessions in FP for luteal phase-based training (LT).
So it would look something like this for the leg doing Follicular Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 4 workouts
Week 2: 4 workouts
Week 3: 1 workout
Week 4: 1 workout
And something like this for the leg doing Luteal Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 1 workout
Week 2: 1 workout
Week 3: 4 workouts
Week 4: 4 workouts
Note: For both programs Week 1 began from the first day of their bleed.
Much like in the previous study, the same workout was used for most sessions. In the 4 day training week 3 sessions consisted of 3×8-10 single legged leg press and the 4th session was 3×15-20 single legged bodyweight squats.
The researchers found that Follicular Phase-Based training resulted in superior strength and muscle gains.
I was a little disappointed to see that diet was not controlled and that they didn’t use trained subjects but what we can take away from this is that yet again, pushing most of the training to the first half of the menstrual cycle seemed to result in better overall results. Also, we can see that when the same volume was done in the luteal phase, the participants didn’t reap as much benefit from their training even though untrained individuals usually can experience gains more readily than a trained individual would.
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The third study was by Sakamaki-Sunaga et al. 2016 and in this case they observed 14 ‘physically active’ women (they had not participated in resistance training for at least one year so these women were thoroughly ‘detrained’) on a 12 week program where each arm was trained separately following either a 3 day a week or 1 day a week training schedule during the Follicular phase and a 3 days a week or 1 day a week training schedule during the luteal phase.
So it would look something like this for the arm doing Follicular Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 3 workouts
Week 2: 3 workouts
Week 3: 1 workout
Week 4: 1 workout
And something like this for the arm doing Luteal Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 1 workout
Week 2: 1 workout
Week 3: 3 workouts
Week 4: 3 workouts
Note: For both programs Week 1 began from the first day of their bleed.
The workouts consisted of 3x 8-15 reps of one arm standing dumbbell curls and nothing else (apart from warm ups)
This is a very similar design to the previous study but with one difference: There was no hormonal analysis done to confirm whether or not the women were ovulating. This could potentially impact the findings because a woman who bleeds but does not ovulate does not reach the same peaks of hormonal concentrations that an ovulating woman would, particularly in the luteal phase and this could impact training response. Truthfully I don’t think that their exercise intensity was high enough to induce anovulation, however we can’t confirm either way and that needs to be taken into account when viewing the results.
How much this might affect results, I’m not sure.
D’Eon et al. 2002 have proposed that a metabolic response to changes in the ovarian hormones occurs only when the estrogen/progesterone ratio is sufficiently elevated and the magnitude of the increase in estrogen from the early follicular phase to the phase of comparison such as luteal phase or mid-luteal phase is at least in the order of 2-fold more. If this is the case and if it carries over to training adaptations then this could have a potential impact on the results seen if anovulatory cycles were present.
All we can say for sure is that the women were getting their periods regularly but we cannot confirm that they were ovulating and reaching an estrogen/progesterone ratio that may or may not impact training response. This is not enough to completely write off the results of this study however.
Interestingly enough, this was the study that found no differences among the different training protocols in regard to hypertrophy and strength.
So at this point this theory has 2 out of 3 studies in it’s favor but the better designed studies were in agreement.
There was also a study conducted by Wikström et all 2017 that compared training responses to menstrual cycle based resistance training versus control in 86 ‘trained’ women. The definition of trained in this case meant resistance training for at least 2 months prior to the study and familiarity with the exercises used. The downside of this study is that it included women on oral contraceptive in the pool of women who were not on the pill. Ideally the participants on the pill would have been observed separately as oral contraceptive may not provide the same hormonal fluctuations as would be seen in a menstruating woman, especially if pills were monophasic and providing one set dose of estrogen and progesterone for the entire pill cycle. But I took at look at the findings anyways, also because I was curious about how they structured their training protocols as well.
