Women Thriving In Sport with Dr Emma Ross

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding. And I'm laura siddall and this is the tribathlon podcast.

Well, what if we just train more in that, in that part of the cycle? What if we do more resistance training in that half of the cycle? Does that, you know, that physiology really help us get better adaptation?

That was Emma Ross and this episode is women thriving in sport. So welcome to an all new Tribathlon podcast. I and I'm extremely excited to tell you about a new co host I have. So longtime listeners of the triathlon podcast will remember that I think the first professional Ironman athlete we interviewed was Laura Siddal, or Sid as she's better known. And I'm really excited that she's decided to join me as my co host on the Tria Bathlon podcast. So, Sid, welcome. Well, welcome back.

Yeah, thanks so much. I hadn't realized I was the first pro iron distance athlete that you'd had on the show. That was back in. Gosh, seems ages ago now, doesn't it, with how long the years have been? The months have changed to years. But yeah, I'm super excited about this. I have to say, when we suddenly press record just then, I did get a little bit nervous about suddenly being being named as co host. But yeah, I think it's going to be, it's going to be good fun and hopefully the listeners will find it good fun too.

I have no doubt that they will. They will. That you'll be adding a fantastic element to what has already been hopefully a pretty good podcast. But yeah, no, it's going to be really brilliant to get your perspective because, you know, it's easy enough for me to bring an age group as perspective to the podcast, but I certainly won't be able to ever bring a pro perspective to the podcast. So I'm looking forward to your insights.

Yeah. And I, you know, I've, I've really enjoyed listening to the interviews that you've done over the past few weeks since you launched. So excited to be part of that. Excited at the list that we've both got our wish lists of people we'd love to, we'd love to get on and interview. So I think that's going to be a really great opportunity and I am looking forward to learning lots from you and from the listeners and from obviously the people we get on to interview and talk to.

Fantastic. So let's kick things off. What is going on in the world of Sid at the moment? What is happening in the pro world?

Oh my gosh. Well, I Think you've probably caught me in my typical stressful days of state before I, before I travel, which might be of a bit of a shock to some people. I'm normally known for spending a lot of my life living out of suitcases and traveling around the world, splitting my time between New Zealand and Spain and things like that. Obviously the past year has meant I've been, I was going to say stagnated but I don't think that's quite the right word. But more stable in the Northern hemisphere. I'm currently in Spain but on Wednesday and this is as we record this because it could all still change. I am due to fly to the us We've got a training camp out there with my coach and squad. I have been trying to get out there for a while. Obviously being aware of all the restrictions and the seriousness of what's going on around the world that's been causing me to kind of just go back and forth with what I feel is right or not right and everything. But then yeah, so hopefully getting out to the States, a bit of a training camp with my coach and then in theory hopefully racing in March in Challenge Miami. But as all things with everything in the world at the moment, it's been quite interesting just checking paperwork and approvals to get entry to the US whether travel restrictions are going to change or not. Do I book tickets? Do I not book tickets? Obviously getting PCR tested and then just everyone seemed to suddenly come back on emails and suggest we had meetings and catch ups for various different projects I've got going on which is all really exciting and I'm definitely not complaining but it just means as always when this happens like a few days before travel my packing goes out the window and I think I've got like two late nights coming up of trying to pack everything and get everything sorted before I go.

That must be, I mean it's bad enough when you're going off to do an event like, you know, an ironman because you've got all the different things to remember but you've got, I mean do you leave stuff behind in, in Spain or.

Yeah, so I will do this time. I'm fortunate. Like the place where I'm living I've rented for a longer period of time so I can leave a lot normally. Yeah, often when I'm traveling I'm packing up the whole apartment as well which is even more stressful. So thankfully I don't have to do all that this time. The only issue is I'm really out. I mean you'd think I'd be quite efficient with packing and getting everything done, but I'm so out of practice, having not really traveled for the last year or so that I'm like digging out all the lists of things and rewriting them and then suddenly like walking, walking to get my COVID test today. I was like, oh, heck, need to write that down. I've gotten. I needed that, you know, or even I had my bike in the bike shop just getting a service and. And they actually, they changed the chain, obviously. Cause it's had a few kilometers. You forget. Because we're not in a normal race world. You forget that actually the bike still had a lot of hours on it on the trainer. So they changed the chain, which is great. And then I was like, oh, right, I need a new chain. If I'm racing, I need my new chain for I need my race chain. Um, a lot of my race kits that I would put on the bike is actually. Which has reminded me now I just wrote down I needed to take my aero bottle with me and I actually don't think I've got it because I think it's in New Zealand. So that's a good one because I left. So to give some of the listeners, I'm not sure how much if they listened to the previous episodes or if we talked. I left New Zealand in February. Where are we now? 2020, I think it was to go on the training camp to the US with my squad for five weeks and then I ended up after that five weeks going back to the UK because New Zealand shut the borders. The whole world went upside down and I couldn't, couldn't get back anywhere. So having left with five weeks of training stuff, I've sort of then not been back to New Zealand. So actually all my. So my race shoes, because they're specially painted, they're not anything different apart from that, my aero helmet again. But I do have another aero helmet here, thankfully. But all my kind of kit that I would take to race is all in New Zealand. So I'm suddenly having to go, right, what do I need to plan and have I got it here or can I just buy it and buy it in the States then? And that's also added with, will I actually get to the States? Will I get let in? Will I get turned away? Is it the right thing to do? I've got like, obviously masks and hand sanitizer and I'll be taking every precaution I can and keeping my distance from everybody. And then the US has just Sort of announced that there's potential quarantine rules now on arrival. So, yeah, that's the long answer that you'll get from me. It's been a fairly stressful. I don't think I'll be relaxed and take a breath until I sort of get to my accommodation in maybe till I get off the plane in Miami as the first stop until I get to the accommodation in Arizona and just be like, okay, I'm here and my bike's here and we'll now just go with the flow here.

I think we're all missing travel, aren't we? But when it comes back, it's not going to be quite as we remember. A, we're out of practice, as you say, and B, it's not going to be like we remembered it, is it? It's going to be on a very different level. And so, yeah, having to kind of take all of the kind of kit that you've got as well just adds another element of challenge, I suspect.

Yeah, you're right. I massively miss travel, but I also understand the situation we're in and normally I would get so excited about these sort of trips in a normal year and I want to get excited about it because I know that if it all works, I know I'm one of the lucky ones and I'm fortunate and I'm definitely not taking that for granted. But yeah, I'm kind of nervous and worried about it all from everything that's going on and yeah, just being out of practice I guess and making sure ready for that. But if, if it all works out, I'm super excited to get time with my coach again. And yes, we're unsure about what's going to happen with races this year, but I just think it'll be, it'll be great to get with some training out there and set me up for whatever the year may bring. But talking about training, I mean, how's your training going? Haven't you got a big race coming up?

Well, I'm supposed to have. So I was supposed to be doing my first ever Ultra, which I wasn't going to sign up to, but when I was interviewing Brutal Claire on this, on this podcast, she. I don't even think it came up. I can't remember whether it came up in the conversation or whether I saw it on her Instagram feed around it, but she said she was doing 100 mile ultra run around the Cornish coastline and it finishes like two miles from my house in corporate.

Yeah.

So where does it start and where does it finish. Because that's another thing we have in common is that we both have a massive, passionate love of Cornwall. My family's got connections down there as well. So I'm. I think we talked about it. I'm very intrigued to hear about this event.

Maybe not.

Not for me yet, but very intrigued.

We'll get you there at some point, maybe. So there's a 50 mile version of it which starts at the Minnock Theatre and then runs around to Porth Tower and we've got a place in St. Agnes which is literally two miles, probably five miles from there. But I know that stretch of coastline really, really well and it's absolutely stunning. So I was really keen. I was. I'd nearly signed up for the hundred and I'm trying to remember where the hundred starts. I guess it must be somewhere east of the Lizard somewhere. I don't know, maybe Falmouth or something like that. I don't know.

But.

But yeah, so I suppose to be doing that on this coming Saturday, 50 mile around the Cornish coastline, which is.

Pretty spiky, which I have to say, at this time of year having that sort of event scheduled could be. I mean, it'd be amazing. The thing I love about Cornwall is that the coastline is epic and stunning, regardless of the weather, whether it's blue sky and the colors just look like the Mediterranean or whether it's that stormy and the waves are crashing. But running a 50 or 100 miler at the end of January could be interesting. However, you won't be doing it in Cornwall.

Well, that's it. I mean, like, you know, it could be an incredible. If you get the right weather conditions, it will be absolutely stunning. If you get the wrong weather conditions, it's gonna be a long day, isn't it? And I was kind of toying with 100 miler and actually I didn't realize there was a 50 mile version. I thought, no, no, no, I'll do the 50 mile version this year. And actually it turns out I don't think they'd have let me into the 100 miler because I think you have to have done a 100k race before I let you do the 100 miler because it's really tough. I mean, it qualifies for a decent number of UTMB points. So it's a proper tough race. So anyway, obviously that's not happening in Cornwall now, much to my disgust, actually, it turns out brutal. Claire is injured at the moment, so she wasn't sure whether she was going to be able to make it anyway. But so then I thought, well, okay, I'll have to do a local ultra. And then there was all this palaver around. You're not supposed to go much more than five miles from your house. I've now got the keeping it Local ultra planned for, so and I figure, I figure a Cornish 50 is probably the equivalent of a Rutland 60. So I've got a 60 mile route planned where as the crow flies, I don't think I'll go really any further than five miles from my house. So. And my feed station will be home. So I'll kind of come back, grab my next bunch of gels and whatever, fill up my water bottles and off I'll go again.

So, yeah, how many. So you've got a loop as such that you're doing or two loops, four different loops.

Going around the same loop multiple times would drive me crazy.

So.

So yeah, I've got four different loops, so we'll see how that goes. So. So next week, whenever I chat to you for this will, I'll be able to report back, assuming I've made it through and I'm still here, I'll be able to tell you about my keeping it local ultra.

But train it. But training has been good. I mean like have you found the training through winter or kind of motivating yourself knowing that actually you're going to tackle this on your own and not in that kind of race environment?

Well, the training's been actually fun. I really enjoy running and I'm really happy running on my own. So the training's been fine. I actually, I don't suppose I really knew that the, the event itself was cancelled until what, when the four. When lockdown was announced. So the fourth. So I was, it was actually a really good thing to have in the diary because it was something that was keeping me motivated to train all through sort of September, October, November, December and then by January it's like, well, I've done all the hard work so really now I might as well do it. Whatever. Well, at least try and do it. If I get past 50 miles I'll be happy. If I get to 60 miles then I'll be really happy. Although I think I haven't done the maths yet. But what's a. Do you know what 100k is in miles? It must be about 63 or 64, mustn't it?

Yeah. So 90k is 56 miles.

So yeah, it'll be something like 63. So I might have to. If I get to 60, I might have to go and do another three mile loop just so that anyone on Strava that uses metric is it looking and go. Why did you pack up with 3 miles short of 100k?

