WHOOP Podcast - Adapting Your Training Throughout All Phases of Your Life with Dr. Stacy Sims

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

This week WHOOP VP of Performance Science Kristen Holmes is joined by exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist Dr. Stacy Sims. Dr. Sims is a leader in the women’s health space who has directed research programs at Stanford, AUT University, and the University of Waikato, focusing on female athlete health and performance and is pushing the dogma to improve research on all women. Kristen and Dr. Sims will discuss the differences in strength between men and women (5:10), how coaches and parents should talk to young girls about puberty (7:10), training through the menstrual cycle (12:15), maintaining fuel and energy during the luteal phase (15:38), the psychological impact of the menstrual cycle (18:40), behaviors people can adopt to stay balanced (21:50), what training modalities you should focus on during each menstrual cycle phase (26:11), reprioritizing how we train when women reach perimenopause and post-menopause (28:52), various training techniques and when to implement them (31:51), protein need and intake (36:53), training during the different stages of menopause (38:30), how to stay active during a chaotic travel schedule (42:25), and certain health risks and factors that come with aging and menopause (46:13).Resources:Stacy's Website Stacy’s BooksTEDx Talk: Women are Not Small MenSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello folks, welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP. If you don't know what WOOP is, check us out at WOOP.com. We build wearable technology. All right, on this week's episode, WOOP, VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes, is joined by exercise physiologist and nutrition scientists, Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Sims is a women's health expert who has directed research programs at Stanford, AUT University, and the University of WICATO, focusing on female athlete health and performance and pushing the dogma to improve research on all women. Dr. Stacey Sims is a member of the WOOP Scientific Advisory Council, and she's also

published over 70 peer-reviewed papers, several books, regularly featured speaker at professional and academic conferences, including those by USAC and USA Cycling. Kristen and Stacey dive in on how men and women have different profiles for building strength, having conversation with young girls around puberty and how it changes their training, women training throughout different stages of their menstrual cycle. This is really interesting. What is the optimal time? to train with heavy lifting or hit workouts and knowing when the body should be recovering. I think women will enjoy this. Tips on how to maintain energy levels during the luteal phase.

How to train while going through parimenopause and during postmenopause. And how Dr. Sims relies on adaptogens when she is traveling and dealing with circadian disruption. So keep in mind, she's traveling from New Zealand to Boston to Amsterdam to D.C. over the next plus week. So you're going to hear how she manages all of that. For all the WOOP members out there, we're also excited to share with you a new update to our app. We have a new home redesign.

We've also introduced heart rate zones and 30-day average comparisons to our strain activities. So those are two new things you're going to be seeing in the Woop app. Make sure you have the latest Woop app, update that in the app store. And go back into some of your old workouts. You're going to be able to see the different zones that you are training in. And of course, you're going to be able to do that for all. new workouts going forwards. If you're new to Whoop, you can use the code Will W-I-L when you're checking out.

Get a $60 credit on W-W-A-W-Ccessaries. Use that credit bans, battery packs, body apparel, and more. That is at whoop.com. If you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-495-2. And without further ado, here are Kristen Holmes and Dr. Stacey Sims. Dr. Stacey Sims is a Ford-thinking international exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who is revolutionizing exercise nutrition and performance for women.

She has directed research programs at Stanford, A.U.T. University and the University of Waikato, focusing on female athlete health and performance and is truly pushing the dogma to improve research for all women. Her contributions to the international research environment and the sports nutrition industry has established a new niche of sports nutrition. and established her reputation as the expert in sex differences in training, nutrition, and health. As a direct result, she has been named one of the top 50 visionaries of the running industry, 2015, by DMSE Sports, one of the top 40 women changing the paradigm of her field, by Outside Magazine, one of the top four visionaries in outdoor sports industry, by Outside Magazine, Genius Issue, and one of the top four individuals changing the landscape in triathlon, nutrition,

by Triathlete magazine. Stacey, so, so honored to have you here today. And I'm here, like, she's actually in person. It's very exciting. It's really exciting. It's so good to see you in the flesh. I know. No more soon.

I feel like we need a screen. I know. It's like so odd. I'm like, thank you. This is really exciting. You know, it's, we've had a lot of conversations around that have been female-focused. But one area that I think we haven't really. truly dug into is just how do we train across the reproductive years, you know, and how does it

change? You know, I imagine when I'm in my 20s versus 30s versus 40s versus 50s, it changes a little bit. So I really wanted to begin to what those changes look like, how data can help us, you know, what are, you know, how do we need to think about nutrition, you know, hydration if you not want to kind of put it all together for folks if we can. I know that's ambitious, but you are the person to kind of help pull it together because of your expertise in all of these areas. So I want to start, you know, you really, I know when I first came to to know Stacey Sims, it was through your TED Talk, which is, you know, this very famous tagline now, women are not small men.