This study’s training designed floored me. Much like the previous studies there was a training program where the majority of the workouts were done in the Follicular phase and another where the majority of the workouts were performed in the Luteal phase. For good measure there was also a third program where the women in that group performed resistance training 3 days a week every week without adjusting intensity, regardless of where they were in their cycle. I really liked this aspect of the study.
What wasn’t great was that it seemed as though training wasn’t limited to the programs they were given which means that they could also have been training other workouts throughout. With that being said, if the women were adhering to the training programs designated to their group, this an idea of how they would have looked:
Follicular Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 5 workouts
Week 2: 5 workouts
Week 3: 1 workout
Week 4: 1 workout
Luteal Phase-Based Training:
Week 1: 1 workout
Week 2: 1 workout
Week 3: 5 workouts
Week 4: 5 workouts
Standard Resistance Training Group:
Week 1: 3 workouts
Week 2: 3 workouts
Week 3: 3 workouts
Week 4: 3 workouts
Note: For both Follicular Phase-Based and Luteal Phase-Based Training, Week 1 workouts began from the first day of their bleed.
What was crazy to me about this study design was that all of the 5 workouts within the week were the same two exercises over an over: 3×12 Leg press and Leg curls 5 days a week. The first thing I did upon reading that was to check if there was any mention of knee pain and sure enough about 4 women dropped out due to knee complaints. However, considering there were about 40 women doing this program design I would have expected this number to be higher.
If you follow me you might know that I am am advocate of low to moderate training frequency of a muscle group so this workout schedule made me cringe a little bit and raised a few questions like whether or not the women were really training to proper intensity if they could train the same muscles almost daily…but either way, this study found the the women in the Follicular Phase Based training saw the best improvements in power, strength and lean mass gains, even with the crazy frequency (current beliefs sufficiently challenged I admit!).
What was also interesting is that after 16 weeks of the luteal phase based training and the standard resistance training the women saw no significant increase in lean mass…so the women training 3 days a week every week across their cycle saw no increases in lean mass either.
As discussed, the findings from this study need to be interpreted with caution because of what was previously mentioned about mixing oc users and women who were menstruating naturally, but also because most programs with a 3 day a week frequency don’t include the same two exercises every session. So don’t look at that and think 3 day a week training across the cycle is necessarily bad for gains. What this, and study 1 and 2 may suggest is that training the same muscle group hard 3 times a week at the second half of your menstrual cycle may not be ideal.
There are studies investigating whether or not your recovery is negatively impacted in the luteal phase of your cycle and again, we have mixed results. Hackney et al 2019 found that women recovered from an 90 minute run better in their follicular phase and the luteal phase while Romero et al 2020 found that an eccentric squat workout of 10 sets of 10 reps didn’t elevate blood markers of muscle damage and inflammation any more in the luteal phase than it did in the follicular phase. The difference in results could be due to the type of exercise being performed or even due to the training status of the women in the resistance training program. It is also worth noting that Romero et al also mentioned that ‘The only phase to report a possible inflammation-related pattern in terms of IL-6 was the mid-luteal phase.’ Again, there is not enough to confirm the effect the luteal phase may have on recovery but enough to warrant further research.
Now that I have showed you all of the studies that I considered, you have probably noticed some the common statement popping up that more research needs to be done on this subject before anything can be said for sure. Because of this I will continue following the literature and update my recommendations based upon anything new that may come to light. Until then I used the information available to design the Practical Application section below for anyone who wants to experiment with menstrual cycle phase based training.
Practical Application:
From the studies above I gathered the following points:
-Women may be able to get away with higher volume and frequency in the first half of their menstrual cycle.
-Women were able to train only once a week in the second half of their cycle and it didn’t negatively impact gains or strength on the lifts performed.
-Women may also be able to train to intensity in the luteal phase and not negatively impact strength and gains but more of the studies suggested that it might not be beneficial to push harder in the luteal phase vs the follicular phase.
-Training 3 days a week every week without varying intensity wasn’t the superior approach to strength and lean mass gains.
