“Isometric strength performance peaked during the ovulation phase.” – The Influence of the Menstrual Cycle on Muscle Strength and Power Performance
It might be a coincidence that I came across to talks or books about woman, nutrition, and performance recently and I still found at least one new thing every time people discuss this topic.
After reading (and still not finish yet) a book called The Women’s Nutrition, I listened to a podcast from BarbellShrugged where they discuss how to tailored training for man and woman. There are some general information I’ve known from previous knowledge, such as:
- Woman tends to handle volume better. While man handles intensity better.
- Generally, the strongest time for woman is during ovulation. (so… go max out during this time if it’s applicable for you?) However, this is varies quite a lot from person to person. The best way to understand this is to track and find any pattern.
However, there are also some new information I haven’t heard before, such as:
- The last few days before ovulation or few days after menstruation is the riskiest time for woman to train. The show did not elaborate on why this is but I found another source explaining this better. During this time, progesterone is far exceed the stabilising oestrogen compounds and therefore some woman become extremely mobile. This can lead to joint hyper mobility. As a result, some woman might be easily has sprain and displacement. So, ladies, be careful but don’t let this limit your training.
- Woman tends to have capability to consistently increase strength for a longer period of time while man will stall faster. If this is true, I believe this is a good news for me and every other woman.
- The show mentioned if you put two man in the same weight class to train together, their performance can be better, usually after finding who the Alpha male is. It seems that male are more in peace after they know the strength hierarchy. This does not work for woman. Woman tends to not get along that well with other woman.
This episode shows that man and woman have some differences. It’s a generalisation but I just love when we fairly acknowledge the difference between man and woman without underestimating one or the other gender.
SUFOM 