Maybe just start there. Just what are the differences? So I guess when we look at it, we know that there are sex differences in uterone. And then after birth, we still see their sex differences. That's why you have XX versus XY within the biological confines. And they have a direct influence on lung volume, heart size, hemoglobin counts, our biomechanics, brain, brain function, mood. And then when we start getting into puberty and we see epigenetic changes with the exposure of our sex hormones, we see for the most part, boys will lean up. They get stronger bones, they have more aggression, they can have more speed and power.

And then for the girls, our hips widen, our center of gravity changes, our shoulder girdle widens, we put on more body fat, and then we get our period. And so when we start seeing the epigenetic changes that happen with our sex hormones, we also see influence of estrogen, progesterone on things like how we fuel, how we thermoregulate, how we have fluid balance, how our mood changes. neurotransmitters, all of these things that we just say, oh, it's because I'm a woman. But they are direct influences from our genetics when we're born all the way through these epigenetic changes that happen with our sex hormones.

You know, there's the turning point in a girl's life where she becomes a woman. And I think that's, I think what we've seen in the research is that is at the point where girls, women, their participation in sports declines. So what is, how can parents think about that conversation with their daughter? You know, she's entering puberty. She gets her period. Things are changing, you know, in her body. And all of a sudden she maybe feels less confident, you know, her, she doesn't have the coordination that maybe she did previously.

Things are just, what is, how can parents think about that conversation? How can coaches think about that conversation? Yeah, I think one of the biggest missteps is that. When we look at kids that are in the puberty range, we're still using male data and male training protocols. What we should be looking at from a coach's point of view is reteaching fundamentals to our girls, how to run, how to throw, how to jump, how to land. Because we've had these biomechanical changes, so this is why we're seeing girls who feel ungangly, they feel slow, they feel not right in their sport, because they're still trying to work with how their body was

before they've had these biomechanical and muscular changes. So when we start trying to invoke in that conversation, we see changes happening before the actual period starts. So this is why you'll see, like, early days in elementary school, the boys and girls are playing soccer or whatever together on the field. And then when they hit like fifth and sixth grade, no more. It's like the boys are really aggressive and they're pushing. And the girls are like off in their own world,

either, you know, doing monkey bars or trying to play their own soccer again. games, but we've seen this, like, switch. And it's because we're seeing the early exposure of these hormones. So from a parent's point of view, just explaining to your daughter that things are changing because you're growing up. But that doesn't mean that you stop sport. It means that we take a little bit of a pull back and we look at how are we running. Let's work on running drills. Let's work on functional movement. Let's see how you are squatting, how you are landing. And let's start working on that and having the conversation with the coaches, too. Often we see girls that will plateau and then go backwards in their sport, right?

And just encouraging the girls to say, hey, this is just a temporary time. This might be six months to eight months where you're going to stagnate. But during this time, we want to keep working on those fundamental skills. Because if we are working on those fundamental skills in the new body positions, then you can then build the speed, the strength, the power once these changes have occurred. And what do you say to the coach, the parent, the pediatrician who thinks they fix it with hormonal birth control? I want to, yeah. So, I know.

I get so frustrated with the answer of having a neural contracepticill will fix everything because it doesn't. It just masks symptoms. And periods are irregular for the first two years after they start. And yes, they can wreck havoc. And no one can really say, oh, you're going to have a light. bleed, then you're going to have a heavy bleed, and you start to have skin issues, but they're really good dermatologists and topical aspects that you can use. So when we're looking at using an oral contraceptic pill, it's actually down-regulating your own body's ovarian hormones

and rhythms. So these external hormones actually take the place of your natural ones. So it's not really doing anything to, quote, fix a problem. It's masking it. So if there is a health issue that's coming up, irregular periods, heavy bleeds. Investigate that. Because when you come off the pill, those problems are still going to be there. And when we're talking to girls who like, I want to be able to skip my period, well, why? Why is it? Because we know that having a period is a sign that you are healthy, that your indocrine system is responding not only to daily life stress, but also your training stress. So we can use it as a marker of how you are actually responding to training, adapting to training, as well as a load of life.

And if it's a heavy bleeding issue, again, there are things that we can talk about and things that we can do to make it better. Because I don't think that's a conversation that people have, like what is a normal bleed pattern? What does it mean to have heavy bleeding or not? And we might talk about periods, but no one talks about the nuts and bolts of what's happening. So if we have those conversations as well, then we can start to see, is there some kind of

dysfunction that needs to be addressed from medical standpoint, or Or is it just the irregularities that come up as puberty hits and you start getting into your teen years? What kind of skills do you build by exposing yourself to that information? Oh, gosh. I mean, I look at my daughter who's 10, right? And she's having these conversations with her friends trying to get in. Totally. I'm in the same bundle. Yeah. Right. You know. And then her friends have questions and they ask my daughter to ask me because they don't want to ask their mom. So it's like when you have a point. person who can ask his questions and aren't afraid, then I think it's kind of interesting those dynamics. So it just really takes one or two people who are open and having those open conversations across the board, not just about periods and not making it taboo in your

