Should peri/menopause give you pause?

There, I said the dreaded word.

For female runners, our hormone fluctuations have been the bane of our existence.

According to numerous studies on the effects of puberty on male and female runners, boys around age 13.5 tend to get faster and stronger as they increase muscle mass resulting from increase in testosterone.

On the other hand, when girls start going through puberty at the earlier age of 11.5, they increase their fat mass and their hips widen, which can substantially affect running performance.

Since girls tend to grow taller earlier, aside from the plateau effect on their running, they unfortunately become more prone to ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and other injuries. Which probably explains why a lot more girls drop out of athletics during that stage.

The harsh predicament of young women in athletics hogged headlines when some female athletes lodged complaints of verbal and emotional abuse against Nike Coach Alberto Salazar who headed the Nike Oregon Project. The Project was meant to be the training ground of future elite athletes and had produced stars like Kara Goucher and even Sifan Hassan.

But Salazar’s training program was hounded by allegations of doping and putting extreme pressure on female runners to maintain a certain weight through rigid caloric restriction. Those who failed to maintain their weight were treated cruelly and repeatedly body shamed. Athlete Mary Cain who suffered depression and amenorrhea for years was among the victims who came forward.

The Project has since been shut down and Salazar himself has been banned from Coaching.

But the reality of women in sports has not much improved.

There is still very little understanding around the peculiarities of a woman’s physiology. What passes for advancement in sports science happen to apply mostly to men. What works for men doesn’t always work for women.

Dr. Stacy Sims (Ph.D.), is an exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist and expert in female specific nutrition and training for health performance and longevity who has long lamented the lack of scientific research, specifically pertaining to women in sports. This is not necessarily a male chauvinist conspiracy but rather, most of the scientific studies are done on young male volunteers as they are more often than not more willing than young women to act as subjects for studies.

Sims decries the fact that, as a result of the lack of gender specific research, women in sports are basically viewed as “small men.”

In her book Roar, she dives deep into female physiology and how one’s menstrual cycle impacts training. She says there’s a real explanation why sometimes a woman tries to do a workout she can otherwise easily accomplish but just can’t because of a fluctuation in her hormones.

In a podcast, Dr. Sims explained that for instance when estrogen starts to rise, if a woman is estrogen sensitive, she’ll feel really flat and bloated right around ovulation.

But if she’s not estrogen sensitive, then she feels invincible. At this point, and she can go out and she can hit PRs, and she can really use it to her training advantage. And the fact that if a woman feels strong, she pushes harder, gets a really good and strong workout that day.

Then come mid late 40s, when ratios of estrogen progesterone, testosterone begin changing dramatically.

At this point, a woman may notice that the training and food that used to work for her are not working anymore. She begins to put on more belly fat, is not recovering from workouts as fast and generally needs more time off.

In the years prior to menopause, women lose muscle mass and bone mineral density because of the loss of stimulus from estrogen. It is at this point that women need to do

more power and strength based training — e.g., plyometrics, box jumps, etc. With the onset of menopause comes an even more significant reduction in lean mass and bone.

It’s not all gloom and doom, however.

As I myself navigate perimenopause, I’ve sworn to fight tooth and nail these catabolic tendencies by being very mindful of my macros (protein especially) and micronutrients, as well as strength and functional training. And while speedwork is my Achilles heel, I do it regularly knowing it will help preserve whatever limited fast twitch muscles I still have.