What are you thinking? Let's see what you feel like. You might also get to that stage. And when I am done, I am quite happy this is over. Now are you going to listen to. I'm intrigued about this long distance stuff. Podcasts, music or just the pleasant sounds of nature.

And a bit of each, but probably not a podcast actually. Probably. Well, I always listen to books, so I've been keeping the David Goggins book. What's it called? What is it called? I figured. I don't know if you've read the book. Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler. It's hilarious. Basically he gets a Navy SEAL to come and live with him for a month and he puts.

There was. There was me thinking you like meant an animal scene. No, it's gonna be hilarious.

And my understanding is that the seal that Jesse Itzler got to go and live, live with him for a month is David Goggins. Okay, David Goggins can't hurt me. I've been saving it for this particular day. So that is what I'm gonna listen to. I'll have some pauses and I won't, I won't listen to it straight through. I will have some, some choir of nature and I'll definitely have some music at some point. But yeah, that's what, that's what I'm building up to.

That's pretty good. I was quite intrigued because at the weekend it was the hoka did a 100k world record attempt with their new carbon x2 shoes. And so I think, gosh, it's ridiculous. I think the men's world record is 400K. It's 6 hours 9 minutes. The women's isn't that far behind. It's 6 hours 33. And they were doing it on a lapped course, which actually looked fairly mundane. And it looked like they were going through like an industrial park and things. But I guess that's what you need for if they go for the record. But it was nine laps and they live streamed it. And I just, I mean I got excited because I was like, wow, this is live sports. And okay, they're just running for hours and hours and hours. And I started watching at the beginning and then I'd go and do something and they watched at the end. But it was, it was just cool to watch. And then the men's winner, a guy called Jim Walmsley. He was. He was under the record for literally most of the run. I think he was about 70 seconds or just over a minute under when he started his last lap and he missed it by 11 seconds. And it's just like when you've been running for six hours, nine minutes and it's 11 seconds. And then, you know, like to do that record again, you've got to go. Right. I've got to go through that whole six hours.

Not just that, all the kind of.

And the preparation.

Yeah, exactly. On all the tapering and everything's like. That's months and.

Oh, yeah, no, and that's. I mean, yeah. And then the women was.

Did he go and attack his pacemaker?

Yeah, that's right. Well, I think he was. He was attacking something at the end, but it was more the floor with the vomit that was projectiling from his. From his mouth. He'd also attack. He also ran most of it with blood streaming down his shoulder. He'd. I think because it was laps when he was overtaking somebody or something, he'd. He tried to cut the corner and ended up like running into the fence or something. Which shows you just how pleasant a course it was. If it was like industrial fences around, but just had this dramatic blood pouring down his arm that made him look. It made him look pretty. Pretty hardcore. And then. Yeah. So the women's. There was. Her name's gone. Carla, who just ran Lands End to John o' Groats in a new world record, a new record time from the uk. She was racing and a few others. But the women, the win. The winner was a French lady. And gosh, now my brain's just fuddled. Angela Tangy, I think, and she was. I think she did about seven and a half hours. But the women's record is six and a half and ridiculously fast.

Six, I mean, six hours for 100K is. I mean, that is bonkers, isn't it? I mean, if I do. If I do mine in double that, I'll be happy.

Well, I think it's. It's something like the. For the women, you're running 356A K and the men is 340something. Okay. To get the record and that just like. Yeah.

What's also interesting is that the men's record and the women's record is really similar, isn't it?

Yeah.

And with. With the whole endurance world, it does seem that the further you go, the closer females and males become, doesn't it?

Yeah. I mean, we saw last year, I think the. The woman who won the. Was it the Cross Pennines or one of the Graham Rounds event?

Yes. So that's Beth Pascal.

Yes, thank you. And you. I knew you'd be able to like, she won that overall and then I think, you know, a couple of years ago.

No, she didn't. She set a new female record.

Female record.

Killian Journey has got the male record and it is, it's like.

But he's. That he's another level as well.

He is, yes. We need, we need to get him on this podcast.

Yes, we do. But, but, but even so that she was in the. Couple of years ago, there was a transcontinental race, which is cycling, and they started in Bulg and you end up in France, and it was a female that won overall outright and she beat the men by a day or so. It was pretty significant in the end. And it is true that, yeah, as the distances go longer, the differences between men and women are a lot less. And actually, I think you'll see over the next few years that the women will start to even eat into that lead or whatever you want to call it, even more so.

Well, and that is a great segue into this week's guest, isn't it? Because. So Dr. Emma Ross is kind of an evangelist for the female athlete. And this was pretty scary territory for me, if. Well, you know full well it was about the fact that this was going to be scary territory. Doing a podcast on female hormones and the menstrual cycle. I have to say, all the podcasts I've done, I have not been so out of my depth as I was on this one. But there is so much. What I. All I found really fascinating is that so much of the research is done on males and then just applied to females. So if the female athlete is treated with the same respect that the male athlete is, the potential for improvements amongst the female athletes are massive.

Yeah, it is. And I think that's where the problem. Well, one of the issues yet is that the research just hasn't been done on female athletes before. It's been done on males and then just sort of applied across the same. I mean, the other point of that is it's really hard to do research on female athletes because of their cycles. So you can never get a. What you call a base group to do your analysis of. Because you just don't know in that, you know, out of those women where they are in the cycles and cycles affect. Affect everyone in or individuals in so many different ways that it's just so hard to collect that data anyway. But it is a really. Call it a hot topic or whatever you want, but it's a real key area I think over the next few years where there's a huge development opportunity. I mean, I just loved, I mean I feel as awkward listening to those conversations as well. So I think even, even though, even though I am female as well, but. And I, it's just always fascinating and I think I probably. I was listening, you sent me across and I was listening it to a fact of kind of like the co hosting and that sort of thing. And then I kept getting distracted by just getting absorbed with what the conversation was, was talking about and where it was going. And partly actually from a coaching perspective. So I have a few athletes I coach and I've done very little on my own understanding of how to coach a female because I like, I'll admit it, I haven't had like a regular cycle for years and years and years and so I've never. And good or bad, for whatever reasons and that's a whole nother conversation. So. But I've never changed my training to cycle or vice versa. So now when I'm coaching females I'm kind of like, well, I haven't had a cycle so I don't get those same fluctuations. However, the athletes I'm coaching do. And I still as a female coaching them, I need to be aware of that. And so I found it interesting just to kind of pick up on those, those things that they were talking about.

Yeah, I mean I think it was. Yeah, it's a really interesting conversation that I know the listeners are going to enjoy. And I think not just the female listeners, but any guys that are dads of, you know, of girls or husbands or coaches of female athletes. I think there's so much there to learn and also it is about dispelling the myths. And I was really extremely grateful to have Laura Penhall, another previous guest, as my sort of co interviewer to make sure that I stayed on the straight an hour and I didn't kind of get completely lost. But there is so much potential there and I think people are going to really enjoy the conversation.

Yeah.

And I do hope the guys that are listening don't turn off when they think it's not relevant to them because I just think it is. We need to get more comfortable in talking about it. We need to get it to not be such of a taboo subject. And again, like you said, for the fathers with daughters out there, for other coaches that might have female athletes in their group. But even just as a training partner, as a coach as well, I want to know about the life of my athlete, the lifestyle of my athlete, whether they're male or female, what are their work stresses, what are their family stresses, all of that of thing, because that adds to it. And so I think it's good even if you're, you know, friends or training partners, if, you know, a little bit like, oh, yeah, you know, they've got a really stressful job or a project at the moment and that's kind of. So they might need some help in this area. It's the same like with a female. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, we joke about, oh, it's the time of the month and avoid the female and that sort of thing. But I think it should be, it should be a little bit more comfortable to talk about and support. So hopefully they'll find it, everyone will find it helpful.

I'm sure they will. So on that note, Let me introduce Dr. Emma Ross. As head of physiology at the English Institute of Sport and helping Team GB Finish an astonishing second in the medal table in Rio Olympics, Dr. Emma Ross led a groundbreaking campaign to improve support for female athletes within the high performance system. And it was through her SmartHer program that she worked to empower coaches, athletes and sports practitioners to better understand the exercising female and how to capitalize and cope with her psychology and physiology in the context of sport. And she is on a mission to tackle the taboos that exist within sport and within wider society when it comes to women's health. Topics such as periods and the menstrual cycle, breast health, pelvic floor health and mental health. But thankfully I had previous guest Laura Penhall and also performance coach Laura Penhall on hand to ask the right questions because I was definitely out of my comfort zone on this interview. But Laura, Laura Penhall, that is, did an amazing job of getting the best out of Dr. Emma Ross. So I know you're going to enjoy this interview and this isn't just for female athletes, it's for dads of girls. It's for coaches of female athletes and it's really actually for anyone so that we can improve awareness and prove or improve the progress of women in sport. This podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfood. Now, I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass for many years, but I only in the last year or so switched to having fresh wheatgrass that's then frozen as opposed to the powdered stuff. And I found that to improve my health even more. Now I've been a big advocate of wheatgrass because I know it's kept me fit and healthy because when I've had spells where I've stopped taking it, I've started picking up the bugs and colds and things like that again, which I never seem to get when I'm taking wheatgrass. I know it improves my immune system, my health, but also it gives me more energy and faster recovery. So loads of health benefits of taking wheatgrass. But Brits is field grown, organic, freshly frozen and they also do a load of amazing juices as well so that you can combine the two like the beetroot ones, so you can have your nitrates before or after an event. You can find out more@britsuperfoods.co.uk but at the end of this podcast I'm going to give you a discount code or a referral code that will give you loads of benefits. So a discount, some free products, some free shipping, but they also have, which is worth just mentioning here, 110% 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not feeling better having taken this for 30 days, they'll give you your money back and an extra 10%, which is absolutely bonkers. But that's how confident they are on the health benefits that you will see as a result of taking wheatgrass just for 30 days. So anyway, hang on to the end of this podcast and I'll give you a great discount code. So welcome to the Tribeathlon podcast. I am delighted to welcome two guests onto this, this particular edition. I'm inviting back Laura Penhall and I'll explain why in just a second from so following up on the podcast we did with her, but also our main guest on this one on this episode is Dr. Emma Ross. Now the reason that I've invited Laura here is because we're going to be talking about female hormones and lots of things that is incredibly scary as a bloke. And so therefore I wanted Laura to kind of dive in and kind of provide a lot of the expertise and ask Emma the right questions to make sure that we get the most out of her expertise. So welcome both to Tribathlon podcast.

Hi Charlie.

Thank you both for dialing in. I'm really excited to have this conversation, if slightly intimidated. I feel like I almost needed to go back to my A level biology notes to prepare for this one. But I'm sure it's going to be a huge amount of fun and a great learning experience for all of us. So do you want to kick things off, Emma, and tell for people that don't know anything about you, tell them a bit about your story, where you've come from and how you've ended up kind of specializing in this sort of area.