house, because then your daughter will feel comfortable coming and saying, hey, I'm having really bad cramps or I can't sleep or just having a natural conversation about what's going All right. Let's talk about just training and in the context of the menstrual cycle. So for women who are naturally cycling, how do women need to think about their training over the course of their cycle? Before we use like official training words, we can say undulating periodization. Yes. Excellent. So we're talking about menstrual cycle phase-based training. It's not just like how your muscles respond and cardiovascular, but it's also immune cycle. system and the psychological aspect. So we see there's immune system shifts where when you start

your bleed or day one, you have an immune system response that now is very effective at taking care of pathogens, virus bacteria. And then it lasts all the way up to ovulation. And after ovulation, it switches and there's a pro-inflammatory higher cytokine response, primarily because the body's like, well, I don't want an attack a fertilized egg. So you have this incredible ship in your immune system. So we're looking at it from a stress resilient point of view. In the low hormone phase, the body is very stress resilient. Its whole goal in that low hormone phase is to create a very robust environment for a fertilized day. So this is the time where we can hit it hard. We can do heavy lifting. We can do high intensity work. We see better

recovery. We see in phase-based resistance training, better muscular responses with hypertrophy and pure strength development. We see from a high-intensity aspect that people can hit higher loads during the low-hormone time frame. And the goal of training is to be able to hit higher loads and stress the body to adapt.

If we're talking about performance, that's a different conversation. So after ovulation, though, when we start having this immune system change, we have changes in our neurotransmitters, changes in mood, changes in cognition, and also changes in metabolism when we start to rely more on free fatty acids and less than hydrate, this is where we need

to get, okay, well, I'm going to do some more steady state work. I'm going to do maybe not 80% of 1RM, but maybe 70% 1RM. And then as we start getting closer and closer to the onset of the bleed, maybe the four or five days before, when we have a peak of those hormones and before they drop off, this is where we want to delode, where we want to look at functional work, we want to look at total recovery to absorb all the hard training from the previous weeks. And of course, there are caveats in there for women who feel absolutely awful in the first few days of their period, then that's fine. You're not going to go hit it hard.

But maybe doing a couple of 20-second surges here and there is really good because it creates an anti-inflammatory response in the body that helps with the cramping, with the inflammation that's still there. And some women feel bulletproof the day before their period starts. So don't delode that day. Go hit it hard. So you have your own nuances, but when we look at the general scope, we go low hormone, really stress resilient, leading into maybe not quite so resilient need to take care of ourselves in the days leading up to the next bleed. Extend recovery, potentially.

What are some other kind of modalities folks can do to just kind of help themselves through that ludial phase where they might not be quite as primed but can still maintain, you know, energy levels to, if they're in a situation, maybe say they were sick during the flickering phasing, weren't able to go as hard, and they need to make some gains for a competition. You know, what would you recommend, how do they buffer kind of that stress, like what would be some protocols you put in place? Yeah, so this is where we look from a nutritional strategy, and we know that carbohydrate availability is massive when we're looking at the ludial phase. So we need to increase the amount of carbohydrate we're eating in and around training, primarily

because women's bodies clear blood sugar out quickly before they start to tap in the free fatty acid. So if we don't have available carbohydrate, then we can't actually get into the metabolism we need to hit high intensity. We also know that there's a 12% increase in protein needs because our body is in a more catabolic state because we're trying to build this tissue so the body's in a heightened state, there's an elevation in metabolism. So increasing your carbohydrate and protein is a way to kind of level the playing field. When we talk about motivation and cognition, if we are having regular doses of protein, then we're also having higher circulations of leucine that crosses the blood-brain barrier and helps create a better cognition

and a better motivation because it reduces triptophan crossing and reduces the fatigue and the experiences women have when they have estrogen that comes up and then drops off. Three grams of leucine per meal would be the recommendation roughly. Yeah. Okay. And that's turkey. What are some just examples of, you know, proteins that have high concentration alucina? Oh, wash. You can look at like tempe has it, tokam has it, all your meat products, right? So we're looking at just really high quality proteins. Okay. Cool. Talk a little bit about electrolytes during that ludial phase as an important kind of strategy. We know that progesterone increases the amount.

of sodium that gets kicked out of the body. So we want to make sure that you're salting your food on a regular basis, so you're bringing in more sodium to keep potassium and sodium in more line. We've also seen a recent research that it's not magnesium and calcium that can really affect premenstrual syndrome, but vitamin D status. So for looking at increasing our vitamin D,

which is not an electrolyte, but I'm bringing it into the conversation anyway. Increasing your vitamin D, then it also attenuates the inflammation, in the PMS aspects. That's cool. You mentioned psychology. And, of course, this is an area where I spend a lot of my ties.

