Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 144: Advanced Female Training Considerations (PMS, Period, Phases) + More

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and this is my first episode back with you since my trip to Cancun, Mexico. And I had a phenomenal time. I did everything I could to make sure you guys had some episodes in the tank. But back to my regular recording schedule here to finish the year, looking to bring you one to two episodes a week. And I'm very, very excited about what this year and the new year has in store. Today, I'm going to share with you

some of the commonalities, themes, and things I've seen working specifically with my female clients with regards to how training, PMS, the menstrual cycle, the different phases of the menstrual cycle can play out. What you might look for, hopefully giving you some tips and tricks to take with you into your own training. If you are a coach, this will be very valuable for you, especially if you work with female clients. If you're a female trainee, this is absolutely worth listening to. And even for the guys who aren't coaches, there's quite a bit to learn today. So can't not wait to unpack that and have that conversation with you guys. But before we do, I want to plug my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. Core Coaching Method is the brainchild of over 10 years of personal training experience, working with people in person, online, a variety of different platforms.

What I wanted to do was create affordable coaching available to people in all situations. So whether you're a self-starter who already has a gym routine and you're looking for an online coach, somebody to handle your nutrition, your training protocol, and hold you accountable, or you're just getting started and you're looking for perhaps Zoom integrated coaching done from home, maybe you're even local to where we operate out of Sonoma County and you'd like to train in person. Core Coaching Method offers coaching services for people with a variety of goals. Anyone from competitive bodybuilders

to soccer moms looking to get in shape. We really work with a large population of people. And in the new year, we will be raising our prices. But for the month of December, all prices will be locked so you can get the best value on some of the best coaching services in the space, something I'm proud to put my name on. And again, we have online coaching that is fully comprehensive, including nutrition coaching. This, of course, includes customized exercise programming, weekly check-ins with either

myself or one of my phenomenal coaches. The coaches that I have on my team are amazing. And we also have Zoom coaching, in-person coaching, consultation, just programming, just nutrition coaching, all available for you. And again, you can lock in that rate from now until the end of December. No massive, cumbersome contracts. You don't have to sign on for a year or pay massive amounts up front. These are very affordable,

very reasonably priced coaching services that are of the highest quality. So please check that out. There's information in the podcast show notes or just head over to my Instagram, danny.matranga, or the Core Coaching Method Instagram, the same name, Core Coaching Method, or www.corecoachingmethod.com. We look forward to hearing from you and potentially

working with you. And it's actually a great segue to what we're going to talk about today, which is some of the themes and commonalities that myself and some of my fellow coaches have seen with our female clients, some consistencies. I think you'll get a lot out of this. Now, of course, I have to disclose I'm not a woman. So everything that I have experienced that I'm about to share with you is from the outside looking in. All women are different. Not all women will experience PMS, menstruation, or the various fluctuations between cycle phases that I'm about to describe. I'll share generalities, commonalities, and themes, but everybody is different. Everybody's individual.

And the best thing you can do is track and monitor your own progress, track and monitor what things you see, whether those be asymmetries, whether those be commonalities. You need to pay attention to yourself, but I will share as much as I can. Additionally, I am not a doctor, so everything I say is something you should take with a colossal grain or several grains of salt. And what I will share with you are in no way, well, there are tactics that are in no way intended to treat disease, that are intended to reduce symptomology of anything. These are just some themes that I have seen. And I do think that one of the most overlooked elements of physical fitness, fat loss,

muscle growth protocols, training, performance enhancement protocols, training, you name it, are the gender-based differences between, or sex-based differences, I should say, between men and women. There are some physiological differences when training men and women. Those don't necessarily show up in the way you might think. Oftentimes, the fitness industry portrays female training as looking substantially different from male training. Men training with barbells, heavy weights in dungeony gyms, and women training with bands and body weight in their apartments, you name it. The actual depiction of what female fitness looks like

from the fitness industry and the supplement industry side of things has really skewed how people train. But in truth, the actual differences in how you train, meaning the exercises you choose, the repetition ranges you choose, the weights you choose, all of these things, in my opinion, are going to very much be the same for men and women. If you looked at a core coaching method training program for a male fat loss client and a female fat loss client, the main differences you would see would be that client's individual goals. So if a female client told us,