Sure. So my story began. Well, originally, I say originally because it feels like a different life now. But I was an academic, I was a researcher and a lecturer in sport and exercise physiology and I did that for about a decade. And then just after the London Games, I moved over to head up the physiology team at the English Institute of Sports Sport, which for those people who don't know, that's kind of the team behind the team. That's the team of scientists and practitioners and physios and doctors who sit behind and support all the Olympic and Paralympic athletes. And I headed up a team of physiologists who were the sports scientists who were supporting all of those athletes across the country. And so I worked there for a few years doing that role. But just after Rio, I got tasked, I suppose, with trying to understand whether we were doing enough for our female athletes. And when I say enough, that was probably as broad as the question was posed. So I kind of set about trying to a formulate the right question because that question's way too big. And then I went on to develop a program which we rolled out over what was going to be the Tokyo cycle. We didn't actually get to Tokyo, we haven't yet got to Tokyo. But so, yeah, So I, in 2016, I kind of set about doing some insight work. How do we support female athletes in this country? And it took me to the participation end and then through to where I was working at the elite end. And that's where we ended up zooming in because that's what we did in our day to day jobs. And we asked the question, do we as sports scientists, as sports doctors, as coaches, support our female athletes as a female as well as an athlete? And you know, overwhelmingly the answer was, huh? What? They're athletes, right? You know, is that not all we need to know? And so that was a great start because it was like, oh, okay, so do we need to know we've got some amazingly successful female athletes in our system. We just came off the back of London, so Rio at the time, and you know, we had some really phenomenal female athletes. Maybe we were doing everything right and all these coaches who were saying, no, you know, I'm using some really well established, well tried and tested training methods to produce Olympic champions, I'm fine, but I'm a physiologist. And so in my nature, you know, I wasn't quite. I didn't sit right with me because I'm like, the physiology of women and men are so different. And even that, as a starting point, was enough to make me curious about whether we should be doing things slightly differently with women than we were with men. And that's probably all the things we'll explore today. But that's how I kind of got to the point where I was drilling very deep into understanding the female athletes from my own kind of background, the physiological perspective. But as you can imagine, that just kind of gains momentum, and it takes you into the biomechanics and the psychology and the nutrition and everything that packages around female athletes prepare them for peak performance. And so I did that. And then just earlier this year, I left my role at the EIS to set up my own company. And the sort of impetus behind that was I was working in this elite bubble, having a brilliant time supporting women in the elite sphere. And the appetite was so incredible there, but also the appetite was incredible outside of that elite bubble. And I used to get coaches and athletes and parents and teachers saying, oh, we don't know anything about that out here. Can you come and. Can you come and educate us? Can you come and give us the confidence to create a culture where women can thrive? And I was like, I'd love to, but I'm still doing this job in the. In the elite space. And then eventually I thought, you know what I'd love? I'd love to broaden my reach. And that's. I left and did that. And then just to end the story, and we'll probably circle back around by the end of the podcast to say that on. On my journey in the last year, setting up my own business, I've. I've been working with two amazing women who also work in this space, and we are now launching our own business to create online content to serve the education and kind of inform women and those who support women better.

Fantastic.

Like, I just gave you my life.

Story, but that's exactly what we wanted. Brilliant. And, Laura, what's your. What's been your experience of working with Emma? You know, how did you guys meet and what have you seen? You know, have you seen this work evolving over. Over the time you've known her?

Yeah, massively. I mean, actually, even though we both worked in each sport, and I was. I've been working with British athletics or then with British sailing, kind of actually Emma, because she was heading up the physiology team. I would work with the physiologist that she was in charge of. So kind of our direct work wasn't necessarily. We didn't actually get to work with each other as much as we have more lately, I suppose, Emma, actually, since we've both left system, which is great because I've seen the absolute phenomenal impact Emma's had within the elite system and kind of this whole Drive within the SmartHer project, which is the female athlete health understanding in the elite world, and kind of, it just suddenly the conversations and it just opened my eyes that in that, like Emma said, in that bubble, especially at the elite end, we talk a lot about the whole percentage gains and the sort of the small things that we can make to try and optimize performance, optimize health. And. And suddenly there's this thing that's come along that's like. We've never considered. It's like 50% of the population and it's much more than just elite performance. This is the whole. This is health of the nation. This is. How do we understand ourselves as a female?

I've, you know, I've done a few.

Bits in the past and I've never even considered it. I've just trained and done whatever I've done. So on a personal level, it really resounded with me. But with our athletes and the people I'm working with, I'm like, this isn't a small game. This is like potential to be a massive gain. And kind of, when you come out of the elite bubble, often what the impact we have, having worked in that environment, it's the small foundational things that we can impact on Joe Bloggs on the street, that's big. You know, like, we talk about hydration, for instance, and, you know, you'd hope that elite athletes optimize their hydration. And it's like that small little token we can give to somebody to improve their weekend warrior sort of, you know, their performance at a weekend or their competitions can be massive. But we're talking about the whole of the female athlete health and that's huge, absolutely huge. So the impact I've seen of what Emma's doing and how she's really striving and driving this forwards with the education of the wider population, I think is brilliant. And I'm a massive, massive promoter of it. I try and draw Emma in everything that I go into. I'm like, you have to listen to this. You have to listen to Emma because she's so passionate and so driven to make sure that the right people get this information. So when we did the talk together, Charlie, I was like, yeah, I can give you the overview of performance and holistic view, but I'd love you to deep dive a little bit more into the female space because I think this is a voice that needs to be heard.

And why, Emma, is it a voice that needs to be heard in terms of not why are we listening to 50% of the population? That would be a really silly question to ask. But more is why is there a difference between the male approach, the female approach and, and you know, why isn't the research just as applicable to women as it is to guys?

Yeah, I mean it's a really good question because you know, it goes back to that, that phrase from the coaches. Yeah, I'm just training athletes, right. What's the difference? And there is just some, I'm hesitating because I'm like waiting to spill it, spill it all out on you. So, so there's so many things we need to consider that are unique to females. And I say unique, but Laura's already said we're half the population, so we're not unique at all. We're just, you know, we're just different from men. And the good starting point is that when we look at research and this isn't just in sports science, but that's where we live. But it goes wider than that and it's in medicine and it's in health and it's in well being. But the majority of the research is done on men. So a survey of the top three journals in sports science and medicine over a year found that only 4% of the research was done exclusively on females. So you know, I tend to open up this conversation with a lot of what we know and understand about performance, about training, about recovery, about nutrition, laws mentioned, hydration, you name it, is based on something that has been proven to be effective. That's why we're using it in the applied world is proven to be effective in men generally. And we then assume that that will work in women and we transpose it across and sometimes that will be fine, sometimes that will work. But on in the majority of cases there's going to be a flaw in that assumption. You know, and let's just take a few female specific factors to kind of get the conversation going. So women have a menstrual cycle and automatically that makes their physiology so different from a man. So, so if you think about the main sex hormone in a, in a guy's testosterone and you peak of that early in the morning, and then it will slowly decline over the day. And then each 24 hours it kind of just follows that steady rhythm. Whereas in a female, the main two main sex hormones are estrogen and progesterone and they fluctuate, they peak and trough across a 28 day cycle. And while their role is to allow us as women to become pregnant and to kind of maintain our reproductive health, we have receptors for those hormones all over our body, in our muscles, in our gut, in our brain, in our blood vessels. And so when those hormones are high, they, they have an influence on all of those places in our body. And so to think that, you know, in any given time of, of a woman's cycle, she might have a very high estrogen level at a certain phase of her cycle, which might be affecting serotonin. We know that it affects serotonin. That's a good mood hormone. We know that it influences growth hormone. And it can really create a nice environment physiologically for muscle growth and repair. That's, that's her in, you know, one phase of her cycle. But then when estrogen is low in another phase of her cycle, her physiology suddenly becomes very different. So not only are we saying women's physiology is different from men, we're also saying women's physiology changes across her menstrual cycle. We know that 90% of women sportswomen who train or do sport, 90% of them say that the symptoms of their menstrual cycle impact their training. So again, we used to have big teams of people that said, if you can reduce the number of days lost to injury and illness, that's a big step forward in achieving your target. Yet we weren't doing anything to investigate or help alleviate cycle symptoms. We've got 50% of athletes, particularly those in their sort of 20s and 30s, on using hormonal contraception. Yet we don't have really informed discussions about what that does because we're now putting synthetic hormones into our system and we're suppressing our natural hormones. And the question is, does that matter? And that's a good question. We've got, you know, females have a large amount of breast tissue, so we have to wear bras. Breast movement in sport is really as has a significant impact on performance. In endurance performance, it can have a 4% impact on improvement. It can. Getting good breast support can improve your performance by 4%. We know that urinary stress incontinence is much more prevalent. That's leaking urine, by the way, much more prevalent in female athletes than it is in just non sporty females. We know that women are four and a half times more likely to suffer a non contact ACL injury than males. We know that concussion looks different in females. We know that energy availability has a significant impact for hormone health in women. We know that there are specific lifespan sort of factors which women have to consider like being pregnant, being postnatal or going through the menopause. And if they're being sporty and training and wanting to optimize that, they have to consider that. And we also have to consider that not a lot of kits and the built environment in sport has been created with women in mind. And so, you know, the question of why is this important? Suddenly becomes like, wow, there is, as Laura said, there is so much opportunity here on all of, you know, in all of those areas to say we can look through, you know, I call it put the female filter on performance. Let's look through that filter and suddenly see what's important for female athlete health, well being and then therefore has a positive impact on performance that we're not doing with our men because they don't wear bras, you know, they don't have problems with pelvic floors, you know, they don't have the menopause and things like that.

Wow, that gives us a lot to talk about, Laura.

Yeah, I told you she'd be a good one. But I think that was kind of one of my biggest things, why I love just listening to Emma talk about.

This subject because it's kind of, it.

Feels awkward for a guy to potentially have this conversation, but it doesn't need to, it's just kind of because it's not been spoken about before, doesn't mean to say we have to keep it that way. And even by talking about it, it doesn't need to feel awkward or like, oh God, we're going into a bit of unknown territory here. So therefore I don't know if I can have that conversation. But I mean, Charlie, you're sitting there as a husband and as a dad and stuff and as a guy that does train and sort of compete with other women and things like that as well. So regardless of you maybe not being a female athlete and not being necessarily a coach to females, you've still got people that are very influential within your training or your lifestyle that are females and therefore having awareness of some of this stuff, meaning that then you can support them in different ways, certainly is just, it's just, you know, it's a better way to move forwards without having that information. So Those people listening, potentially there might be a load of guys that might have switched off and unfortunately will miss getting to this point to sort of think, oh, this is all about females. It's not, it's not to do with me. Whereas I just think it's a complete opposite. We're just, you know, we've always females and whatever, we've learned so much about the men. It's now, it's not trying to be feminist about it, it's not trying to like put a stake in the ground about women are amazing or any of that cr. More. Excuse my language, Sorry. But it's not about that strive. It's just let's get the information out there. Let's just all learn about every human being to get the best out of a human. If we know how to get the best out of males. Now let's explore how to get the best out of females. And I think that's, that's why it excites me. And I think, you know, Emma's voice is really strong to listen to.

