Cycle syncing for female athletes is a heavily marketed term being thrown at women as a necessary piece to their training. To cut to the chase, the current evidence (as of January 2026), doesn’t match up with the claims that are being made.
What I like about the general concept is that it continues to bring awareness and discussion to your cycle and how it affects YOU. I like that it gives women more control and empowerment over their symptoms and options that could help reduce impactful symptoms. It might bring to light that their are abnormalities that need addressing, or that someone has lost their menstrual cycle which is extremely important for female athlete health.
What I dislike about the term being thrown into apps and workouts and marketing for women, is that it implies we are weaker or more vulnerable or more fragile in certain phases which could lead to women training less or losing consistency, which is what is necessary for progress.
For female athletes who compete, or do competitive athletic endeavours – avoiding races, games, or competitions on certain days of the month isn’t really an option. The cycle-syncing talk either now places the blame on the athlete that they are choosing to compete during a phase of their cycle that has been deemed ‘more risky’, or it reduces an athlete’s performance/injury/circumstance down to their hormones.
The Myth:
The marketing claims state that in each phase of the menstrual cycle, the hormone fluctations will cause certain symptoms, and so in those phases, only specific types of training should be done. For example, it is being stated that in the follicular phase you should lift heavy as compared to the luteal phase where you should do less or only light workouts.
The Facts:
Research continues to show that menstrual cycles have so much variety in terms of levels of hormones, length of phases, and symptoms that a blanket statement for each phase can’t be applied at this point.
Images from Dr Lauren Colenso-Semple website https://www.drlaurencs.com and can also be found on her Instagram.
What should you do?
Tracking your cycle and your symptoms is really important if you find you are impacted by your symptoms, are monitoring for well-being and health, or find the process helpful in any other way.
I recommend something called auto-regulation. Meaning adapting in real-time to your workout. This option combines symptoms from your cycle, with other contributing factors, like life stress, lack of sleep, family or finanical stress, other health factors, etc. – basically everything that contributes to how we feel one day versus another.
Use this information with RPE – rate of perceived exertion – as a simple autoregulation tool for that workout.
Your RPE takes into account your symptoms especially if they are impacting how you are feeling, as you likely will feel much less inclined to be lifting super heavy or doing something super intense.
It’s worth noting that those symptoms or feelings don’t always match up to a specific phase or day of your cycle, and that research is telling us it isn’t going to match up for everyone.
RPE can fluctuate and change based on any day of your cycle, meaning that you don’t need to be pigeon-holed because of the phase of your cycle.
There are great researchers in the space who are continuing to do research on and for women, share it on their platforms, and educate around how you can still do all of the things you want to do, without feeling like you are doing something wrong due to the phase of your cycle:
- Lauren Colenso-Semple, PhD: Instagram page
- Melissa Lodge, PhD(c): Instagram page
- Alyssa Olenick, PhD: Instagram page
Want to listen to a podcast of the summary of the current state of recommendations for training and implications of the menstrual cycle? Listen on Nuance.