Again, all of this is based off of a small pool of research and future studies need to be done. So I figured the best middle ground was a light implementation of this where instead of mandating making the last 2 weeks of your cycle close to no training, instead start pulling back volume and intensity if not also frequency post-ovulation. This way you can get the best of both worlds, a training program that may maximize on your growth and adaptation potential when it’s available while maintaining or deloading regularly to allow yourself to repeat those efforts again without beating your body into the ground. Bonus points that the reduced intensity may in fact be happening when your body is less able to adapt and recover from harder training.
These recommendations are what I implement on my own training as well as my female clients interested in improving overall strength and making body composition changes. But before you can implement them you may want to take a look at how I am my clients currently track our cycles.
You’ll see that the language has shifted from ‘Week 1’ to ‘Phase 1’ and that is due to the language used in the tracking app when dividing your menstrual cycle into 4 phases:
Phase 1: The days of your bleed
Phase 2: The remaining days in the first half of your cycle leadning up to ovulation
Phase 3: The first week or so after ovulation
Phase 4: The 7 days or so before your bleed is predicted to start.
Please note that I am not affiliated with FitrWoman in any way. I recommend it because it is a free app with few bugs that clearly outlines what point of your menstrual cycle you may be in.
Now that you know what each Phase represents we can move on to discussing my suggested training adjustments.
Phase 1: The days of menstruation, starting from the first day of bleeding
This is when you have the green light to start ramping up your training intensity. Weight training is usually a little heavier (6-12 rep range for hypertrophy and sticking in the lower rep ranges (1-5) for strength movements) HIIT training is programmed here if desired.
Phase 2: The remaining days of your cycle leading up into ovulation
We stick with the training guidelines from Phase 1 while continuing to push to perform more reps or increase the difficulty of the exercises performed by going with harder variations or adding more weight. You also push to improve your time on runs, intentisy on intervals etc. You do want to keep in mind that you don’t want to have more than 2 high intensity sessions back to back, but once there is enough rest included in your training week this is when you can push your hardest in your workouts and potentially reap the most benefits.
Phase 3: The first week or so post-ovulation
This is where it may benefit you to look at this part of your cycle from a maintenance perspective as opposed to a time to push, especially if you are someone who experiences lethargy at this phase of your cycle. If research has indicated that you can get away with only training once a week here then you can certainly get away with pulling back your training intensity. It is also suggested that a woman’s ability to recover from higher intensity exercise may be reduced at this point of her cycle though how much so may be impacted by training status and form of exercise performed. The research on this is limited and again, mixed in results, but if we take a look at the majority trend on what is available, and we take into consideration that for many women they are not feeling as high energy during this phase as others, it doesn’t defy logic to consider pulling back here.
For weight training you can reduce your weight used and focus on technique either by staying with the same 6-12 or 1-5 rep range but using less weight OR going lighter but for more reps (12-20 if you were doing 6-12 and 6-12 if you were doing 1-5). Anecdotally I have found that most of my clients really thrive with a switch to higher reps in training for this phase and it may have something to do with the changes to exercise metabolism stimulated by the increase in hormones at this time of your cycle which favors endurance work. This is also why cardio is switched to lower intensity, longer duration at this phase to play upon that potential benefit of your hormonal environment.
Another way that you could consider altering your training at this time of the month is to reduce overall volume and frequency, if don’t want to pull back on how hard you push within the session. So instead of training 5 days a week, consider training 3 days a week instead and alter volume to keep balance between the muscle groups worked while only training a muscle group once a week. Consider switching to a 3 day Push, Pull, Legs schedule in Phase 3. This way you can still get the satisfaction of a tough workout while still doing less over the course of Phase 3 than what you were doing in Phase 1-2.
Note: If you do not experience a slump in energy or strength and you feel as though you can push past your previous best easily I won’t go so far so to say don’t go for it in Phase 3, especially when it comes to resistance training and especially if you follow the deload plan for Phase 4. However, keep in mind that since there is still the potential that you may take a little longer to recover from your hard session in this phase so you may want to wait at least 2 days before another high effort session.