I think you're absolutely right. I think that this is a really important message to get out there. Whether it's because a guy is a dad or husband or a coach of female athletes, you know, it's. But why, you know, it is quite an intimidating subject for a guy to talk about. Why do you think that is and how can we overcome that?

Yeah, I mean, it is. And often I've had to walk into roomfuls of middle age male coaches, some from cultures where, you know, far more extreme in their kind of stigma that surrounds some of this stuff. And so it felt like a bit of a tough gig. But actually, I mean, for me, when we're in sport, we can route it to performance. So if we anchor things in performance always makes sense to people. Because, you know, when I say if your athletes are in the right fitting sports bra, you know, I'll give them 4%, you know, coaches, like 4%. You know, they like the sound of that. If I tell them, you know, that if we do this conditioning program, you know, we're going to reduce the injury risk in your athletes. They like that. Just because it's to do with her female biomechanics or her hormones. So often we. I anchor the conversations in performance. But I mean, I think Laura's touched on something there. It's about the human element, it's about the individual element. And I think always in some sport, but particularly now with some of the crisis in culture that we've had in sport, we have to put the human at the center of performance and not the performing machine. And that performer, that human has, you know, they have a mind, body and soul. And I think with women there is a discomfort because we don't understand a lot of it. You know, if you haven't had a menstrual cycle, if you haven't had periods, if you don't have to wear a bra, it feels a bit peculiar trying to enter that space. But one of the things that I always encourage men, the men that are supporting women, to frame this as. I don't expect you to be an expert. No one's going to come and say, oh, you got the name of that hormone wrong, or even that you need to use the name of a hormone. We're not trying to create experts. We're trying to create people who are confident enough to hold a space for women and for women to be able to share and explore things that are important for their health and performance. So if they need to say, they need to discuss or put on the table. I have some cycle symptoms that really hold me back in terms of being able to deliver the training I'm meant to be doing or getting the right fueling in or, you know, we were with a group of rowers the other day doing some insight work and they, you know, a few of them, and it took one of them to say it before, all the others sort of followed suit and said, oh, me too, you know, said, I get really bloated at a certain time of my cycle and I haven't found a way to kind of alleviate that. And I row. So I'm continuously pulling, you know, the. What do they call it, Laura? A paddle or.

Yeah, depends.

I'm like, what? I'm pulling the or back onto my abdomen. I'm having to bend forward. I'm in the gym putting weights on my abdomen as I'm lying, you know, and it's all taking, you know, like, percentages off my ability to give my full effort. And they don't want a coach who can cure menstrual cycle bloat. You know, that's not what they're after. They're after someone that they can hold a space with to say, oh, this is not working for me. What can we do to make sure I get the most out of this session? And if it's doing a different exercise that works the same muscle groups with a different movement, or, you know, if it's going to see a nutritionist to try and get some strategies, you know, what is it because coaches and athletes are really good at unpicking problems to try and solve them in terms of improving performance and training. And it's about creating a culture where you can hold that space for women and all the things that they want to talk about, you know, and for that to be okay. And in sport, we've started, I think, probably recently to kind of coin the phrase of psychological safety. Creating psychological safety, which basically means, you know, you are free to be vulnerable, to discuss your own experiences and perspectives without the fear of judgment and without the fear of criticism. And it's tricky in sport because sport is based on judgment. You know, there will be a winner and a loser. You will be better or worse than your last performance. So you're making a judgment on that. But if we can just, you know, reserve the judgment for the performance, but take the judgment out of the culture and say, like, bring it. Just let's talk about stuff in a. In a way that's appropriate and sensitive, you know, to this relationship and what the outcomes we want. So I think you're right, Charlie. It is. It's intimidating and it's not easy. And I. I'm very well versed in talking about this stuff, so it's easy for me to say the words or to talk about the topics. And I appreciate that for some women, let alone men, it's really difficult. And it does require some bravery and it does require sort of some discomfort in getting over that initial reservation. But hopefully in the opening gambit where I was talking about all of the opportunities, the opportunity on the other side of that is so huge. And, you know, I think Laura's probably cottoned on to my, like, fangirlness about Brene Brown, and she says, you know, we can choose courage or comfort, but we can't have both, not at the same time. And I think this is a really good example. We've got to be courageous. We've got to be brave and say, I'm going to talk about this because it affects me or my life or my. My athlete or my wife or my daughter. I want to serve them better. I want to support them better. So I'm going to be a bit uncomfortable right now, but it's brave. And then the opportunities beyond that are amazing.

Yeah. I think even on top of that, Emma, is that there's sometimes in that. What I see in a male coaching space is I think it's so true that we all do it. I've most probably even done it myself as a physio, dealing with female athletes. That you, sometimes you do jump into that judgment space, like, or assumption. Maybe judgment's a bit harsh, but assumption space. So if there's a load of information there that we don't know about, how can we make such assumptions? We can't. Like, so where you might see people being vulnerable in time periods through their, in their cycle, like how that can be supported in different ways or that there's other reasons for it than kind of the, the age old. Ah, you know, it's just that time of the month type chat. I mean that's just so old school. Like, come on.

Yeah. Happens.

And even if elite level, like it's, you know, it's.

Yeah. I mean, I'm here to stamp out the word hormonal as, as being reserved exclusively for the. For women in the days before their period. Because we are all hormonal all of the time. Hormones are amazing and in sport we use them to our advantage, you know, in the, in acutely to, you know, when men beat their chest and run out on a football pitch kind of barging up, you know, like really getting ready. They're raising their testosterone, they're raising their cortisol, ready to be aggressive and self confident. And when we're adapting, we're using all these hormones to build a bigger, stronger system. So we're all hormonal. And women, you know, it's not exclusively reserved for women in the days before their period, but it is, it is that, you know, those kind of, that stereotype and that assumption that, you know, that's just what it is. And one of the things I think is really challenging is that people don't want it to be perceived as weakness. So if you have a menstrual cycle and it's causing you problems, you know, lots of athletes will say, the last thing I want to do is put my hand up to my coach and say, you know, I've, I'm, I'm not able to train fully on these days because of my cycle. They're like, we don't want to show any weakness. We don't want to show ourselves to be any, you know, we don't want to be on the spotlight. We just want to do the training, get, you know, get our space on the team or. And I get that. But equally it, if you flip it and you said, you know, I injured my shoulder when I was 15 and now it just flares up every now and then and you know, Laura's my physio and if it does, I'll tell her, I'll Say, ah, it's flaring up. And then Laura will go, oh, you know, what worked last time? Or what works really well when we're doing this type of training and your shoulders niggling you as we do this. And your coach will say, okay, well, we might take that drill out today, but we'll put this one in until your shoulder kind of eases out off. That would feel like a completely normal conversation. No one would be like, I'm so weak for having a, a shoulder injury. We're just, we're just, we're working with it, we're giving strategies. And so if you flip that and say it's menstrual cycle or it's breast pain or pelvic floor dysfunction, that's the same, right? We're all just be working to find opportunities to make it better or optimize it or, you know, take away the challenge completely. But just because it's in one of these topics that we haven't naturally shared previously, it suddenly becomes. Feels like, oh, it might be deemed as weakness or so, you know, again, I'm just really, really passionate about saying it again. It will be, you will have to be brave, but it's not a weakness. And we, we have to take ownership of that, whether you're the female or you're the guy who's trying to support it, like, and just, you know, imagine I, I have a, one of my, the women that I work with, she specializes in the pelvic floor. And we know that female athletes have a 40% prevalence with urinary stress incontinence. That means they leak urine. Now, these are women who haven't had children. So urinary stress incontinence is usually reserved for the mums, the postnatal women, because we know that pregnancy and childbirth puts enormous strain on the pelvic floor and therefore you have pelvic floor dysfunction in the postnatal period. But we have all of these young women who are meant to be fit and healthy, yet they are showing signs of dysfunction because they can't keep their urine in. And, but it's considered a normal part of sport leaking. Oh, yeah, they, when we saw this data, the 40%, and that was taken off Commonwealth athletes, they were elite level athletes. We had lots of sports doctors saying, no, no athlete has ever come to me and said, I have a problem with urinary stress incontinence. And then we went and spoke to the athletes and the coaches and they said, oh yeah, everyone wets themselves all the time. Okay. So we all think this is normal around here. And. And the fact is that it's not. And it's a sign of dysfunction. And if you address it early, your range of, you know, treatment options are huge and really conservative. You know, it's physio, it's conditioning. Nothing out of the ordinary in any training program, just focused on pelvic floor and core. But the longer you leave it, and over the course of your life, the longer you leave it, your treatment options become narrow and more sort of significant. And yet we've normalized it. But Baz, my colleagues will always say if that was, you know, blood coming out of someone's ear rather than urine leaking into a pair of black shorts where you can't really see it, but everyone knows it's happening. You know, it would be a different. Every time you lifted away, a bit of blood came out of your ear, everyone would be like, we need to sort this out. And then once we do, we'll, you know, we'll carry on. But again, it's just like shifting that culture of being able to speak about these things openly and comfortably and confidently. And part of that is education. And Laura's always said, you know, if. If you feel well equipped to have those conversations, then you're in a much better position. You know, the. The data suggests that the reason there's a silence in this space is that women, the men, don't feel confident enough in their knowledge, and the women don't feel confident enough enough that the men know what they're talking about. And there's this huge lack of confidence which creates this huge silence. And that just perpetuates all of the discomfort around these subjects.

So sticking with. Sticking with that example, then what. Are there any specific things that a female athlete can do to avoid that becoming a problem or deal with that if it is a problem?

Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that we always say is every woman is different. And so every woman's reason for having a menstrual cycle symptom or urinary stress incontinence might be different from the next because we are beautifully human and complex and not a simple blueprint of a machine. But in athletes, what tends to happen is the pelvic floor, rather than compared to postnatal women, where it becomes loose and is unable to kind of, you know, fulfill its function, which is to hold in all the organs above it and to keep urine in until you relax it and allow out to. For bowel control it. That. That's too loose in some people. But in athletes, it's often too tight. And athletes get very good at holding themselves together. You know, muscle tight, tense, do your core work, have your strength, and they forget to relax and breathe and let it, you know, and when we train with athletes and first will say, you know, and relax your tummy, just let your tummy really sag out. And they're like, no one's ever told me I can relax my core. They're always telling me to work my core. And so I'm switching it on and then I sometimes forget to switch it off. And that's where the dysfunction starts to happen. And you know, if you've got a muscle that's turned on all the time, it doesn't work very well because it's too tired. And so there are lots of dysfunctions around that. But interestingly, it's not just urinary stress incontinence, which can be a sign of pelvic floor dysfunction in athletes. It can be things like repeated urinary tract infections or gastrointestinal issues such as constipation or problems with the bowel, because the pelvic floor is integral in allowing us to have good bladder and bowel function. And for athletes particularly who want to get good nutrients and good nutrition in, which also means, you know, having a good digestive system that can have significant impact. So suddenly, you know, you've got this thing where people say, oh, it doesn't matter if we have a little wee now and then, does it? You go, okay, well, but it could be affecting your health, it could be affecting your ability to absorb, you know, this brilliant diet you're using, utilizing, or the amount of athletes who fill up their headspace with, where's the toilet? Like, if I'm going to go on this three hour ride, like, where am I going to go to the loo? I'm worrying about it, you know, all of that stuff. So it's not just a little way. It's a huge health and performance factor. And like I said, it can be treated really easily, but we need to know about it and we need to talk about it so that we can. Then if an athlete says, actually, I can't do weights, or I can't do agility, or I can't play a match without having leakage, then we signpost and we signpost to people who are really expert in this, for example, women's health physios, and they can, you know, assess and then give some conditioning, rehabilitation, whatever, that then an athlete can go back into their own training environment and Perform. So it's not complicated, but if they leave it, it can become much more significant.