I really want to build my glutes, then we would build that into her program. If a guy said, I really want to build my pecs, then we would build that into his program. But we'd probably use similar exercises. A lot of what we think of when we're talking about the differences between how men and women should train shouldn't come down to necessarily repetition ranges, rest periods, although there are some

nuances there that we might talk about, sets and reps. They should come down to looking at the underlying physiology. And the biggest and most obvious difference between male and female physiology is the presence of the menstrual cycle. And so we will unpack that quite a bit today. But here are the rules for the road and some general findings we have found working with many, many women over the years. Number one, not all women are the same. And I know that seems quite obvious, right? But one of my favorite quotes, and it's been attributed to multiple different people. I've heard it attributed to Dr. Stacey Sims. I've heard it attributed to Lyle McDonald. And I'm not in the business of attributing quotes.

But the quote is, women are not just small men. And I like that quote because it really unpacks this notion that's present in our industry that to train women and to create nutritional strategies for women and to help women with fat loss, performance, you name it, you just train them like they're small little men. And that's definitely not the case. But within that, not all women are the same. There are huge differences that you will see with regards to things like the menstrual cycle, with regards to things like trainability, with regards to things like anthropometry, meaning how you're built, everything from limb length to even the pelvis, right? There's a large amount of variation between pelvis dimensions between women, which can

affect things like how you squat, how you hip thrust, how you deadlift. So the first thing, the most important thing is not to just broad brush paint training women as just small men and not to train every woman the exact same. You really need to take an individualized approach. So if you're training a pre-menstrual cycle woman, which in this case would probably be considered a child, you will probably be able to train that younger woman very consistently across the month without any variation. If you are training a woman who has started menstruating, she's past puberty, there will be the presence of the menstrual cycle. So you have to make certain adjustments. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Again, we'll get to that in a minute. Not all women have the same menstrual

cycle. Not all women have the same hormonal fluctuations. Some women can train absolutely the same from day one of the cycle to day 28. And not all cycles are 28 days. I think that's important to acknowledge, but we'll work off that 28-day framework because it seems to be pretty consistent. And it seems to kind of, even though I warned against this, it seems to kind of encapsulate the largest percentage. But then you also have women who are postmenopausal or premenopausal or perimenopausal, meaning we've got three specific hormonal categories for women who are older, and they're starting to phase out of reproductive age. And so again, all of those things are unique. And it's very important to acknowledge that for men, from a hormonal standpoint, things tend to be fairly consistent up until they hit middle age, at which point there is a small decrease in testosterone.

And there are some training adjustments you might make to accommodate that, but they're much less so than the training accommodations you would make for women across these various different physiological, let's call them time periods of their life. So I think that's important. Another theme that I have seen to be pretty common amongst women who are past puberty, but pre-menopausal, meaning, or even pre-pre-menopausal, meaning they're not close to menopause, is that most of them tend to do better after their period, but, and right up until ovulation. And so we call that phase of the menstrual cycle the follicular phase. And we'll usually consider that to be working on that 28-day framework, right? The follicular phase.