And belief effects. You know, it is a psychological component to the menstrual cycle just generally. And I think all this information is obviously super critical, right? The more you understand your body and understand the outerline mechanisms, like, the more proactive you can be around your own progress, right? Right. But I think they're also, like, you kind of get an athlete's, right? heads, I think. So maybe talk through what are some of the conversations you've had with some of the

top athletes in the world around, you know, how to think about these different phases of the natural cycle and how to overcome maybe some of these, you know, beliefs that are not going to be as sharp, you know, during the space. Yeah. I just on a segue on that, one of my PhD students is the performance dietitian for some of the top teams in New Zealand for the professional teams and they were going out for a massive international game and two of them came up I'm like oh you know I don't feel that great because my period is starting he's like what are you kidding me this is the best day to go out and kill it and I did oh I love it just like that affirmation of what do you mean I can and so just breaking down those barriers so yeah this is what I mean by

performance is different training because training you can work with your hormones and the idea behind it is to work to be able to increase the loads when your body can take it on to adapt so you get better fitness, and you're not fighting. When we're talking about performance, we know that the belief and affirmation, plus all the other things you've done to get to that one point in time supersede of hormonal effects. This is why you're seeing in literature, there's no menstrual cycle phase effect on performance, which is absolutely true that one point in time, if you have the mental skills and you have prepped really well, then there's no negative effect. It's a very small underlying effect. The problem comes when people are getting that performance.

and training kind of mixed up where an athlete is like, oh, I always feel really flat on day 23. So my main event is on day 23. What do I do? It's like, okay, well, first we need to change the mindset. We're training. We do something different than what we do on the day of performance. So if you feed flat, well, then we look at increasing branching amino acids. We look at increasing carbohydrate availability. We look at the taper and the sleep leading up to it. So all the controllables we actually control. And then they go and they're firing. When they get that and they understand, hey, wait, yes, there is a difference between training and performance and I can conform on any day of my menstrual cycle. Even if day one

bleeding is super heavy, there are things we can do in the cycles leading up to it to reduce the heaviness of the bleed. So there's, yeah, it's that that conversation in the belief system of performance is completely different and we can nail it on any day of the menstrual cycle and training is something separate. I love it. I mean, and that's really, and that's really, and And that's where I think this whole conversation has changed. Like, there's, there's planning, you know, and we're planning around not just these arbitrate, you know, these dates of when these competitions are, but we're actually planning around how can I optimize these different in the lead-up of that event. How can I optimize my training, my sleep, my recovery, all the things that are going to impact me on the day of the race anyway, you know, how can I do those things as consistent as possible? So I have these less, you know, egregious perturbations across my training cycle.

And I think that's really the opportunity, you know, when you think about all these behaviors that are really foundational, you know, for every day of the month, you know, and we need to give ourselves some leeway you're in there. But I think there are really a set of kind of non-negotiables and you hit on them a little bit sleep. But if you want to just expand on, you know, if we're really trying to be as consistent as possible and minimize the perturbations across the entire cycle, what are just some like cornerstone behavior? viewers that you would recommend athletes and just individuals generally adopt. Oh, like fueling for what you're doing, especially female athletes across the board, right? Because fueling for your activity requirement. Right, exactly. I totally agree with that. I mean, even more research backs, like, don't too fast a training because you don't get the adaptations, even a little bit of protein before resistance training increases your epoch afterwards.

So there are so much robust research out there that really shows women should not do fast at training. So you're training for the activity, you're recovering from it, that's critical because it keeps you out of a low energy state. It keeps the hypothalamus understanding that there's nutrition coming in so it feeds forward to better endocrine health. And then sleep, of course, super important. I mean, the sleep research is still relatively new with regards to everything because we don't actually know why we need to sleep. We just know that we need to sleep, right? And there's all these mechanisms within it. So those are the two big things for female athletes, the two big rocks.

Can we go back to Shuling for a second? Yeah. Because I think, you know, one of my, you know, I'm kind of circadian health things, right? That's what I've been research for studies. So one of my frustrations is that we seem to conflate kind of intermittent fasting and time restricted eating. Absolutely. Time restricted eating, obviously has a circadian component and is wildly beneficial.

Intermittent fasting has a calorie component or restricting calories in an in rare fasting. So maybe just talk about, I think, the opportunities for women who are looking to really optimize across, you know, the days, you know, try to be as consistent as good as they possibly can, you know, across the month. Maybe talk about the opportunity that exists with time-restricted eating. Yeah. So, I mean, there is that big misconception that intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating aren't the same thing. But we know it's not. There was a study that came out in nature, maybe six weeks. ago that was looking at time differences and showing that for those people who fueled mainly

before noon, then- Bias in the morning, other, yeah, biased calories in the morning. Yeah, reduced obesity, better sleep, better lean mass, all of these things, right. All of these things. All those. Every boss. And melatonin production. Yes. Every box. Right. So, like, I get. I know. We do. I know, because I think what's tough and, you know, shoot, I've been experimenting with all this stuff, you know, and I look at the research and I'm like, and I'm like, oh, shit, that was all on dudes. Oh, those on mice, you know. And, um, but when we, you know, now I think we're starting to kind of get to a point where we're, there's some good research, you know,

that's coming out. That's, um, that has both men and women. And we can kind of see the differences. But I love that Dr. Andy Galpin, too, in a recent interview mentioned, um, that the whole notion that we shouldn't be eating carbohydrates before we train is just nonsense. It is. It doesn't make any. There's a big no basis for that. at all. So, yeah, I think we miss opportunities, you know, when we're kind of training in these depleted states. Absolutely. And it's the whole, like, let's take health research and pull into the fitness world. And it doesn't work. Because if you see fasted training from someone who's trying to get insulin control, yes, possibly. For someone who needs to