I think there's something about that, though, across the board. Let's go. You know, even going wider than that, I don't know if it's a British thing, a prudent. But there's something about when something feels a little bit uncomfortable, we find it difficult to share. So even. I mean, you could go wider than that. I know I'm going a bit off tangent here, but the mental health side of things, when people are struggling, we talk that. Starting to get out there now about being open and checking in on people and creating again, that psychological safety to feel like we can say it's okay to not be okay and it's much better to share that stuff. But there's something historically, culturally, whatever it is, that underpins the fact that male, female, mental health, women's health, whatever the subject is, if it feels a bit uncomfortable, we tend to keep it in rather than be able to find people that we can trust, we can be open with. And I guess if actually one of the takeaways from this podcast is, you know, just sometimes ask yourself, how do you create a culture amongst your friends, your family, your peers, your whatever environment to enable people to just feel comfortable to share, whether that's a high or a low or, you know, whatever sort of issue it might be, then that moves everything further forwards, one step closer to exactly what you're saying there. Emma. Being able to deal with it, rather than it being something that suddenly becomes a big issue when it could have been dealt with quite early on.

Yeah, I think one of the most powerful things we can do for, like, you say, our friends, our daughters, our co workers, our athletes, is to say, let me understand what's going on with you, rather than making massive assumptions from your point of view, from your standpoint, and thinking, gosh, she's really emotional or very standoffish or, you know, and just creating this space, this void where each of you are having, you know, telling yourself your own stories. Oh, I won't share it with them because I think it'll embarrass them, and I don't think they'll be confident to talk about it. And the other person's sitting going, oh, she's acting really weirdly. And rather, there's everyone leaning in and saying, you know, let. Let me understand what's going on with you. And that, you know, that could be the most powerful conversation you have if you created, like you say, the culture where people feel like they can just let down that garden and go, yeah, actually, this is a bit. I was about to swear, rubbish. And because it's not. It's not saying that you are rubbish, you know, it's. And I think that's one of the things that. Particularly with my work around the menstrual cycle, it's about allowing people to be compassionate to themselves and also allowing people to tune in and recognize that some things that happen to you don't define you. So rather than be cryptic, like using the menstrual cycle, and if people become emotionally fragile, you know, on a couple of days before their period or, you know, for example, we know that coordination can be affected. So you might be slightly more clumsy at a certain time of your cycle. Now, if an athlete or a woman, you know, I use myself as an example because it used to happen to me with trying to put keys in locks for a couple of days. And I didn't realize it was to do with my cycle. But for a couple of days when I got clumsy, I couldn't open the front door with my key, couldn't put it. And on those days, I just think, you know what, I'm just rubbish at life. I can't do life. And I was a bit hard on myself because we're highly functioning people and we just need to get on with life. And then you start to think, this is me all the time, and you've got an athlete who's, you know, a couple of days, they're, they're off. You know, they're. If they're a games player, they're off the ball, they're off the game, they're not finding space and they think, you know what? I'm just not that good. And it becomes this narrative which becomes spirals into quite. Can spiral into quite catastrophic thoughts, as in, like, I probably just not shouldn't even be on this team. I probably should give up this sport. And actually, if you tune in, in this case to your menstrual cycle and start to recognize a pattern and you go, oh, okay, well, that's not me. That's just me on these days. And if I want to, I could try and do something about it, or if I don't, I could just be really kind to myself on those days and just go, hey, oh, well. And it's just a completely different narrative and it's a bit kinder.

So that kind of prompts the question, how can people. People adapt their training to this? So I suppose what research has been done around people, female training at different times of the menstrual cycle and what specific actions can athletes take to improve their performance based on that research?

Yeah, so, I mean, not much because there's not much research and actually to, I don't like filling us with like despair, but there was a recent meta analysis done on research that looked at the menstrual cycle and it found that a large proportion of it, about 60, was low quality. Which means that we can't be confident of the, the results that they truly apply that what the research found. And that's because measuring the menstrual cycle, you know, you have to time it right, obviously you have to get testing at different times of a woman's cycle. And every woman's cycle is different. And that's kind of another really important point to remember is whilst the menstrual cycle follows a predictable pattern of hormonal fluctuation in every woman that will look slightly different. You know, some women might have a 35 day cycle, some women might have a 25 day cycle. And therefore saying you're at this point of your cycle isn't as easy as saying, well, I'll just count seven days in because that's, you know, one week into someone's three week cycle or one week into someone's four week cycle. And then we've done research looking at the levels of hormones, they vary considerably. Our lifestyle, our nutrition, our ability to manage stress, our sleep, all influence how sort of sensitive we are to hormones and how well we produce and metabolize them. And so suddenly you get a picture that, well, yeah, everyone's, every woman's life is different. Every woman's menstrual cycle experience will be different. And so the best thing to do as an athlete or someone who's wanting to tune in and really optimize your experience of cycle is just to tune into you for a start and not suddenly start saying, oh, what are you doing over there? For this bit and that bit, tune into your experience of it and start to notice what that is. And we often focus on the bad bits, the days where we're in pain or we have symptoms that challenge us. There are also really good aspects of the cycle. Those hormones not only challenge us, but they also help us. So I've already said, you know, estrogen is really good at influencing mood, motivation, energy levels. The way we utilize, you know, way we metabolize fuel is slightly different across the cycle. Say, for example, in the first half, high intensity exercise might just feel better, you know, because our body is better able to fuel it. And if we can tune into that as women who are training or competing, then you can start to notice. Yeah, actually this is what I need to do at this time of the cycle. And it's not about saying, oh, well, on those days I can't do this training and I'm going to be very fixed, but it's about saying, if I do feel really lethargic or very heavy legged or fatigued at a certain time, my cycle, is there something I can do ahead of my training session that energizes me? Is it some kind of restorative yoga, energizing yoga flow, or is it, you know, some kind of skill and coordination exercise? You know, what is it for me? Is it caffeine, is it music, is it. Whatever it is, what do I need to make sure that on these days when my symptoms are challenging me, I get myself into a place where I can deliver my best in training, I can get the most out of that training ride or whatever. So the first thing really, if you're training around your cycle, is to tune into your cycle and get what you need out of it. And if there are days where you actually feel flipping amazing, you know, go and do the hard sessions on that day or go and push yourself, or, you know, do two sessions, whatever, but make the most of how your physiology is supporting your performance. But then in terms of what we do know about how to train across the cycle, there's not much, but there's some really interesting emerging evidence that plays with the fact that in the first half of the cycle, let's say it's the first two weeks, but as we know, everyone is different, but the first couple of weeks when estrogen is, is elevated, and as I said, estrogen has some really nice influences on other hormones in the body, on satellite cell proliferation, which means that the cells that are going to go and help muscles repair themselves on recovery, and the markers that we use to see how quickly people recover, they are better in the first half of the cycle. And so we often say that the first half of the cycle is quite an anabolic physiological environment. It sort of helps muscles repair and grow. And so researchers sort of played with that and said, well, what if we just train more in that, in that part of the cycle? What if we do more resistance training in that half of the cycle? Does that, you know, that physiology really help us get better adaptation? And so far the research has suggested that if you condense more strength training efforts in the first half of the cycle, which means you actually have to do less, you don't do that all the way through, otherwise you're just going to overtrain. You do less in the second half of the cycle, you actually get better strength gains than if you did those resistance training sessions spaced equally across the cycle. Now, that's emerging research. We have a handful of papers that are suggesting that, but I think that's really exciting and it kind of makes sense physiologically and for some people who have fixed training or who don't want the rigor of trying to figure out what day of my cycle am I on and what training should I do, then that might not work. But if you are someone who wants to play around, if you're someone who wants to say, could I gain a bit of extra strength by doing it this way, then I think that's, again, a really exciting way to tune in to the physiology of being a woman.

And what about, sorry, Laura, I think you. I've got to ask one more question to take this to the next level. So let's say, can you use this to your advantage, either through saying, I'm going to do this event rather than that event because it will fall at this part of my cycle, or is it possible to vary your cycle so that you can roughly time it so that you're, you know, at the start of, you know, the first half of the cycle when you hit your big event for the year?

