Earlier this year, I wrote an article arguing that there’s insufficient evidence to justify broad statements about how to adjust your training around your menstrual cycle. A big part of the problem, according to a major review of the existing research, was that much of it relied on self-reporting to determine what menstrual phase its subjects were in, which is notoriously unreliable. How can you claim that training is worse during the luteal phase if you’re not sure when the luteal phase starts?
The conclusion of that review was, as you might guess, that more and better research is needed. So here’s a start: new data from the Female Endurance Athlete Project, a Norwegian initiative to fill some of the gaps in knowledge about female-specific aspects of exercise and athletic performance. A team led by Virginia De Martin Topranin of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology assessed recovery status in 41 female endurance athletes as a function of their objectively monitored menstrual cycle. The results, published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, suggest there are indeed…