lose a lot of body fat, then yes, possibly. But we mean, bringing into a healthy population that's active, it just doesn't work. And that's what we're starting to see more and more in the active research and which makes me so happy yeah and we need we need that nuance right like i think people need to accept that hey we can't just throw everything into a bucket whether the fitness bucket the health bucket the wellness bucket like you have there's just different needs across those buckets and we have to be able to we need to understand the science that exists one of those buckets and go from there and i think we have to be careful not to kind of complete you know, these difference is for buckets. Okay, great. So training, that's awesome. Let's like

dig in. We're going to talk a little bit more about sleep, but on the fueling side, if I'm just kind of a general fitness enthusiast, you know, I'm trying to get, you know, stronger and faster and, you know, improve my cardiac basketball strength, would you say that I should maybe lift more weight stirring kind of ventis and ovulation? And, you know, is there, should I prioritize, like, the different training legalities across the month, would you say? If we're trying to really get power and speed, and then we do want to prioritize the lifting in the follicular phase. Okay, that's what I'm going to be kind of strongest, essentially, most prime to kind of

tick on those gains. And we are seeing research from ACL rehab all the way through, like someone who's just trying to get muscle gains, where if you're prioritizing the lifting in the follicular phase, get better hypertrophy and muscular control. So central nervous system for all the control proprioception plus the size of the muscle. We're looking at the high intensity work. It hasn't quite been done yet. We're looking at what is the best for your true sprint interval and high intensity anaerobic training. If we look at the research that surrounds it, then it also makes sense from a metabolic standpoint to do your anaerobic capacity.

in the follicular phase as well when you can access carbohydrate better. I feel like my track workouts are just, they're just better than that. I just feel. I always like, I plan my, yeah. And I just do kind of the longer, slow stuff and luteal, yeah.

But I always put in skill-based work in the luteal phase when my body is most fatigued from a central nervous system and proprioception. Because if I'm really trying to explain proporeception because that might be a term.

So progerception is like your balance and like far past. those kinds of things. So I work on my Olympic lifting technique in the ludial phase with light, almost no weight on the bar. So I can really nail the bar path. So then when I go into the follicular phase

and I load it, that bar path and that pattern is firing really well because I've thought it that when it was a little bit compromised. So when we look at technique, a lot of people like, oh, do technique in the low hormone phase because you're really on par. It's like, well, yes,

if you really want to develop technique when you're fatigued, work when your body is a little bit more fatigued. And I put a lot of the steel-based stuff for my athletes in that mid to late ludial phase when they're deloading. So then I'm like, well, why don't it is? And it's like, well, let's see what happens when you get in the gym during the your bleed week. And they're like, oh my gosh, yeah, I see what you mean.

So how does this change? So obviously we're really focused on, you know, women with the menstrual cycle. How does this change and folks start to inconsistent periods? So kind of getting into perimenopause and then once the period ends, how do things change? How do we need to reprioritize how we train? Yeah, so we do. We do, definitely. So when we're looking at perimenopause, we look at early and late perimenopause.

So early perimenopause is often when a woman's like, I don't understand what's going on, but my training and my nutrition, I just can't. can't do what I used to do. Starting to put on a little bit of abdominal fat. I can't lift the loads. I always feel tired. So this is what we start to kind of investigate on a periodization standpoint of, okay, we need to change the recovery aspect.

So we need to increase recovery, drop some of the volume. But we can still phase-based train because you're still having a regular cycle. When we get into late perimenopause, so this is about the five years before that one-point time menopause. We start to see changes in bleed patterns. we start to see changes in the entire cycle. So this is where we can't really phase-based train. So we are having more and more in ovulatory cycles.

So for having in ovulatory cycles, of course, we're not producing progesterone. And we start to have a change in a ratio of estrogen and progesterone. So this is where we look and say, okay, well, this is the time where we see biggest amount of body composition shift. We see more abdominal adiposity, a greater amount of lean mass loss. we see a little bit of insulin resistance coming into play. And we need to look and say, what kind of external stressors can I provide my body

that is going to create the adaptations that these hormones use to support? So this is where we really get into prioritizing power-based resistance training. We're lifting heavy loads. We want a central nervous system response because if we're looking at recruiting more fibers and having a central nervous system response, then we're not as reliant on estrogen to do that for us.

When we're looking at how are we mitigating these body composition changes, we need to stay out of that moderate intensity zone. Because if we're doing modern intensity, which is your typical F-45 Orange Theory hit class, then you're just really going to increase cortisol and stay in a sympathetic drive. If we're polarizing and really going true high-intensity interval training or sprint interval training or maximum capacity, like flat out.