And the follicular phase refers to, or the term follicular in this case, refers to the actual formation of the follicle, of the egg. That's when this stuff is happening, okay? So during this phase, there are some hormonal things that are fairly unique, different than what happens at ovulation, which represents the very middle, the 14th day, right? And the luteal phase, which represents days 14 through 28, this is where you see PMS tend to occur. So what happens during this follicular phase? Well, body temperature is slightly lower. Follicular stimulating hormone is slightly lower. Luteinizing hormone begins a steady climb lower. Luteinizing hormone begins a steady climb towards ovulation. Estrogen climbs quite rapidly. That tends to be a good thing for training. There's a big misconception between men and women or between trainers and clients that because testosterone is a hormone that helps make

work feel good, it's good for muscularity, it's good for nutrient partitioning, it can be good for body composition, that its counterpart, estrogen, must do all of the opposite things. But that's not the case. Estrogen can be beneficial for performance. If you want to learn more about this, I've actually done two podcasts with my good friend Lyle McDonald talking specifically about female hormones and female physiology. And we'll go much deeper into these topics in those podcasts. So please go check that out. But in that first 14 days, I have found that most women tend to be able to push a little harder, recover a little better, and lift a little heavier. That is during the follicular phase.

And so it's important to remember that the first day of the follicular phase begins with menstruation. So day one of the period initiates the follicular phase. And throughout that phase, we see that steady climb in estrogen. And then you hit around that 14th day where ovulation occurs. You can also train really well around ovulation. So let's say day 13, 14, and 15, a day before and a day after. Part of why, or theoretically what I think drives this, is the increase of testosterone around ovulation. Women actually get a small surge of testosterone around ovulation, and that could help with training. There's a few different, let's call them theories, as to why this might occur. My completely rudimentary, non-scientific, uneducated stance on this is that because testosterone does enhance libido,

it does increase sexual proclivity, it might make sense that if during this ovulation window, when a woman is most likely to be impregnated, that rise in testosterone would encourage reproductive behavior. That's how species evolve. That's why we might see this. So as a general rule of thumb, if you're still at that phase and stage of your life where you're getting and having a regular period or you're having your menstrual cycle. So again, this tends to be the largest percentage of the training age women out there. We're not talking about women who haven't hit puberty and we're not talking about women closer to menopause, although it's not just like menopause occurs and then everything stops. You still have a variety of different hormonal things, and I'll be meeting with Lyle soon to

hopefully talk about that. But I've consistently seen with clients, they generally do better days 1 through 14, and days 14 through 28, they still do okay. But when we enter that luteal phase, day 14 through 28, that climb in progesterone that can lead to those feelings of PMS, water retention, fatigue, lethargy, etc., that can lead to decreased training activity. Or not activity, but outputs. Another thing I've seen consistently is weight fluctuations generally occur in days 14 to 28. Why is this important? Well, when I'm looking and when we at CORE are looking at client check-ins, it's kind of nice to know, and oftentimes we'll ask in a non-invasive way, when exactly that period started. So we kind of

can calibrate when a client's in the follicular phase and when a client's in the luteal phase. And so generally speaking, I have noticed that women tend to see increases in scale weight, scale weight fluctuations, decreases in what we might consider to be predictable fat loss during this phase. This is when the scale becomes a tool that is best used exclusively as a tool. It's still nice to grab these weights. It's still nice to grab these weights. It's still nice to grab that data, but it's also important, I believe, when you're in that luteal phase to be a little bit gentler with how you interpret that data, right? Because what will happen is that increase in progesterone, that increase in water retention can skew things and it can make somebody

who's really doing a good job with their diet feel frustrated. So it's nice to know and that's a consistency that we've seen with many clients over many years. Another consistency I've seen is that strength tends to fluctuate a bit more than volume capacity. So what I mean by this is across the entire 28 days, I find that women tend to be fairly fatigue resistant. They tend to be able to do a considerable amount of volume. They often can do it with reduced rest periods. If that work is done at higher intensities, one thing I've seen is that they will fatigue

a little bit more quickly. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. But if we're talking about submaximal work done within two