Phase 4: The 7 days leading up to your bleed when PMS symptoms are present if experienced.
This time of your cycle is when many women feel their worst and if studies are correct, may still be unable to recover quickly from training. Instead of forcing things, consider this to be a deload week. Reduce your sets and reps for your workouts and even your training frequency if desired. For my clients we maintain their same 4 day a week schedule but reduce sets, reps, weight used and also sometimes regress to easier variations of exercises used to focus on technique and foundational movement. Whether you switched to a 3 day a week schedule or maintained your usual schedule in Phase 3, in this phase you can repeat your workouts but perform one less set and cut your sets a few reps shy of failure. I usually recommend reducing the weight used by 10% as well to reduce the stress on the body.
Note: Some women continue to feel low energy in the first few days of their menstrual cycle. If you are someone who continues to feel lethargic and low energy up to a few days into your bleed, continue with Phase 4 styled workouts until you feel your energy levels rebound and then you can pick up the pace from there.
Here is a sample of a basic hypertrophy template so you can get the idea of how this might look keeping the same training frequency throughout but altering intensity.
Phase 1:
Workout 1:
- Leg Press 3x 6-12
- Hip Thrust 3x 6-12
- Laying Leg Curls 3x 8-12
Workout 2:
- Pull Ups or Lat Pulldowns 3x 6-12
- Chest Press or Push Ups 3x 6-12
- Dumbbell Lateral Flyes 3x 8-12
- Cable Crossovers: 3x 8-12
Workout 3:
- Bulgarian Split Squats: 3x 6-12
- Sissy Squats or Leg Extensions 3×6-12
- Glute Kickbacks 3x 8-12
- Resistance Band Clams 3×10-12
Workout 4:
- Shoulder Press 3x 6-12
- Unilateral Seated Cable Rows 3x 8-12
- Face Pulls 3x 10-12
- Swiss Ball Pikes 3x 6-12 reps
Phase 2: SAME AS ABOVE
Workout 1:
- Leg Press 3x 6-12
- Hip Thrust 3x 6-12
- Laying Leg Curls 3x 8-12
Workout 2:
- Pull Ups or Lat Pulldowns 3x 6-12
- Chest Press or Push Ups 3x 6-12
- Dumbbell Lateral Flyes 3x 8-12
- Cable Crossovers: 3x 8-12
Workout 3:
- Bulgarian Split Squats: 3x 6-12
- Sissy Squats or Leg Extensions 3×6-12
- Glute Kickbacks 3x 8-12
- Resistance Band Clams 3×10-12
Workout 4:
- Shoulder Press 3x 6-12
- Unilateral Seated Cable Rows 3x 8-12
- Face Pulls 3x 10-12
- Swiss Ball Pikes 3x 6-12 reps
Phase 3:
Workout 1:
- Leg Press 3x 12-15
- Hip Thrust 3x 12-15
- Laying Leg Curls 3x 12-15
Workout 2:
- Pull Ups or Lat Pulldowns 3x 12-15
- Chest Press or Push Ups 3x 12-15
- Dumbbell Lateral Flyes 3x 15-20
- Cable Crossovers: 3x 15- 20
Workout 3:
- Bulgarian Split Squats: 3x 12-15
- Sissy Squats or Leg Extensions 3×12-15
- Glute Kickbacks 3x 15-20
- Resistance Band Clams 3x 15-20
Workout 4:
- Shoulder Press 3x 12-15
- Unilateral Seated Cable Rows 3x 12 – 15
- Face Pulls 3x 15-20
- Swiss Ball Knee Tucks 3x 12-15 reps
Phase 4:
Workout 1:
- Leg Press 2x 8-10
- Hip Thrust 2x 8-10
- Laying Leg Curls 2 x 8-10
Workout 2:
- Pull Ups or Lat Pulldowns 2x 8-10
- Chest Press or Push Ups 2x 8-10
- Dumbbell Lateral Flyes 2 x 8-10
- Cable Crossovers: 2x 8-10
Workout 3:
- Bulgarian Split Squats: 2 x 8-10
- Sissy Squats or Leg Extensions 2 x 8-10
- Glute Kickbacks 2 x 8-10
- Resistance Band Clams 2 x 8-10
Workout 4:
- Shoulder Press 2x 8 -10
- Unilateral Seated Cable Rows 3x 2x 8-10
- Face Pulls 2x 10-12
- Forearm Plank 2x 30-60s hold
I also give clients the option of taking this week off and just doing Yoga and/or going for walks if preferred.