So, good questions, Charlie, you're getting into this now, channeling your inner woman. So really good question. So the first thing to point out, which I should have started with, because it's really important, is our performance capacities. Those things that we measure as sports scientists, like VO2 max strength, speed, lactate threshold, all of those markers of our fitness and our capabilities are not altered across the cycle. So, you know, you have the capability to run that 10k. You know, physiologically, your VO2 batch is going to be the same. Your lactate threshold is the same on any given day of your cycle. The reason why sometimes performance feels different is because, you know, on any given day, we might be feeling different. We might have gastrointestinal symptoms, we might have a migraine, we might have fatigue caused by the fluctuating hormones. So that even though we've got a brilliant VO2 max, and I'll let that hasn't changed, there is no way I'm dragging my ass out there and doing a really good park run or whatever it is. So I always think that it's really empowering to think that your ability to perform isn't compromised but as an athlete or as a woman who's trying to be active, what you have to do to get to tap into that potential might be different on different days. So working that out for you as a woman, I always used to say to athletes, is there any day of your cycle you don't want your Olympic final to fall on? And they'll be like, oh, yeah, this one, this one, or this one? I'm like, well, okay, we're changing that because it can't, you know, we can't be working to a, you know, such a degree of precision on one hand, but such a degree of luck on the other hand. And the reason I say luck is that if we travel, if we're stressed, like before a major game, something our cycle can change. So however much we want to try and predict it, like you say and say, wouldn't it be brilliant if this event fell in this time of my cycle? We can't always guarantee it because our bodies are amazing. And they will start to sort of become, you know, adapt to whether we're traveling or not getting enough recovery or training hard or tapering even Sometimes when athletes taper, suddenly their period comes because their. Their body's always like, oh, I've got rest, I've got nourishment. I'm not doing as much, and I feel really healthy. And that sort of brings on a more healthy cycle. So we can't often predict it. So the important thing is to be empowered by the fact that our performance capacity is. Isn't changed, but we need to figure out on any given day what we do to tap into that. And so scheduling a competition versus another competition, because it's at a certain time of the cycle, it's not a crazy idea. I don't think it's a crazy idea. And if that suits you and it really gives you confidence, why not? I had a cyclist who I worked with, and she hadn't scheduled a competition, but it happened to fall around the middle of her cycle, which is when she personally felt brilliant, and the physiology would probably support that. And she. She emailed me so happily because she said, oh, I got a pb. I won, and, you know, I was ovulating. Isn't that an amazing, you know, that was just amazing combo of timing because that part of her cycle was when she felt brilliant. So it was really lovely that she recognized that she probably was able to tap into that that day, and it gave her that. But it's only, you know, it's only the same as if you were doing if you were doing a marathon and you did it on a treadmill in a. In a cold, silent room, how you'd feel compared to doing the London Marathon with everyone cheering you on. You know, it's like your physiology, is this your VO2 max? And everything is the same on those two different days, but how you feel is different. So we need to make it so that we can, you know, tap into our cycle and make ourselves feel able to realize our potential at any given day. And do your last point about shifting your cycle, that is something that athletes do. They might. They might say, you know what, I have got a major competition, and I do get severe symptoms, and so I'm going to try and shift my cycle using hormonal contraception or synthetic hormones. And again, it's quite standard practice. It's something that works for some people and doesn't work for others. And I think where it's gone really wrong is when people have gone, oh, geez, I've got my world championships in four weeks, and I think that's going to fall. Let me shift it. And just like you would never try, you know, running in a new trainer on. On race day, you don't try and manipulate your very finely balanced physiology a few weeks out from it and expect that it will always work, because sometimes our bodies just go, I don't like these synthetic hormones. I'm gonna. I'm gonna have symptoms that are just as pesky as the ones you're trying to get rid of. So there's a risk to doing that. And my. My strategy would always be, how can we just make you confident that on any given day, you've got the toolkit to be able to access that. And if you can't, if you say, you know, and we had an athlete in Rio, he was double dava on the doctor's bench with period pain before she went out to do her event. And she came out afterwards and said, felt a bit embarrassed that I was there, because this has been happening to me month on month for years of my life. I have period pain that floors me, like, literally curls me up on the floor. Yeah. I got to the Olympics and it, you know, it ruins my game. How did I get there? And symptoms shouldn't be that severe. If they are that severe, we need to see again. We need to signpost people to seek help, because there are things that will work. And if the first thing doesn't work and the second thing doesn't work, don't stop trying, because it's not. It's not normal. So it's not normal to have very, very significant symptoms without getting to the underlying cause of that. Sorry, I probably went off on a few tangents there, but those are all important messages.

No, they're really good tangents. And I would imagine that, you know, the more of these podcasts I've done, the more I realize that kind of endurance sport is probably more about. Probably more than 50% of it is about psychology and the rest of it is physiology. So even if your physiology is saying that it's exactly the same, your performance ability is exactly the same as it was two weeks ago ago, if your psychology isn't there, then that is going to make a big difference to your performance, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and like you say that that's ultimately what it comes down to on the day. You know, you, there's, there's a couple of things. Your, how you feel on the day and, and how you feel physically also affects you psychologically. So all, you know, all manifests as your perception of your ability to give it your all and how you feel. And also you're confident in the preparation that you've had that can also play into your ability to perform on the day. And if, you know, if your training and preparation has been hampered by some of these stuff things that we've been talking about, then again, that doesn't play into peak performance because you just think, oh, you know, I missed that block of training or I got injured or I missed three sessions because of most cycle symptoms. And, and so, yeah, so for me, it's like all of these pieces of the puzzle and lots of them, you know, if I were to be cliche, are pink, as in they, you know, they're related to being female. They make up a big picture of performance. And that has lots of things that are universal to everyone. But there are some things which are definitely, you know, in a shade of pink because they have female specific things related to them that we need to consider.

Just kind of picking up on that point and what you're discussing there, I think whether you're male or female, like there is a big thing that we talk about of just trying to build body literacy, just trying to build feel understanding of ourselves as a human. And I think, Charlie, we may have touched on this in our podcast together, but just especially in the world of triathlon and running and whatever, we're surrounded by some great technology and that AI space is only getting bigger and bigger and giving us more and more data to feed off. But it's Making us. It can sort of, to a certain extent, it can enhance us, but it can also make us very external to sort of be like looking at a watch to see how well we slept last night, it's like, well, no, before you look at the watch, wake up and how did you feel like? Do you feel like you slept well? Did you feel like, you know, actually, yeah, that was good. Or, you know, did you wake up? But you look at your watch, it's like, oh, I woke up three or four times last night. It's like, but you don't remember it. It's like, well, you most probably didn't, but because the watch is telling you, then suddenly believe that you had a really crap night's sleep. So we're starting to get surrounded by all this technology and I think it's starting to get us out of ourselves. And it's, you know, what you're talking about there. And I think it goes across the board of how do we, you know, internalize. How do we feel the signs, the symptoms? And it's, you know, when we're, when we're running or cycling or whatever, if, if our mood starts to drop, it's often it's related to fueling or something, or hydration rather than it being a mental training. It's kind of actually, it's our body's way of telling us so that. That mind, body relationship is so, so in tune, but our mind will react to something very subtle that changes in our physiology. And it's just how much we can keep trial and error of all these different things you're talking about, which is across the board. But then as a. As a female, we've then got some more specifics that we can really start to tune into so that we do become adaptive athletes. You know, we can be a bit more robust because actually we've got more tools in our toolbox that means we can cope with whatever's thrown at us on any given day.

Yeah, and we always talk about body literacy. I think it's. I think it's the key and I think it's almost like the antidote to the technology, isn't it, Laura? Because there is so much to be had from technology telling you a. What you did and be what you should now do, you know, like, oh, you're ready to train, you know, your, your nervous system is recovered or. And actually, like you say, just giving yourself permission to sit and take a few seconds to say, how do I actually feel? Is so much more power, is actually more powerful. And we know, because the research shows us that, that you can, you can ask people lots of different metrics, how hydrated are you, how, how sore your muscles, how well did you sleep, how many hours did you sleep? You know, how stressed do you feel? And the one thing that determines best performance in the next training session is the question, like, how do you feel in some way or form? Like, how tired are you? Or how well recovered are you? How ready to train do you feel? Because our perception, we are amazing, aren't we? We are, we are this computer which is taking all of these inputs from everywhere and go and giving ourselves this, like, you know, a perception of how we feel. And like you said, with women tuning into that and your body and what's normal for you and what's not normal for you. So you can recognize when your body is saying something's not right. Equally, you can recognize when your body's saying, this is amazing, let's go for it. Because there's lots of, because we don't talk about it enough. Because there's silence, there's lots of normalization of things that aren't normal. And I think women intuitively know, oh, this is, this is not. My body's kind of trying to tell me something. You know, when athletes lose their periods, it will often be the athlete who says, is that normal? You know, and it's often people around her, whether that's other, you know, well meaning peers, said, oh yeah, it's okay because you're just training a lot, or whether it's coaches or GPs or, you know, I've heard everybody trying to give advice, oh, it's fine. This is what happens when you train a lot in sport and the female is actually going, I know, you know, I know that my body is meant to be doing something and it's not. And I'm trying to listen to it. And I've got all of these voices outside saying, it's fine, carry on. And actually, your period is a vital sign of health. And when we're talking, and we're talking to listeners who are in endurance sport here, where amenorrhea, so losing your menstrual cycle is actually quite common. About 30% of athletes in general, but mostly skewed towards endurance sports, might experience amenorrhea. And that's not normal. We have to listen to what our body is telling us. Our body is saying, I'm not coping with something. In athletes, it's usually the training, it's not being fueled effectively. And so I'm shutting down my reproductive system. Because at the moment, there is no way we are going to have a baby. Now, whether you're intending to have a baby or not, the fact that your body has said you're not coping well enough to do that is a sign that you need to do something before you break. Because before you get ill, before you have some stress fractures, because the estrogen of your cycle is super good for your bone health. And now you shut down your reproductive system, you shut down your estrogen, you've now started to impact on your bone health. If you're a runner, even just the impact of running can start to give you stress fractures. So it is tuning in with your body and knowing what's normal and what's not. And sometimes that requires some help, it requires some education about what's normal and what's not. But then it requires you to listen to your body and be confident in what it's telling you. And in that case, in the amen area, losing your periods, it's to say no. In no way, shape or form is losing your periods a sign that you are training enough or just part of sport. It's a sign that you've just fallen off, you know, the cliff edge that we all walk when we're training. We're training really hard, which is trying to train hard enough to get, get brilliant adaptation but not get injury, illness. And you've, you've fallen off. That's, that's what that's telling you. And you can get right back up again if you feel better. It might not just be, you know, how many calories you're having. It might be the timing of that fueling. We know that carbohydrates are really important in, in the signaling between our reproductive system and our brain. And so it's not just a case of, oh, I think I eat enough. If your periods are stopped, something's wrong. Let's look at it because it might just be some small tweaks where then, you know, you'll get back on track and your body will again be telling you, oh, I'm happy, I'm coping now. So, yeah, body literacy and knowing you're normal is really, really important.

Just on that point as well, Emma, it's worth maybe highlighting you touched on it a little bit before, but, you know, contraception is a bit, you know, taking the pill, the monthly pill, and I've heard you talk about before, quite a key point in that, you know, just because you're, you might say that you're having a regular period, but you're Doing three weeks on a pill and one week off, like just.

Are you able to describe a little.

Bit about the insight there of whether that's a normal thing or not? And actually, you know, yeah, that's, that's artificial hormones. So what does that actually mean for us basically?