to three reps of failure, whether we're in the follicular phase, the luteal phase, or at the middle where we're ovulating, you're doing PMS towards the back end of the luteal phase, or you're in menstruation towards the front end of the follicular phase, volume tolerance seems to be pretty consistent. However, strength fluctuations seem to be quite present for some clients, meaning I oftentimes will try to time peaking strength, PR attempts, high load, let's call them high load sets where it's like, hey, this is going to be a set of three, this is going to be a set of two, it's going to a set of two it's going to be a set of one i want you to take this set to failure yada yada yada that really really hard training if i can if it makes sense and again i think we all think about this at core when we're putting these phases together i want to try to time it

if i can for when my client is in the follicular phase. And that's not always easy to do. And it's not to say that you can't make PRs in the luteal phase. You absolutely can. This goes back to the first point. It really just depends on your physiology. This is something that you should monitor. This is something that you should pay attention to. But if I had to say, But if I had to say, generally speaking, where I would want my female clients to attempt PRs, those highest output workouts, those highest output sets, I think we would have the better likelihood of those being successful between days 1 and 15, 16. Somewhere between when the period starts, and ovulation. A lot of women struggle with training on their period. So probably we could cut that range down to like day seven to 15. So that might be where I would hope, like if I had a client who needed to perform, I would try to time things up like that.

If I had a client who, like in a competitive standpoint, it's obviously wildly impractical to go, hey, there's four weeks in a month when, it's obviously wildly impractical to go, Hey, there's four weeks in a month when we're working off this 28 day range, or there's four weeks in this cycle. Some for some women, it's less for some women, it's more, but I want to try to time up everything with that one week. That's obviously impractical. Um, and think about this, think about a female Olympic athlete who trains her entire life. And well, that's a little bit, it's a little bit silly because most female athletes in the Olympics probably don't have a regular period because of relative energy deficiency syndrome, or at least a good number of them might not have a

regular period. But imagine you train four years, you finally get to compete and boom, you're in the back end of your luteal phase during PMS. That can be really brutal. So ideally, if you have the ability to try to cycle sync or at least have an idea of where you're at, you can be gentler with your training and make more accommodations and try to position things more intuitively. Lastly, and this is purely, purely anecdotal. I don't have any evidence or research to back this up. I have noticed over the years working with clients that conversations about body composition, particularly acute body composition, how I'm looking, how I'm feeling right now, tend to be more negative or have a higher prevalence of use of negative language,

more negative or have a higher prevalence of use of negative language, self, let's call it deprecative language. I look fat. I feel like shit. I had a bad week. These types of interactions with my clients tend to be much more likely to occur during the luteal phase, particularly during PMS. And this is probably understandable due to these hormonal fluctuations. But I think it's important because our language around what we're doing when we're coaching is important, but it's also important for clients and how they use their language. And so if you have a prevalence for increased negative self-talk when progesterone's high, water retention's high, your weight's not dropping. It's absolutely understandable. But I have noticed that there is a pretty tangible

increased prevalence of these conversations. And so one thing I will often tell clients is, hey, look, we're at that part of your cycle where the negative self-talk seems to creep in. It's really a good idea to remember that what's happening inside your body physiologically is transient. You will get back to that luteal, or out of this luteal phase into your follicular phase

ovulation area where you can train a little bit harder and have more consistent body comp outcomes. Please try to be gentle with how you talk to yourself and the self-talk you have during this time. So what does this look like actionably? It just, again, all goes back to pay attention to where you're at on your cycle. Understand that what you might experience in your follicular phase around ovulation during PMS, during your menstrual, actual menstrual, menstruation during your period is highly variable. And paying attention to it, taking some notes, monitoring it is something that I would highly recommend for all women.