Full gas, right? Yeah. Then you're going to get epigenetic changes within the muscle that increases your insulin resistance. It also increases your body's ability to store carbohydrate, reduces the signal for abdominal adiposity. And so this is where we start really going. You need to drop volume, totally drop volume because you want to be able to do heavy loads

and high-intensity cardiovascular work. And even for my endurance athletes, we go two weeks on where we're doing quality work and then one week of a delode where we are very low intensity. And if you're training for a marathon, you're training for an ultra, then we have more time on the feet. And just talk real quick about recovery periods and how to manipulate that for different effects. You know, yeah.

So if we're doing sprint interval training and we're really trying to maximize that, you want to make sure that you are doing your 30 seconds or less. is super maximal, as hard as you can go, and your recovery is enough to recover central nervous system. So some women you'll see doing these heavy, heavy sprints, they'll go like 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 30 seconds. Now, that's not what time. That's high intensity. That's high intensity. Yeah, high intensity training. Yes. And sprint and real training are two different things. Yes. So sprints, we're doing 30 seconds on and like two minutes off. Complete recovery. You're after like absolute quality. Yes. And you might be able to do four.

when you first start. And then you're like, boom, I'm completely done, which is great. That's fine. And then when we're talking about high intensity interval training, wait, let's talk. So I tend to prioritize sprint interval training because I feel like there's a bit more return. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So maybe just talk because I don't think people really do sprinted interval training. I think people are intimidated by it. But I think we just need to get the ladies out there sprinting because of all the things that are happening metabolically and whenever system standpoint. So if you want to talk a little bit about that, just kind of inspire people to get out there and do sit. Yeah, I know. It's like, don't pull a hamstring, phase your way

into it. Would you recommend? I used to do this with my athletes at Princeton. When they would come back from a long break, we would always start uphill sprinting to shorten the gate. You know, so it's just really hard to overstride when you're sprinting uphill. So I think that could be actually a good place to start with sit. And stairs. And stairs. Yeah. Yeah. And my cyclist in the off season, right, because there's snow on the ground. I have them run stairs. Like do sprints up the stairs because it's still maintaining that sprint capacity. It's more of that short cycling capacity and there's a low risk of injury. So when people like, well, I can't sprint, it's like, well, you start with stairs or uphill and maybe you're power walking first and then you start the high

intensity like trying to run the stairs. Run up, walk down, run up, walk down. And it is about shortening the gate, about not tearing anything, the shorter stride, will be driving the knees up, thinking about put to knee, foot to knee, foot to knee. And you get so many great benefits from it. You get greater rebound, power. You can then go do box jumps, right? Because you're developing all that power and that reflex that people need. Body composition. Yeah. I always bring it back to when spinning first started in the 90s and it took off like a storm because all of a sudden people were doing high-intensity work, and the body fat was just, foo, pulling, and body recont. So now that, you know, people are like, oh, spinning now.

And now you're seeing all these, like, hit classes, and there's even some sprint interval stuff. Les Mills has a strength development specific stream and a sprint interval specific stream. And those are the two where I'm like, this is fantastic, because they're on demand and in the studios. It's like, I wish other gyms would follow suit because it kind of messed up. and the hit stuff. But yes, sprint. Sorry, I sidetracked, but sprint interval training. No, it's good. I can sidetracked you. But I, um, so would you say how many times a week should you do hit? How many times a week should you do sit? And when should you do your zone two and your strength? What would be kind of the optimal? And maybe it depends depending on where you

are in your cycle. We kind of talked about that a little bit. But if let's say I want to do all these things across the week, what would be your advice? Yeah. So if we're looking perimenophase and menopause, we go a two week block right so in one week we're doing minimum three heavy resistance training two sprint interval and maybe one hit or two hits and one sprint so it's a variable on those intensities and you can back up a resistance training session with sprint interval training so you can do your heavy lifting in the gym and then jump on a bike elliptical treadmill whatever it is and do your sprint interval training. And after the strength training, ideally, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. So it's you're in and out of the gym in an hour and you have two recessions. Then the next week you might, you know, if you're blocked training your squats or whatever, you're still doing your three times a week, heavy resistance load. And then maybe you want to do two hits in one set. So

it's a variable in those two weeks. And then that last or that third week where we're talking about that delode, this is where it's all recovery. modality. So you're in the gym because it's in your plan, but instead of doing heavy loads, you're doing technique under the bar. And then this is where if you're training for something long or you just need soul food where you keep it very, very easy when you go out for your longer session. And how do you, how would you recommend, you know, for those delode weeks or those

kind of taper weeks? How do nutrition requirements change there for submenopause, perimenopause? it's always about the protein. You keep the protein elevated. We're looking at two to two and a half grams for kilogram of body weight. So it's a little over that one gram per pound consistently. I hear people say, because we've been talking about that a lot, and there's lots of good information, I think, out there or starting to get out there about the importance of protein.

And that feels like a lot of protein for a lot of women. But you can't really have too much protein for one. I understand. I haven't found any evidence of that in the literature. No. No. And I mean, there's been some studies that have been done in the Florida State University group where they've brought the women up to 3.3 to 3.5 grams per helix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no negative fix. People like, what about my kidneys? Like, unless you have an undercurrent of kidney disease and then, yeah, you have to watch. There's no issues on bone. There's no issue on kidney. It's just you up it. And we also see like when you go to altitude,

you need more protein if you're in a heavy block of resistance training, peeking it up to that three grams really helps with body recompense strength. And I think it's because it's been in the bodybuilding set for so much, like high protein, you're going to get bulky. So women are afraid. But unless you are eating an abundance of food and training super, super consistently hard and focused, you're not going to get bulky. Okay.