Yeah, and I think it's really important because we don't have enough conversations about hormonal contraception. But as I said, we know that about 50% of athletes, athletes use can be as high as 60% in, in the younger 20 year olds. It then drops off to sort of more like about 15% in over 40s. But let's take the pill as an example. When you take the pill, you're taking synthetic hormones. It's either as a contraceptive which is really effective, so don't stop taking it. It's an effective contraceptive. You might be taking it to manage really significant hormonal symptoms like acne or something to do with hormone levels. And actually taking the pill helps that. And again, it's really effective and it can be really life changing. Or you might be using as an athlete for what we call menstrual cycle management, which is where athletes or any woman takes it just to make her cycle more predictable. Easier, easier to kind of predict when it's going to happen because you're taking, you know, a certain amount of pills and then you know you'll have a bleed and then you'll take pills again. And so it's very easy to know what, anticipate what's going to happen. And for whatever reason you're taking it, it's really important to be fully informed about what it's doing. So it's suppressing your menstrual cycle so you don't get the peaks of estrogen and progesterone that you would if you were having a natural menstrual cycle. And it also means that you don't have a period because the period is where your body has built up your, the lining of your uterus ready to be pregnant. Like I said, this whole cycle is every month. Want an opportunity to be pregnant. The hormones have helped your uterine lining build up into a lovely healthy place to implant a fertilized egg. And if you, if a fertilised egg doesn't become implanted, the uterine lining is shed and that comes out as the period and then we start again. Now when you take the pill, that doesn't happen because your natural hormones are suppressed and so your uterine lining is kept fairly thin. Don't Want a fertilized egg to implant. That's the whole point of using contraception. So the bleed you have when, for example, you're on the pill and you have your pill free days or your placebo pill days, is just a withdrawal bleed. It's your body's response to withdrawing from these synthetic hormones that it's been getting delivered every day by the pill. And so you have a withdrawal bleed. The reason it's not usually as heavy is because you haven't built up a thick endometrial lining throughout this process and then you start next cycle. Now, the reason that's important to understand, you know, people might say a bleed's a bleed. I'm still using the same period products. But the important thing is because the period is a vital sign of health. It's a sign that your training and your nutrition, your recovery and your stress and your life is in enough balance that you're staying healthy. A withdrawal bleed isn't an indication of that. So we have athletes who are on the pill who are having a bleed and saying, oh, it's okay, my energy balance is okay. Actually, because that's an artificial period, is a withdrawal bleed. It's not an indication of your health. It is an indication that the synthetic delivery of hormones is working as it should do. So those are important distinctions because they can be really significant in terms of an athlete knowing or not knowing when she's coping or not coping with her training equally, you know, suppressing the hormones of the menstrual cycle. When I said they have receptors everywhere for those hormones. Therefore the effects of hormonal contraception gets everywhere. It's not just a case of shutting down your ability to reproduce, which is help helpful because you don't want to have a baby. There's also research to show that, you know, mental health, the prevalence of depression is greatly increased for those taking the pill. Some people on the pill display chronic stress markers. So their blood profile looks like someone who's under chronic stress. They have elevated cortisol, for example. We know the research suggests that, that our ability to respond to stress is different when we're on the pill. So instead of having real peaks of hormones that happen when we, when something stressful happens, that is good because it allows our body to do its thing and cope with it. We don't get that when we're on the pill. So there's some, lots of things that are happening to our physiology that, you know, we don't know about as pill taking women because we were never told by the doctor, maybe that's a bigger conversation in the five minutes you're prescribed it. But the reason I mention it isn't at all to scare people off. Taking the pill, if it's what you want and if it works for you, absolutely, that's really fantastic. But it's to say that we need to be well informed about it if we're about to start taking it. For example, why not track how it makes you feel so you can make sure you've got the right one? Because for the pills, for example, to work for you, you shouldn't be getting any significant symptoms and you shouldn't be embarrassed or, you know, worried about going back to your doctor and saying, this one doesn't feel right. Because a pill that can work for someone else can leave another person with severe mental health challenges, for example. So finding the right one, being, you know, persistent in getting what you need and knowing that there are other options. So the pill is often given as the, you know, someone says, I'm thinking about using hormonal contraception. Oh, here's the pill. It's cheap, it's easy, go for it. But, you know, you might be someone who's not very organized, so you don't know. Remember to take the pill at the same time every day. That, which is what makes it effective. You might travel lots of times at different time zones. Again, you're missing your window of it being an effective strategy. You might want something that you don't have to remember to take. So there is things like the implant as an option. There's something like the Mirena coil, which is inserted vaginally and it delivers a local, like progesterone locally at the level of the uterus. So it's basically ensuring that you don't get pregnant, but it isn't sending those synthetic hormones all around your body. And what actually happens is you have a natural menstrual cycle in the background for the majority of women. And so if you're, Again, so when you're starting to think about this, if you were a woman making a decision about what you were going to use, it is a decision, it's a choice. And you're starting to weigh up the pros and cons for you and what you do in the context of your life, your relationship, your sport. You know, I, I worked with a, a weightlifter who went on the pill and, and she stopped adapting to training as well as she had done. And when we look at the research and we know that some pills are anti androgenic, it means it competes with your, your body's natural testosterone. Although we don't have much, we do have some and it can impact on strength gains. Not all pills are anti androgenic, so for her, if she wanted the pill, choosing one that fitted and suited her lifestyle was important. So again, like a can of worms we've just opened. But it's to say that let's start having better informed discussions because these things are all really important in a woman's health and well being.

There is clearly, I mean we could do about 10 podcasts on this subject, I think, which is why you've put together your course, which I am going to cover, come back to because I mean there is just so much to think about here, isn't there? Moving away from kind of the menstrual cycle and hormones. What I was thinking about, I know we talked before the podcast about equipment. You mentioned sports bras and I think you said that a lot of the research and a lot of the equipment is kind of more male orientated than female orientated. Perhaps not the sports bras, but other elements of equipment. Do you want to talk to me a bit about that and what you've experienced and like things like the importance of a female bike saddle and that sort of stuff?

Yeah, and again, when we think about sport, a lot of the things have been designed by men for men just because the nature of the sport was that men were there first and they might have been the majority consumer market, whatever. However that, that, you know this, these people are going to make their money and women kind of got forgotten. And so the bike saddle is a brilliant example because, you know, women have been riding bikes for a long time, but we haven't necessarily provided for them in terms of designing saddles which are designed for them. And you know, there is no greater or more obvious difference between a man and a woman than with what's going on the saddle. And, and so it just, just feels like it should have been on someone's radar. But it wasn't and I think it is now, which is great. There are different saddles being designed for women and for men. And again, it doesn't have to be a biological, sex or gender thing. It could just be that you are someone with the physical dimensions that better suits one type or the other. So the saddles, for example, a lot of this came into the press because a Paralympic cyclist, Hannah Dines, was, went into full time training, so she was a competitive cyclist, but then became funded to go on a full time program. So her volume of training up, the amount of time she was spending on the saddle increased significantly and she started to get a lot of pain, which was kind of written off a saddle sore. And you know what, when you spend more time in the saddle, anyone who's been on a bike knows that those, those first few days or weeks or months, you can be a little bit sore. But again, it was a normalization of something that was actually pretty significant. And Hannah actually had to go on to have surgery on her vulva because she'd built up so much scar tissue in that area that. And this is not meant to be a weight bearing area of a woman. The vulva is not weight bearing. And she was in the down position on her bike. The saddle meant that it put a lot of pressure there. She built up scar tissue over time and ended up having to have surgery to remove that.

That.

Now that's really significant. And actually A, could have been prevented if she'd had equipment that was designed for her. But B, also if she had been in a culture where people said it is not normal to be in pain. And I think because we associate sport with pain and suffering, that's kind of why some of us love it, isn't it, that we kind of think it has to extend, you know, beyond the limits of our training and our performing. But it doesn't have to. And there are, you know, we shouldn't all be in pain all of the time if we are sports women or sports men. And if we are, there's something probably wrong. And for her there was. So that created a bit of, I think a bit of a revolution in the fact that big sport, big bike brands started designing good saddles and some better than others. And there's. If you go online, you'll find lots of people who have started to review those saddles. And again, it's still very individual. But the women's saddles tend to have a wide. They have, we have wider seat bones because our pelvis is wider. We have to fit babies through it. So we have wider seat bones. And obviously our reproductive anatomy is different from a man's. And so they accommodate. These saddles, accommodate for that. And that's really important for people to recognize because, you know, with, with the advent of even in cycling, let alone outdoor cycling, and people spending lots of time on bike bikes, really important they realize that they, yes, you can have a bit of saddle soreness for a few days when you start riding a bike if you're unaccustomed, but no way should you be in significant pain for long periods of time. And I think the bike saddle is just one example where of many where we haven't designed for women. I mean, even if you take the humble weight bench, you know, like a gym bench, where you. They are created with the. With the man's dimension in mind. And therefore, when you've got women lying on the gym bench, they often have to put their feet on either books, yoga blocks, or something to raise them so they can get in the right position on that gym bench. And you're like, oh, we're sort of like, we're trying to check. We're having to manipulate this to just fit in to this. This sort of man's world. So actually, I think we need to be more mindful of is the equipment we're using, whether we're using our bikes, and I think probably endurance sports. You've got trainers which are designed for women, and you've got wetsuits that are designed for women. So that's probably a really, you know, big tick. But there will be some things which you might suddenly realize that, oh, no, I'm just fitting into something that was designed for a man. You know, if you take things like, if you go outside of sport and look at the police force, even their flap jackets and their protective equipment isn't designed with breasts in mind. So now, only now are we starting to do research projects on trying to look at the needs of. So if they're not doing it right over there, it's okay that we're not doing it right in here, but we do need to have people sort of being curious and raising the question, is my kit right? Even down to things like putting girls and women in white kit, it might seem really simple. And I've seen a few Twitter threads recently where someone said, I hate my white kit. I'm a woman, I hate my white kit. Because who wants to be in white when you're having a period? And lots of people went, oh, get over here. Like, no, honestly, if you're working with a team of women at any given time, one or many of them will be bleeding. Why are you putting them in white shorts or white Lycra pants or white Lycra? You know why? It just seems really, just a really poorly considered design when you could put them in black, brown, blue, whatever, and take away that massive anxiety. Because ultimately, when I've worked with psychologists trying to understand, you know, psychology and mindset in females, one of the things I always joke with them about is, oh, you spend loads of your time Working with athletes to get them into a space where they can perform, you know, like their pre performance routines, their headspace, everything. And I said and you know, the amount of women I talk to who the first thing they're. Sorry, the last thing they're thinking about before they're performing is, you know, have I emptied my bladder because I've got stress incontinence, you know, have I changed my period product because I'm on my period? I said that is not what you want to consume a mind of an athlete. You want them to making good decisions, feeling prepared, feeling confident. So and kit and equipment and the environment of sport really plays into that. Even just having sanitary bins in the toilet, you know, at venues. Because I know we are notorious when in endurance sport, particularly for the portaloo and. Or the wild we or whatever. But we have to understand that for women, particularly for women who are on their period at that time, that's not gonna, you know, fly because they need more provisions. And just to say, oh well, it's just really unconsiderate and it's really not creating a culture where these women can thrive and fulfill their performance potential.

Brilliant. Yeah. I mean there's, it's clearly a whole other world to explore there as well, isn't there? And as you say, if the research is done around the guys and the products are therefore made around the guys, there is so much scope for improved performance when things, you know, equipment becomes more tailored to the, to the female athlete. Have you had any experience of this law in your work?

