Lift The Bar

As a personal trainer, you’re always looking to help your clients get the most out of their sessions, maximising performance, boosting confidence, and preventing burnout. But if you’re not taking your female clients’ menstrual cycles into account, you could be missing a major piece of the puzzle.

The menstrual cycle isn’t just about menstruation. It’s a powerful driver of physical and emotional changes that can affect energy levels, motivation, sleep, recovery, and even injury risk. When you learn to programme in sync with the individual you empower your clients to train smarter, not just harder.

 

Why It Matters

It’s normal for female clients to show up one week feeling strong and confident, and the next feeling drained, bloated, or emotional. These fluctuations aren’t just random, they’re linked to hormonal shifts across the menstrual cycle.

Rather than viewing these changes as setbacks or inconsistency, you can reframe them as an opportunity. With the right understanding, you can adapt training to work with each woman’s body, not against it.

 

The problem with generic information

Most of the information you find about the menstrual cycle and training focus on a set pattern.  A pattern that talks about the menstrual phase on days 1-5, follicular phase on days 6-14, ovulation around day 14 and the luteal phase days 15-28.  In each phase they tell you what is happening relating to hormones and its assumed impact on training.  You can find neat little strategies like focusing on low-intensity training or active recovery during the menstrual phase and high intensity training during the follicular phase. The problem is that the information presented as fact doesn’t take into account how we all experience things in different ways.

Working with humans isn’t something we can do in a theoretical vacuum.  Only approximately 13% of women have a 28 day cycle with a typical cycle lasting between 21 and 35 days, meaning these nice little blocks of time become less useful.  The menstrual cycle isn’t the only thing that impacts how we feel or what we can do and our bodies respond in different ways meaning that the assumptions of what to programme for that time aren’t reliable either. And that’s before we add in other conditions, medication, lifestyle, training experience, recovery or any other considerations that will impact us.

 

So where does this leave us? 

This doesn’t mean it’s not useful to understand any patterns relating to the individuals you are training, just that you need to keep it specific to each client rather than generalise. Hormonal changes affect mood, body image, motivation, and even pain tolerance. A client might feel confident and capable one week, and flat or defeated the next, without anything changing in her actual progress. Some women may feel weaker and have low energy whilst menstruating whereas for others it’s when they feel strongest and can lift heaviest. Some women will find they are more likely to see changes in scale weight at certain times in their cycle than at others or feel hungrier at different stages. We can’t just make assumptions because a text book says something.

 

Encourage Tracking and Open Conversation

Helping your clients recognise patterns and identify when they want to make changes and when they want to push through can make a big difference to long term success. To do that it is important to foster a safe environment for open conversations. When clients feel seen and understood, they’re far more likely to share information so make sure you are listening effectively and not undermining them by dismissing their lived experience.  Reminding clients that everyone is different and reinforcing that they are not weak / broken / overreacting if their needs aren’t the same as someone else’s can be incredibly empowering for them.  It’s easy for clients to believe that because others feel strong at a certain time or aren’t struggling with pain or mood swings in the same way as they are that it’s a personal fault. This means that, as coaches, we are in a great position to be able to change those thoughts and empower our clients.  Conversely, we can inadvertently reinforce these negative opinions.  The difference is in our approach.  As long as we work with the individual, and avoid telling people what they should be feeling or doing at certain times of the month based on theory, we can ensure we have a positive impact.

 

Many women have never been taught how their cycle affects them, their mood, and performance. No matter how many years someone has been menstruating it doesn’t mean they’ll know the patterns so, if your client doesn’t already track her cycle, you could suggest that she does.  There are many apps and wearables that make this simple. Tracking helps you both identify patterns, such as poor sleep, increased cravings, improved strength, weight changes (in either direction) or dips in motivation. (Note: it's important to be awarer that there are many reasons why someone may not want to track the menstrual cycle or avoid using apps that do.  They may be ok with tracking patterns in things like strength without reference to menstrual cycle but it is obviously completely their choice to make).

Once you recognise patterns it becomes easier to plan for them or explain variations in performance and results. Where possible aim to compare like with like so you’re comparing first week of the cycle each time, based on the length of that individual’s cycle.

They will also find it easier to make adjustments themselves and come up with ways to mitigate the impact of the changes in hormones.

 

Final Thoughts for Coaches

You don’t need to be an expert in hormones to make a big impact. A basic understanding of the impact the menstrual cycle has on the individual you are training allows you to adjust training loads, exercise selection and intensity, manage expectations, and support your female clients in a way that respects their physiology.

This isn’t about lowering the bar, it’s about removing invisible barriers. And when you help women train in tune with their cycle you’ll not only see better results, you’ll build stronger relationships and set yourself apart as a coach who truly understands female performance.