If you have a coach like myself who's male and you're not comfortable sharing that information, that is absolutely okay. And that's why I don't require it for clients at core, although it is generally recommended. I would do it yourself. So pay attention to that stuff. So knowing all of that stuff, here are some things that I think can work really well with regards to practical training and how you might adjust nutrition. These are practical, actionable tips that you can take with you. So number one, if you're going to load up on volume

or you're going to load up on intensity and trying to time progressions, if you can, and trying to time progressions. If you can, try to pack that stuff into the follicular phase. If you can, try to pack it around ovulation. As for things like deloads, recovery weeks, days off, those might be better positioned during the luteal phase, where we have that progesterone elevation, we might not have such a consistent recuperative, or we might have not such a consistent output effect. It might be a better time for recuperative stuff. So I tend to think that's a good general rule of thumb. For women who are outside of the menstrual window, this would be mostly women who are post-menopausal, I don't think it's as big of a deal when you train hard and when you take those deload weeks. I think for most women who are in

that menstrual cycle and they're in the kind of largest cohort of training age females, it's not the biggest difference maker in the world, but it's something that you might want to keep in your bag of tricks just in case. Number two, I find that decreasing intensities, but keeping training going if manageable, tends to be really, really effective for training while on your period. Not all of my female clients train on their period. Some have very intense symptoms, intense cramping that make training or resistance training very hard. But I would say that 95% of my clients and 95% of the clients Core works with are able to do some type of movement and training around their period. So if possible, if movement is tolerable, I find it to be generally good at not just minimizing symptoms, but keeping you on track with the greater program. Okay, number three, I do think that when working with women, it's very important to remember that

most women are natural weightlifters. They're not enhanced by androgenic anabolic steroids. Now, some women do take steroid hormones in the form of hormonal contraception, but this is very different from what you might see a male competitive bodybuilder or an enhanced female competitive bodybuilder take. So at no point in the cycle, at no point in a woman's training career, whether she's prepubescent, actively in her menstrual cycle, training age, largest training age cohort, pre, peri, or postmenopausal, do I think it's ever appropriate to do five, six, seven sets of an exercise, to do 25, 35, 45 sets in a workout? Close to failure, right? I see this happen a lot. I see ridiculous numbers being programmed for clients all the time. I have a lot of women

coming to me telling me they're spending two plus hours in the gym every day and doing cardio. I don't think that that's really ever appropriate, not just for women. I very, very rarely think this is ever appropriate for men, maybe if they're enhanced, but I think as a general rule of thumb, three to four sets per exercise done relatively close to failure with rest periods greater than one minute. You've got to start there. This tends to be true for both sexes regardless of training age. Don't overdo it. I find that women have a tendency to be more fatigue resistant and they tend to have a tendency to want to do more work and a lot of uneducated coaches take that and just throw and dump insane, asinine amounts of work on people and women. And this can lead to things like REDS or relative energy deficiency syndrome.

And that is something that I think is generally best avoided. So as a general rule of thumb, try to always remember you're a natural lifter. and there is a point at which diminishing marginal returns kick in From a volume or intensity or time in the gym standpoint number four Getting good steps getting a high amount of steps is always a good idea This again is true for both sexes I find this to help with recovery if you're not able to train on your period or you're not able to train during pms Getting walks particularly outside can be very effective. And then lastly, you might try some dietary strategy tweaks. Some people say, hey, you can load up on the carbs in the follicular phase

and you might want to load up on the fat during the luteal phase. Hey, you can burn, you generally burn more calories during the luteal phase. So if you're in a deficit of 500 calories and on your follicular phase, you're eating 1700 a day in your luteal phase, maybe you can have more like 1900 a day and still be in that same deficit. This again, is something I talked about with Lyle on an earlier podcast. That's just some advanced nutritional stuff you might play with. But as a general rule of thumb, I don't like the idea of making wild nutritional or training changes based on where you're at in your cycle, but instead making small, thoughtful, deliberate changes, 20% style changes that yield 80% results, the 80-20 rule or the 20-80 rule. Okay, something else worth talking about. I think that specifically when working with

women, a lot of the conventional rhetoric can be really, really harmful. Over-exercising and over-restricting, I have found, tend to be more common with women than they do with men. I work with quite a bit of men, but I have noticed that more women come to my coaching company having been punished with massive amounts of volume or having been coached into massively restrictive diets by other coaches, or they've stumbled upon doing this themselves. That's something that I think is worth being aware of. I think it's something that's worth acknowledging, having an honest conversation about. If you have been overdoing it, this tends to, again, be more common with women than