Yeah, a number of bits. I mean it goes across, I think it goes across so many, so many systems in a sense of. We're talking very much here about sport and performance because obviously this is also the audience of the, of the podcast. But I mean anybody that's listened to this is most probably also in a full time career in a workplace. And interestingly enough it's that you know, when we talk about performance, performance is. It can be decision making, it can be cognitive performance. And like as Emma's already alluded to there, like how sort of. Yeah how it can affect our psychology, our mood, our decision making has a massive knock on. So therefore it isn't just isolated to monthly undulations in sport, but also in our workplace, in our kind of how do we optimally perform from a point of view of decision making and kind of that environment, in the work environment is also crucial and in sort of some of the external stuff that I do, whether it's corporate talks and stuff, you know, it's really interesting to kind of see you've got a whole audience that are mixed of male and female and yet kind of often things are so directed and towards the male audience. And that's where I kind of go, well, you know, there's a whole host you could understand more about your female employees to get the most out of them to make sure that they're supported. And we know that, that with the FTSE 100, with sort of the, you know, Helena Morrissey key people in the corporate space are really driving forward actually. How can you create a more optimal environment for a female corporate space with which I think is again championing sort of some of the work there that Emma's talking about. But it's kind of trying to do it more from a social and a kind of, you know, a workspace environment. But that being said, you know, it's military is the same, you know. And I think from a point of view of in expedition and in ultra endurance type space, which is maybe more where I'm working towards now, I mean there's a whole host that's still behind, very much behind the time. If you think we're only having these conversations now on an elite sport level, it's, you know, it takes time for that all to trickle down. Which is why I get passionate to make sure that that voice is heard. Because, you know, when I did ocean rowing, when I, you know, that was five years ago, we, we did the, we did the row. There's more and more females now doing things like the Atlantic row and whatnot. I mean we had a boat that was built for men. Like the outboard is a male diet, you know, at oars where we couldn't get them smaller. So it had to be even though we were smaller frames in heights and if anybody knows a bit of basic biomechanics, like it's not ideal that we were rowing the Pacific with oars that were designed for pretty much six foot men like that. I mean the amount of force and leverage that we had would have been less, very less optimal than what we could have done if we had, if we had smaller inboards and smaller oars. So as a basics on the equipment side, there was that. There was also for us, we went through the whole hormonal thing as well. From the point of view of how do we control our periods because we're out in the expedition environment and so those people that are listening that might be doing 24 hour sportifs or back to back days, it's definitely a big thing that plays on your mind. We were four people in a 29 foot ocean rowing boat. There was no way we really wanted to deal with that stuff. So we had to have those open conversations of like, right, well, what are we going to do about this? What do we individually feel comfortable to manage? And kind of what we, you know, how do we collectively go about this? And even then I remember Emma and I have talked about this. I spoke to a GP and this isn't anything against gps. You've got a very short space and time when you go to speak to them. So coming back to Emma's point about having individual choice and knowing your body, knowing what feels right to you is really important because they can only give you so much information in a short space of time. And they also, you know, gp, like anybody doesn't know every depth of detail on core subjects. They've got to know a lot about everything. And therefore kind of when I spoke to them, they're like, oh, go and use a coil. And I was like, what doesn't, I don't know why that doesn't feel right because I'm going to be sitting on, I'm going to be rowing and I'm sitting on that space for six months plus. We don't know is that going to cause me any internal damage? And they're like, oh, I doubt it. It's like, you don't know that. But I am going to ask that question, okay, we don't know the answer, but I don't want to take that risk. So that's my choice. I'm going to own it. And when I came back, there were a whole host of issues having had the implant and what that went on to. And again, my, the advice I was given was, well, let's just pile on a few more. Take the pill. On top of having an implant. I was like, I don't want to be pumped more of artificial hormones. Thanks, I kind of want you to take it out. And they really didn't want to take it out, but I was like, but it's my choice, I want you to take it out. And only because I suppose I've got that sort of bit more body literacy because of the job that I've had and I'm interested in science and everything like that. Did I push for the fact of saying, no, take it out, this is my body, I don't feel right, I don't care what you're going to tell me is the perfect thing to do. Gold standard, I've got to own this decision. So if I own it, then I will deal with whatever the circumstances the output is, that's fine. But if you put something on me and that doesn't work out, I'm going to blame you. And I've always thought of that whenever I deal with any of my athletes, I've always thought they have to own the decision. I want to empower the athletes, anybody that I work with, to make sure they have that body literacy, that they own a decision, because fundamentally that then they own the success or the outcome of that. And there is no outward blame and culture from that point of view. We're there to support them, to support, give them the information and to make those decisions. But you have to own that decision in order for it to be successful or whatever. But you therefore don't have any negative output if it doesn't work out, because you know that that's a decision you've made, it's not been forced upon you.

Well, it's all very well acting with the benefit of hindsight, isn't it? But you know, you've got it. You're right. If you make that decision, then you've just got to look forward from that and rather than becoming a blame culture about other people said this, that and the other. So I think that's, that's really good advice. I find incredible that there isn't more research and we're only just starting to scratch the surface of this topic given that it impacts so many athletes and people in, as you say, Laura, in business as well as in sport. Emma, if people want to learn more about this subject and try and understand how they can improve their own performance, I want to ask you, I know that I want to ask you for any books that you can recommend, but I think I'm right in saying that you're in the process of publishing your own book.

Book.

So why don't you tell us about your book and also the three courses that you mentioned and then perhaps tell us about whether there are any other books that you found really helpful on your journey.

Yes. So we, we kind of. I always would get asked this, so where's the book? Where's the blueprint? You know, where I can kind of just learn the encyclopedia of the female athlete, given everyone is different, but like just, just understanding the fundamentals. And I would never be able to, to say, oh, here it is, or here's a selection, and there are some good books in specific areas in the menstrual cycle, for example, whatever. But there wasn't one compilation so, yes, that's what we've done and we're just in the process of editing that and it will be released hopefully in January. It's called Train Like A Woman and it covers all of these aspects from menstrual cycle, hormonal, contraception, injury prevalence, nutrition, psychology. And we've really just tried to give people, like I said, we're not making people experts, but we are giving them real insight to give them a better understanding and be, and to be able to look in and tune into their own bodies or to be able to support the women they work with better. So that will be available in January, but that's almost a companion book to the courses that we've created. So this new venture that I'm embarking on with two other brilliant women, one is Bas Moffat, she's a former GB rower and she's now a women's health coach. And the other is Dr. Bella Smith and she's the GP who specializes in women's health. And so together we do have quite a, you know, comprehensive experience of supporting women, whether it's in sport or just in life. And so we've created what we believe kind of are the female athlete fundamentals online courses where you can just access information like what we've, we've, we've been discussing today. We've created one that's a practitioner course. So it's designed for people who are working with female athletes, whether you're a coach, whether you're a nutritionist, physio, personal trainer. And it's accredited, just going through accreditation at the moment, but it will be accredited by the time we release it. And it's 12 modules covering all of these things and really empowering you to better support your female athletes. And then we have a course that's aimed directly at active women. Again, it's for those people who love their training or who are really serious about, you know, kind of improving their performance. And then we've got what we call it in a nutshell course for those who don't want to consume the long form content, but they do want to get really curious about some of the headlines and that that's in a nutshell course. So those are going to be online in January. The reason I'm sighing is because we're just, you know, in those final throws of getting all that together, we're really excited. The content is brilliant and if you go to our website, www.thewell-hq.com, you will be able to, at the moment only just put in your email Address? Oh, actually, no. By the time this goes out, it will be a real, live, life, living, breathing website, which is very exciting because we're just signing off a few of the last things so people will visit us there. There is going to be content on there as well, free content. We do, we're going to do blogs and webinars as well as the online courses and the book. So do go and check us out the well hq, because we'd love to see you there. We're really passionate about informing everybody, you know, to better be able to support women or be women who thrive in sport. And so, you know, you're going to ask me for other books and I don't want to tell you because I'm like, well, there is only one. Right, that's fine.

If there's only one book worth reading, that's the book. We just got to get our hands on that in January.

Absolutely, yes, let's, let's say that.

And Laura, have I missed. And have we missed any questions that we should have asked?

No, I think we've, we've covered a whole broad brush of topics. I mean, there's loads of things we could deep dive in and. But I think, you know, Emma, very articulately as ever, has sort of been able to sort of give everybody the overview and I'm excited to see what's coming out with what the guys have put together because, yeah, I think it's, it's something definitely worth educating us all on, whether it's the nutshell course or certainly I'll be, I'll be jumping in to do, to do the practitioner course because, yeah, I think it just helps us to further our understanding. Depth, ask questions, feeds that curiosity and together we can learn. Like, I think the great thing is the stepping stone that these guys are taking just to get the conversation started, get, get the education out there is absolutely brilliant. And then where it goes from there, the research, the kind of, you know, what's going to happen over the coming years, I think is really, really exciting. So, no, I think that was a great, great coverage. So thanks, Emma, for your, for your time for letting me pull you into another podcast. And Charlie, thanks for giving us the opportunity to do so as well.

Well, you're both very welcome. I'm just really grateful. Thank you very much to both of you for giving up your time and sharing so much wisdom. Thank you, Emma. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you, Laura, for making my job a little bit easier. And actually thank you both for not making this as scary A conversation as it could have potentially been so nice. It's been a really interesting conversation. I'm sure people will get a huge amount out of it. So I look forward to tucking into that course and that book when it's. When it's live. You can find out more about Dr. Emma Ross at thrive revolution.co.uk and for those courses, the three courses that she mentioned in the podcast, the bite size one, the athlete one and the practitioner one. If you go to thewell-hq.com you can find those. And if you use discount code Tribeathlon10, you'll get a 10% discount there. I'll put all of these links in the show notes and also the links for Laura Penhall and adaptive-performance.com Laura's business. So you've got all the links in the show notes. Well, I hope you guys thought that was as interesting as I did. Certainly it was a daunting subject for me, but Laura did a fantastic job of helping me get the most out of Emma. Syd, what did you make of that?

Yeah, I just find it fascinating. I think I just need to. You know, you'd think I should know all that stuff myself as a female, but I'd have. I'll openly put my hand up and say I don't. I tend to bury my head in the sand myself about those sort of topics. So I just found it fascinating. Again, you know, I was listening and just picking up on some of the nuances about tailoring, training and that sort of thing, but even about the product side of things as well. And I think it's something you just, you've just kind of taken it for granted for so long that that's the way everything's designed.

But there's so much potential, if it is designed with females specifically in mind. There is so much potential for improvement in performance, isn't there?

Oh, well, I mean, look, 50% of our, you know, the population and everything is female and yet we're still designing things for male. So, yeah, there's huge potential and I guess it's exciting then to see, to see that leap forward. I think it'll be great for, great for women's sport as well.

Yeah. And actually I think great for guys because, you know, it certainly helped me. Well, you know, being a dad of two girls, it's given me a lot of insight into what to look forward to with regards to my daughters, if that's the way I can put it. But, but, but actually in terms of helping them from a, from a coach point of view, from a dad point of view, I think there's a huge amount for us guys to learn on this and we need to kind of get rid of some of the shyness around talking about this stuff because it's fairly fundamental part of our evolution, isn't it?

It is, yeah. You're right.

Brilliant. So I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. And in the meantime, until. Until the next podcast, keep on training. Thanks, Sid.

Thanks, Charlie.

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SA.