How Do You Change Your Training to Match Your Menstrual Cycle?

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How do you change your training to match your menstrual cycle? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Melissa from Instagram asks, how do you change your training to match your menstrual cycle? Hey, it's J.J. and I have Dr. Stephanie Estima with me to answer this question. She's an expert in female physiology, metabolism and body composition, and she uses the science of your cycle, and that's whether you have a period or not, to help you reclaim your energy and feel great in your skin. She actually decides how she's going to work based on her cycle. Super interesting. She's a total science nerd, but she's all wrapped up in this glam package. She always seems to look like she just stepped off the red carpet. And she looks more like Wonder Woman than Wonder Woman. I was at a costume party with her. Incredible. So she'll be right back with the answer. Stay with us.

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So I love this question because as when we are in our reproductive years, in the same way that we can change our eating, we can change our chemical environment, which is what our diet does. It changes our chemistry through diet to match our hormonal environment. We can also change our physical input, the mechanical input, through resistance training, cardiovascular work, you know, generalized movement to support this ever changing hormonal environment. So let's kind of just go through this week by week. I think it'll make a bit more sense if we talk about it, you know, kind of week one, week two, week three, week four. So in week one, this is your bleed week. This is, you know, most women feel a little lethargic, a little slow, a little crampy, you know, the first day that they get their period or, you know, first two days or whatever. But as you get into sort of the swing of things, then you can start to go to the gym lifting moderate weights. So I define that as 8 to 12, you know, 8 to 10. 8 to 12 repetitions per set. Towards the end of that first week, we are now beginning to see estrogen levels rise. And then of course into week two, estrogen goes all the way up. We have this huge peak of estrogen in week two. 2. And of course, week two is also the week where we see that rise in testosterone. So if you feel like super flirty, your libido's up in week two, this is a really good indication that your testosterone levels are peaking. And I always like to joke, and it's like, I'm half joking but really serious. Like week two is where I'm chasing my partner around the dining room table because my testosterone is just like off the charts. So the way that you can profit in terms of training here, the way you can profit from this peak in testosterone and this peak in estrogen is to lift heavy. And let me promise you, you can lift heavy things. And you know what? He, what heavy is for you is going to be different than heavy for JJ or heavy for me. But a general rule of thumb is somewhere between five and eight repetitions, where the last three reps like, you're like, oh my God, this is heavy. So five to eight reps. The other thing I would counsel you on this week is to lay off your high intensity interval training. And this is hard to hear for women who are completely addicted to their spin classes that you know, where you have all these sprints. But one of the things we want to be thinking about is the effect that estrogen has on our ligaments. And like I mentioned, you know, in, in this week, estrogen reaches the, the largest peak that she will through the entire cycle. Estrogen creates laxity in our ligaments. So what a ligament is and why this is important is this is the structure that provides stability to your joints. So estrogen's high ligaments are loosey goosey, right? So when you think about the type of, if you think about burst type training or explosive type movements, like whether you're sprinting, you're doing burpees, you're spinning like all out balls to the wall, you are much more likely to injure yourself this week doing high intensity interval training than other weeks because of this rapid rise in estrogen concentration. The other, you know, for my, for my nerds that are listening, cause I am a nerd. The other thing that estrogen does is it actually makes your tendons stiffer. So it actually, when we think about lifting heavy, this is the perfect time to lift heavy because now your tendons are stiffer. So now when you lift a heavier weight, you're going to be able to utilize a stiffer tendon to be able to impart that force from the muscle to the tendon to the bone. So it's really, really a beautiful time for heavy lifting and laying off of that high intensity interval training. And you can do hiit training like any other week. Just stay off of it in week two, especially towards the end of week two, closer to ovulation, that's sort of like really a dangerous time for my women who are still in their reproductive years. In week three, because you've been lifting so heavy in week two, you know, nice to give yourself a little break so you can return back to those moderate weights like that, 8 to 10, 8 to 12 repetitions per set. And a good if you're kind of thinking like, well, how much weight should I be lifting? A general rule of thumb is the last three reps should be difficult. You should still be able to do it with perfect form. But those last three reps, like you want them to be over. And then in week four, for a reproductive woman who still has her menstrual cycle, this is like for your reproductive system, this is do or die week, right? You either have a fertilized egg or you don't. So I love to counsel women to take it a little easier here. If you want to lift weights, you can lighten up the load so the weight is lighter, but you can do more repetitions. So you may think about moving from 8 to 10. You may think of jumping up to 15 reps or 20 reps. Other things that I like to do here is to make sure that you schedule in a few days of recovery, especially towards the end of week four, where we see progesterone dropping quite rapidly. So things like yoga, walking, pilates. It's really important to schedule in recovery because if you think about it, you've been training consistently for three weeks, right? You have earned your rest, and you must rest because that's where all your muscle gains actually come from, is in your recovery. It doesn't actually happen when you're in the gym. That's when you break down your muscles. But you have to give your body time to recover so all your gains happen in your recovery. So take the time, give yourself a couple of days off or just train lighter to the point where you're not sore. So that's how I like to change my training to match my menstrual cycle.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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