Female Phase Training… some basic principles

So, you may have heard me mention female phase training before, or maybe not, either way, here is a little bit more of a breakdown into it and how you can use it to approach your training.

First up, you need to be tracking your menstrual cycle in order to take advantage of FPT. If you don’t have any data on where you are in your cycle, then you need to get some, as the saying goes ‘what we measure we can manage’ so go get yourself an app to track that shit. A couple i’ve been told are good are: Clue, Flo, Fitr, theres a bunch out there so just go get one init.

Right now that you’re tracking your cycle, lets breakdown the 4 main phases of your cycle. A normal cycle is anywhere between 21 and 35 days, for the sake of easy maths and for our example we'll go with the average being 28 days (4 weeks). But it varies for woman to woman and can vary month to month too.

So let’s get into it. Day 1 of cycle = 1st day of heaviest bleeding

Day 1 to next day 1 is the length of your cycle

So if we are going to use our example based on a 28 day cycle, it gets broken down into the below 4 phases

Day 1-7 Early Follicular

Day 8-14 Late Follicular

Day 15-25 Early-mid Luteal

Day 26-28 Late luteal

So Female Phase training is a way to take advantage of your hormonal fluctuations over your cycle. We can go over what’s happening with your hormones during your cycle in another post. Today we’ll look at typical symptoms during each phase and how we can approach training based on these phases and why this can be beneficial.

So let’s start at phase 1, early follicular, in some circles they use seasons spring, summer etc… but I found that a little confusing so I’ll keep it a little more sciency. During this phase, PMS symptoms start to fade and you’ll probably start to feel more like ‘yourself’, physiologically your most like a man at this point. If you’re into body composition measurements etc… this is the time to do it (once period has finished and not bloated). This is when you are less stable so you really need to be guided by pain during this phase, so you don’t need to avoid lifting etc… but maybe lighten up the load if you’re experiencing any pain e.g. lower back, hips etc…

Phase 2, late follicular, this is when you start to feel good, time to get shit done. You can tolerate a lot more, you can train and tolerate, higher heavier loads, more intensity. Estrogen makes it easier to recover so you can train more frequently too. This is the time to push, you’ll also feel more coordinated so time to do some of the more fancy stuff if you feel like it.

Phase 3, early-mid luteal, at the beginning of this phase we have ovulation, and this is where you are going to see PBs set, so if you are doing strength training testing this is a great time to do it, but make sure you re-test at the same point otherwise you will get some varying results. Early follicular is also a good time to test. After ovulation bring the intensity down a little to a more moderate intensity.

Phase 4 and into late-luteal, PMS symptoms start to appear, and most likely not feeling up to it. This is a perfect time to take a deload week, bring the weights down, do more walking or yoga, pilates, low intense cardio, or skill work type activities. So take advantage of the fact you’ve got a natural deload week built into your cycle and take some pressure off here. You can still train, move but a HIIT session might not be the way to go here.

There are lots of benefits of working with your cycle, you’re not too hard on yourself when you feel like you’re not performing in the gym, it can massively help you mentally to have more of a plan when going into a session, so you can continue to show up for yourself, continue to move but not damage or injure your body and work with your body and not against it. It’s a fascinating topic with more and more research being done all the time.

Now you've got a little more info, go put the wheels in motion to get the most out of your training.

L x