So if I can only do, let's say I'm in one pause and I can only do, three workout sessions a week. I can only work out three times. What do I prioritize? Resistance training? Absolutely. Great. Yeah. For body recomp, for metabolic control, brain health, specifically because of the central nervous system connections and neural growth factor that comes through resistance training, seeing how it really attenuates Alzheimer's risks. We see it's better for appropriate reception and quality of life when you get older. So if you happen to slip and step off a curve wrong, you don't fall and break a hip.

So there's so many beneficial things about just doing the resistance. There's a neuroprotective effect. Exactly. Yeah. And when I travel, that's all I do. I find a gym, I'm like, I don't want to get lost running. I don't want to pull something. I don't get retired.

Let's just go lift heavy. I think it's a great default. And I think for, you know, for women who are listening who are in their teens and 20s and 30s, like, get comfortable lifting. Like, don't wait until you're like, oh, my God, I have to really start lifting because I'm at this point of no return right now. and I'm going to have a pause, and I'm struggling, and I realize that the cure is actually resistant training, get that going as early as possible. Right.

Quit making every gym a bro gym. Like, the one I was in this morning, there were two women, me and this other younger woman who was in the upstairs weight room. There are a few on the treadmill, but I mean, in the weight room. I was like, we're surrounded by dudes, but I'm going to monopolize this one lifting platform because I'm going to. I love it. That's great. Okay, so what do we mess in terms of training and perimenopause and menopause? Like, what else do women need to know?

I think one of the questions I often get a lot is, what about me? I've had a hysterectomy. And people are like, I don't, where do I fit? If you still have your ovaries from hysterectomy, then you can still track your cycle. You're still ovulating. You still have your ovarian hormones. If you have had a hysterectomy, have your ovaries, and you're in your mid to late 40s, and we know that it's perimenopausal, so you can still track.

But we really preference you to train like your perimenopause into menopause. If you've had a total hysterectomy, this is what we call medical menopause. And you go into surgery, naturally cycling, and you wake up, boom, menopausal. And the first six months is absolutely crazy. Your body is completely going wackadoo because you haven't had the lead in that paraminopause has to downregulate some of your estrogen receptors. So if you can, you talk to your physician about using menopause hormone therapy up to an age appropriate where they're like, okay, you're probably menopausal, we can tape

you up or not, but definitely need to prioritize the heavy resistance in protein to really minimize this body composition changes that happen with the immediacy of medical medical. So when we're looking at hysterectomy, it depends on what has a body composition changes that has been taken and what has not. And we look at the eye of if you're naturally cycling with ovaries or what your age is versus that immediate medical menopause. Sleep. You know, sleep is really important for exercise capacity and other important functions. You have just flown from New Zealand to Boston. And then you go Boston to Amsterdam, Amsterdam of D.C., D.C. to London. That is going to be your schedule in the coming week.

So how do you think about travel and sleep and training? You know, talk people through like, how do you think about fueling and training just so you can kind of keep yourself? Because you're not just visiting these cities for fun. Like, you're going and speaking on huge platforms in front of loads of people. Like these are things. No, no, but it's not like you're just going to see the, you know, big Ben. And, like, you're actually, you're really having to perform.

So how do you manage some of these variables that are really challenging? Yeah, yeah. I really rely on adaptogens because I was exposed to adaptogens when I was doing my postdoc at Stanford. Oh, so many years ago. I don't want to count all the years. But I'm a huge fan of Rodeola, a huge fan of Aschaganda, and a huge fan of Shashondra. So I use Rodeola really to help with sleep. and the stress and the calming

I use it on the plane I use it when I'm trying to go to sleep in the new time zone so 640 milligrams I think is the kind of a going rate and then ashta gone across the board to help with stress Shashandra I used to wake up instead of caffeine

because I'm diehard espresso person like love it and so instead of going I need coffee coffee coffee coffee because I know that's going to interfere with sleep then I'll have whatever time I wake up I'll have double espresso with Shashondra and then as I started to get more and more tired throughout the day, I'll have another dose of Shashondra. Because it increases function and of, you know, like, brain function

and the focus that people need. Won't interfere with sleep onset. Right. Exactly. It'll allow you to continue to build that sleep pressure. Yeah. Yeah. And I really like try to be ignorant of what my old time zone was. So I wake up and be like, okay, it's 8 o'clock, stare at the sun. Do everything in her new times in terms of light and fueling and training and yeah so all your alert activities are happening when you're new doing zone's alert yeah yeah and i prioritize protein as well because when your brain is tired and your body's tired you create carbohydrate but if you're really focusing on the protein helps with energy levels helps kind of eliminate the carbohydrate cravings and also helps

keep you going yeah because your your brain isn't when you're traveling your default is is not going to be to do the healthier things. Right. And that's where you've got a really conscious and bite because those things that aren't healthier are really going to, it's going to obviously delaying your ability to kind of adapt to your new environment. Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, that's really, that's great advice. And then just talk about training. So you just, you know, this morning you got up in Boston time and you went to the gym. Yeah. Yeah. So just.