Now, you don’t have to follow this structure exactly. I have given many explanations of ways you can alter at the different phases according to your preferences and you are free to go according to any that you like. You can take your own training program that you enjoy and alter it similarly to the above program or according to any of the suggestions listed under each Phase. It is important not to overthink this tremendously and make it a source of stress. This should be an enjoyable adventure to see how your body feels with these adjustments. If it is a stress, maybe this isn’t for you. It’s also good to remember that at present there isn’t much to strongly suggest that simply adjusting your workouts based on your energy levels for the day is definitely an inferior approach.
It is also important to note that even when my guidelines are adhered to perfectly this isn’t a bulletproof approach because without hormonal analysis we can’t really confirm when you are in your cycle to appropriately trigger the switch from Phase 1-2 to Phase 3 training frequency/intensity. That doesn’t make my suggestions useless but they definitely don’t require hellbent adherence in order to be effective. Also, no adherence is better than any level of adherence that comes at the cost of your mental wellbeing.
From all of the above information you can take away these key points:
How far you want to take this is up to you. I have discussed an easy way to sync your training with your menstrual cycle here and this article has given you a few options for how you can adjust training according to what part of your cycle you are in. You can follow the plan I gave, make your own or play with your current programming to see where similar adjustments can be made that fit this format to some degree:
Phase 1 – 2: Go hard. Make your workouts count. Shoot for improvements from Phase 1 into Phase 2.
Phase 3: Focus on maintenance as opposed to shooting for personal bests and focus on technique. If you decide not to pull back on the intensity of your workouts, reduce frequency and limit training a muscle group to once a week. Opt for lower intenisty, endurance styled cardio over higher intensity cardio. You can pull back on training frequency regardless of your choice of training intensity if desired.
Phase 4: Focus on technique and foundational training or lower intensity forms of exercise that work with your energy levels. Deload. You can take this week off if desired. This is a recovery week. Recover in the way that you feel is best for your body. If you are someone whose energy levels are impacted during the first few days of your bleed, continue with Phase 4 styled workouts until your energy levels pick back up again OR just time your deload from the start of your energy slump.
REFERENCES
Reis E, Frick U, Schmidtbleicher D. Frequency variations of strength training sessions triggered by the phases of the menstrual cycle. Int J Sports Med. 1995
Sung E, Han A, Hinrichs T, Vorgerd M, Manchado C, Platen P. Effects of follicular versus luteal phase-based strength training in young women. Springerplus. 2014
Sakamaki-Sunaga M, Min S, Kamemoto K, Okamoto T. Effects of Menstrual Phase-Dependent Resistance Training Frequency on Muscular Hypertrophy and Strength. J Strength Cond Res. 2016
Wikström-Frisén L, Boraxbekk CJ, Henriksson-Larsén K. Effects on power, strength and lean body mass of menstrual/oral contraceptive cycle based resistance training. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2017
Hackney AC, Kallman AL, Ağgön E. Female sex hormones and the recovery from exercise: Menstrual cycle phase affects responses. Biomed Hum Kinet. 2019
Oosthuyse T, Bosch AN. The effect of the menstrual cycle on exercise metabolism: implications for exercise performance in eumenorrhoeic women. Sports Med. 2010
Romero-Parra N, Barba-Moreno L, Rael B, et al. Influence of the Menstrual Cycle on Blood Markers of Muscle Damage and Inflammation Following Eccentric Exercise. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020
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