Periodizing Your Training: Should You Train Around Your Menstrual Cycle?

There’s been more and more conversation in recent years about planning workouts to match different phases of the menstrual cycle—often called periodizing your training. At its core, periodized training just means intentionally varying how you exercise over time. This is something both professional and amateur athletes have used for years to add variety to their training, accommodate real life, and match their capacity to exercise.

That variation might mean changing intensity, volume, or focus across weeks or months. When applied to women’s health, it usually refers to a specific kind of periodization: adjusting exercise type, intensity, and duration around the hormonal shifts that happen across the menstrual cycle.

The underlying hypothesis is that during your cycle, your body doesn’t respond to training the same way every day. Some propose Luteal Phase Training (lift heavier and push intensity when estrogen is high; when progesterone rises, ease back, reduce load, and prioritize recovery) To account for these hormonal changes. 

On the surface, this logic makes sense. Many women will attest to recognizing predictable changes across their cycle. They may notice energy dips, disrupted sleep, changes in appetite, bloating, motivation, or how their body feels during a workout. 

Which leads to the obvious next question: does the science actually support planning exercise around the menstrual cycle?

What the Research Says (And What It Doesn’t)

When researchers have looked closely at exercise performance across the menstrual cycle—strength, endurance, aerobic capacity, recovery—the results are surprisingly consistent.

Across large systematic reviews and meta-analyses:

• Differences in strength and endurance performance between cycle phases are small or trivial
  
• Muscle growth and strength gains do not reliably depend on menstrual phase
  
• Endurance performance is largely unchanged across the cycle
  
• Where differences exist, they are often inconsistent, highly individual, or too small to matter in real-world training.
  

In other words, while hormones do fluctuate, research has not managed to draw a clear line between exercise performance and these fluctuations.  A woman may feel weaker, slower, or less motivated at certain points in her cycle—and that experience is valid. However, when we look at large groups of women, we cannot make concrete predictions or conclusions that support that every woman should exercise in a certain way. Objective performance outcomes don’t change enough to justify rigid, cycle-based training plans.

Complicating things further, the quality of the evidence itself is limited. Women remain underrepresented in exercise research, and only a small fraction of studies properly account for menstrual status. Many are small or at high risk of bias.

So despite confident claims online, the evidence simply isn’t strong enough to support menstrual-cycle–based periodization as a superior training strategy AND has more research is done this may alter and further refine this conclusion.  

So Why Doesn’t This Match Real Life?

This is where nuance matters.

Research looks for group-level patterns. Your body lives at the individual level. We often say, you are an “n” of one - or you are a study of one. 

What is going on in your life, how you are sleeping, eating, your stress levels etc. will all influence how you perform when exercising and respond to exercise. 

It’s also worth noting that perception and performance aren’t the same thing. Studies consistently show that women report feeling different across their cycle, even when objective measures remain stable.

That disconnect doesn’t mean your experience is wrong. It means your body is more complex than a calendar.

The Trap: When “Listening to Your Body” Becomes a Rulebook—or an Excuse

At this point, we often find ourselves back at the same conclusion: every individual is just that—an individual.

But that raises a practical question.

If research can’t give us a rule book with a specific formula, how do we actually apply this in real life?

The answer lies in a middle ground that’s often missing from the conversation.

Yes—listen to your body

Tracking your cycle, energy, sleep, mood, soreness, and recovery can be incredibly helpful. Over time, many women notice patterns that are unique to them. Using that information to adjust training day to day is reasonable and supported by evidence.

But—don’t let it become a limit

The research is clear on one thing: consistency matters far more than perfect timing.

Cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, bone health, and metabolic benefits are driven primarily by:

• Regular training
  
• Progressive overload
  
• Adequate recovery
  
• Long-term adherence
  

If “it’s just my luteal phase” becomes a reason to consistently skip strength training, avoid intensity altogether, or abandon a routine, the long-term cost may outweigh the short-term comfort.

Listening to your body should guide adjustments, not create rigid rules—or excuses.

A More Practical Way to Think About Exercising for Your Cycle

Rather than building your entire training plan around menstrual phases, a more evidence-aligned approach is simpler and more flexible. Start by keeping a consistent training structure from week to week. If you’re new to exercise, aim for around four days per week and include a mix of strength training, stability work, and zone 2 cardio.

The goal here is consistency, not perfection. Instead of chasing “perfect” timing, consider tracking the bigger picture—sleep quality, energy levels, muscle soreness and recovery, stress and life demands, and your cycle. After a few months, review what you’ve tracked and how you feel.

This approach helps you learn how you, as an individual, respond to the many factors that make up your unique biology, lifestyle, and habits—rather than assuming your cycle is the only variable that matters.

The Bigger Picture

Across all life stages—premenopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause—the strongest evidence supports exercise that is:

• Regular
• Varied
• Progressive (intensity matches your experience)
• Sustainable
  

Menstrual-cycle–based periodization may sound empowering, but the current science does not support it as a necessary or superior strategy. If you find tracking your cycle a useful tool to help you understand your exercise response - feel empowered to do so - hormone fluctuations are a real thing. If it is just one more thing on an already full to do list - skip it. Focus on consistent, varied activity that you enjoy!