with men. You're not going to likely get where you want as quickly as you would like. Additionally, I would avoid hellacious workouts where you're punishing yourself in a fasted state, where you're punishing yourself in a low- state where you're trying to take, you know, burn as many calories as possible because it is so important for the female body to reproduce. If it wasn't for women's ability to reproduce, we would not be here as a species. You know, women are very stress resistant and they're very resilient. And I find it to be generally unfortunate that because of that resilience, because of that toughness, the amount of volume,

training, dieting that women can put on themselves or have coaches put on them can be pretty destructive in the long run. So be aware of that. Stay away from the harmful rhetoric or the harmful, let's call it conventional wisdom. So to circle the wagons and just touch base here, some rules for the road. Remember, not all women are the same. In fact, most and almost all of our clients have a unique physiology, but there are some consistencies. There are some fluctuations across the menstrual cycle that one should be aware of when designing training programs. However, it shouldn't dictate the majority of your decisions. I find that a 20% adjustment on some small actionable things can yield 80% of the upside. So that's something to be aware of. I find that consistently women tend to train better during

the follicular phase and ovulation than they do during the luteal phase. I find that most of our clients are fine resistance training while on their period, but even if they're not comfortable doing so, or they just, even during PMS, it's something that is very challenging. Any amount of movement that's tolerable is a very good idea and something that I think you should stick with. Weight fluctuations are very common across all of our clients, specifically clients who are in that largest cohort where they're still in their reproductive age. Weight fluctuations are still common for perimenopausal, premenopausal, and postmenopausal clients, but they do seem to be the most present during the luteal phase, particularly around PMS. Strength fluctuations seem to be fairly present too,

as does the capacity to handle large amounts of training volume. And if possible, I would try to position your peaking, your PRing, or your highest output weeks in the first 15-16 days, assuming you're able to train relatively hard on your period, which I find many women are. Things that tend to work well from a tactical standpoint, again, positioning volume and intensity earlier in the cycle, avoiding the end of the luteal phase if possible, decreasing intensities while training on your period or during the luteal phase, but not removing training altogether. Remembering that you are a natural lifter and just because you're fatigue resistant and conventional wisdom and rhetoric might have told you you need to be all balls to the walls all the

time with massive amounts of caloric expenditure and hardcore caloric restriction. I find this is generally a dangerous practice for both sexes, but specifically for women, and it can lead to things like relative energy deficiency syndrome or the loss of the menstrual cycle, which is generally bad. Number four, try to get steps, try to be active, try to get outside, no matter what. These are general practices for health and movement that I find to be very, very valuable for both sexes. Lastly, some dietary adjustments can be made depending on which phase of the cycle you are in, and your deficit might not need to be as intense when you are in the luteal phase. So guys, hopefully that gives you some stuff to work with. This is kind of a nice little quick

hitter. I would strongly recommend going back and listening to the episodes I did with Lyle McDonald, talking about PCOS, talking about female training, talking about the period, menstrual cycle, PMS, all of these different things. They're much more in-depth than what we talked about today. This is almost a Cliff Notes version. I very much appreciate your subscription to this podcast, your decision to continue listening to it. If you have not yet already, please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes. If you mostly listen on iTunes, a Spotify subscription takes 10 to 15 seconds, makes a huge difference. And if you are one of my iTunes listeners, please leave me a five-star

rating and written review. It makes all the difference in the world. Hopefully we can help more women find the ability to train intelligently and break free from some of the conventional wisdom and harmful rhetoric in our space. I hope you are well. I hope you are enjoying the holiday season. I am thinking of all of you, sending you the best wishes, and please enjoy this last stretch of 2021 as we head towards the new year. Stay tuned for more.