CYCLE SYNCING OUR WORKOUTS

If you’re a woman in your reproductive years, your hormones and body aren’t the same everyday, they fluctuate and play a crucial role in our bodies responses to workouts and the environment around us. They also affect our emotional status, appetite, thought processes and so much more. Syncing our cycle with our workouts is a great way to optimise our fitness routine based on our menstrual cycle. With a bit of tweaking, we can workout smarter, not harder and still get in the best shape of our life.

So what is cycle syncing? Cycle syncing is a concept that is said to help balance hormones, and thereby help reduce symptoms of PMS, painful periods, fertility challenges etc, by supporting our hormones fluctuation and needs. It is when we change the intensity and types of workouts depending on what stage we are at in our menstrual cycle.

During our cycle, our body responds differently to workouts due to rising and falling hormone levels. This fluctuation affects everything from our metabolism (the rate we are burning calories), to our stress and immune response. Therefor, matching your workout intensity with each stage of your cycle can help you build lean muscle more efficiently, boost metabolism, improve recovery time, increase endurance, avoid burnout and balance our hormones.

To understand how we cycle sync our workouts, it’s important to have an overview in what our hormones are doing in each phase. Let’s briefly go through what happens in our body as we move through each cycle.

Menstrual (part of the follicular phase) - Between day 1-5. Oestrogen and progesterone is low, and the lining of the uterus shed, causing bleeding. You are likely to feel tired and possibly fatigued during this period as your hormone levels are very low. This is when you want to take it easy and be gentle with your body. Be sure you do slow and easy workouts during this time and get plenty of rest.

Suggested workouts include:

Walking
Stretching
Gentle Yoga
Beginner Pilates Classes (from the online library)

Follicular - 6-15. Oestrogen levels increase during this time, and you will likely feel more uplifted and can opt for more cardio based workouts. Your body will react more efficiently to your workouts, helping you boost metabolism and build lean muscle mass.

Suggested workouts include:

Running
Barre
Cardio Pilates (Intermediate or advanced)
Power Pilates (Intermediate or advanced)
Dancing
Biking
Hiking

Ovulatory - 15-17. Oestrogen peaks and testosterone are at peak, and progesterone rise. This is when your energy and libido are at their highest. This means you probably have a lot of energy to give. During this time you can really challenge yourself and opt for more intense and challenging workouts.

Suggested workouts include:

HIIT
Interval training
Intense Cardio
Barre

Luteal - Oestrogen and testosterone remain high, and progesterone has entered the building. If an egg isn’t fertilised, hormone levels decrease and the cycle starts over again, so your energy levels will come down from the previous high. During this time we can slowly start to slow down as our energy levels decrease around day 6. Might be helpful to divide this into two different phases.

Suggested workouts as we move into our menstrual phase in order:

Barre
Strength training
Power Pilates
Resistance Training
Yoga
Slow Flow Pilates
Walking
Rest (Arrived at menstrual phase)

The easiest way to get started with cycle syncing your workouts is to start tracking your cycle using a cycle tracking app. There’s many free apps and if you have an iPhone you can access cycle tracking in your health section. Once you’ve logged enough information, you can see how many days your average cycle lasts, which helps pinpoint your ovulation window and the phases in-between.

Then when you have a loose map of your menstrual cycle, start scheduling a few workouts on each phase. You can find workouts in the online library for all different stages of your cycle.

Lastly, check in with how you feel. The most important thing is that we are feeling intuitively good with our body, and the workouts we are doing. I encourage you to check in with yourself daily or weekly. Let’s move because it makes us feel good.