I took a walk in the sun. It was freezing cold. I'm not used to real winter. And there's a snow advisory. I'm like, what? I'm going to do snow. Is there a snow advisory? Yeah, tonight.

Stop. What? Storm coming. It's because I'm here. Sorry. I know. Yeah. Staring at the sun.

So I walked to the gym, got to the gym. I didn't want to do anything high intense because I was having head swings, you know, jet lag head swings. Yeah. Right? So it's just all heavy lifting central nervous system. Five by fives, five by six is total body movement. And then some modality, mobilization, walk home the long way in the sun. and then I felt really tired and fell asleep.

But anyway, that's a set. It does happen. All right. Well, we talk about the health risk factors during perimenopause and menopause related to osteoporosis, heart disease. There was recently a really interesting study on postmenopauseal women. I don't know if you saw this, Stacey, but they looked at women did back strength and exercises for two years.

showed that their risk for spinal compression fractures was 2.7 times lower than their peers who didn't do strengthening exercises because it's not surprising. Then another study of high intensity resistance and impact, I think like with pliometric, improved markers of bone strength in post-menopausal women with low and very low bone mass with no adverse effects. I think it just kind of reinforces all the things that you said that, you know, can kind of help it if there's what kind of context or anything in addition you want to add. to that. One of my PhD students just finished. Her defense was a couple of weeks ago, and her

project was looking at early versus late post-menopausal women with high-intensity work and cardiovascular respectors. So she's based, she's Canadian based in Copenhagen. And so their big social game is floorball or floor hockey. So she had two groups come in and they're either doing floor ball or spinning. There wasn't a resistance training component because that comes later and found that in early postmenopause, the high intensity of

like true high intensity really worked to increase vascular compliance and reduce cardiovascular risk factors. Late post menopausal, no. Not the amount of times they did. We need more. It's a dose response. And the reason

the hypothesis is that when you are early postmenopause, you still have some estrogen receptors that are playing around and can really work with the nitric oxide cycle for increasing vascular or vascular compliance, but in late postmenopause, you don't have those receptors. So you need more doses of shorter intensity, high intensity work to like, I should say more sprint intensity and more doses of the sprint intensity. So it's an exposure thing. So instead of going, okay, well, I'm going to do two days a week of sprint interval training. It's more like you want to do four days a week when you get into late. Post-minis. It's crazy. I mean, I guarantee that there is probably not 0.000 of the population and the very, you know,

that kind of training. I know, I know. And I really get frustrated at the 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity at the baseline. Based on due data. And it just does not work for women who are 45 and all. That is just such a critical piece. I mean, I hope people listen to this whole podcast so they get to that moment

because I think that's really important. Like, I just don't think, I don't, you don't hear that. No. And people are like, oh, you're going to have my 7-year-old grandmother or my 80-year-old grandmother sprint. It's like, yeah, they can walk upstairs at a high intensity for them. I'm not saying running sprints.

I'm saying high intensity for them. When I think about markers of longevity, speed. I want to stay as fast as you would be possible, right? Right. You know, like, I think that that's so, so critical. Yeah. Nice. So it just to kind of wrap, Stacey, this has been, I think, wildly insightful.

Is there anything that you want to leave the audience with that you think, you know, we miss out or, you know, that just is going to help inspire people to really adopt a intentional, like, program for training? I think one of the things is we have now the buzzword of intuitive eating. Right? Where people are listening to their appetite, I think we have to have intuitive, just body. Because people will need to listen and understand their bodies, both men and women, but particularly women, because they've been told for so long what to do and fighting against their physiology because they've been told what to do. But if they're starting to listen and understand what's happening across their cycles, what's happening in perimenopause, then they can start training according to one, how they feel and how their body responds to get to. get more potential, to get more performance potential, because I really don't think that we've reached it yet in female athletes, because we've been training with male protocols for so long. We're leaving stuff on the table. Great. Yeah, I know. I think when I think about it in

those terms, like, how do we help women of all ages, maximize their potential? And I think that there's an incredible opportunity right now to leverage this science that is coming out. Yeah, exactly. And I'm glad that there is. coming out now. Well, thank you so much for all your time today, and it's just going to be a great one. Thanks for having me. It's fun. Big thank you to Dr. Stacey Sims for coming on the WOOP podcast and sharing her insights on how women can develop a better training program alongside their menstruation. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, be sure to leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the WOOP podcast. You can check us out on social at Woop at Will Ahmed. If you have a question,

you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcast at whoop.com call us 508 443 4952 new members can use the code will W ILL when they sign up for a new WOOP membership and that's a wrap for this week thank you all for listening we'll catch you next week on the WOOP podcast as always stay healthy and stay in the green Thank you.