In a perfect physiological environment, the menstrual cycle will occur every month and always be the same duration. But that doesn’t always happen, especially with many girls and women who train with high volumes and high intensities and have a low percentage of body fat. They often experience irregular or even absent menstrual cycles, which …
The menstrual cycle, which occurs monthly from menarche (age 11-14) until menopause (age 45-50), is the defining physiological characteristic of females. The levels of estrogen and progesterone change continuously throughout the cycle as a complex interaction of positive and negative feedback mechanisms regulate the timing and amount of hormone secretion. With the large fluctuations in …
A few minutes into your high intensity intervals, you notice your legs feel sluggish. “That’s odd,” you think, since you felt fine just a few days earlier. You shrug it off as just a bad day at the gym, and return the next week to do another interval workout. After the first sprint, you can’t …
Women’s nutritional needs are different than men’s, due in part to the menstrual cycle and differences in bone density between the sexes. Inadequate caloric consumption to match the caloric expenditure of running—a common problem among women runners—puts many female runners at risk of nutrient deficiencies that can affect their health and their running performance. Here …
Recommendations for exercise during pregnancy have undergone significant modifications since 1985. Initial guidelines placed restrictions on exercise intensity and duration, limiting women to a heart rate of less than 140 beats per minute and restricting exercise to 15 minutes or less. Following publication of numerous studies that showed maternal benefits from regular exercise during pregnancy …
