Training for the Individual: Women Are Not Small Men… But Women Are People Too

In This Chapter

• How to understand and plan training around the menstrual cycle without overcomplicating it
  
  
• Why individual variability is more important than any general model and how to recognise your own patterns
  
  
• How to use tools like the EBR planning spreadsheet and tracking apps to connect data, context, and intuition
  
  
• Strategies for managing training when cycles are irregular, suppressed, or transitioning through menopause
  
  
• Real-world lessons from professional coaches and athletes, including Karen Darke, demonstrating that awareness and flexibility outperform rigid templates

1. A New Way to Think About Difference

Stacey Sims coined the phrase: “Women are not small men” , which is designed to shape how coaches and athletes talk about female physiology. It is a useful reminder that women respond differently to training loads, nutrition, and recovery cycles. But it is also incomplete. Because while women aren’t small men, they are fundamentally people; each with unique responses, circumstances, and internal rhythms that defy simple generalisations.

In endurance sports, individuality matters more than category. Hormonal fluctuations, life stress, sleep, work, parenting, emotional energy and many other factors can all shape performance more profoundly than any single biological factor. The art of planning and executing great training, performance and coaching is understanding underlying generalities but focusing primarily on an individual’s lived reality.

The best training respects physiology and serves individuality.

2. Beyond Generalisation

Modern sports science has made huge strides in understanding female physiology from menstrual cycle effects to perimenopausal changes. However, there is wide variability: some women experience major performance swings and emotional rollercoasters, while others notice almost none. 

Too often, we see training advice either ignore hormonal fluctuations completely, or reduced to templates: train harder in the follicular phase, recover in the luteal phase, and so on. This oversimplifies or overcomplicates reality. 

Learn how your personal response is more valuable than learning a formula.

Understanding and Planning Around the Menstrual Cycle

For many female athletes, the menstrual cycle is one of several repeating rhythms that influence how the body adapts to training. It isn't a limitation, it is a framework. Tracking your feelings and responses during your monthly cycle allows you and those around you to recognise patterns in energy, recovery, and mood, and to adapt training to work with physiology rather than against it.

The Cycle as a Training Signal

The typical 28-day cycle (though many vary from 21 to 35 days) includes fluctuating levels of oestrogen and progesterone that affect temperature regulation, recovery rate, and fuel usage. 

Broadly speaking:

• Early Follicular Phase (Days 1–7): Low hormones; energy and tolerance for intensity often improve toward the end of this phase. Some athletes prefer lower-load or technical work early in this week.
• Mid to Late Follicular Phase (Days 8–14): Rising oestrogen supports strength and coordination — ideal for higher-intensity training and key sessions.
• Luteal Phase (Days 15–28): Rising progesterone and body temperature can increase perceived exertion and reduce tolerance to heat and dehydration. Focus shifts to endurance, aerobic sessions, and recovery.

(Adapted from Sims, S. ROAR, 2016, and McNulty et al., Frontiers in Physiology, 2020)

These are not rules but descriptions of typical average patterns. Every woman experiences things differently. Tracking your individual patterns and responses, combined with a flexible plan to change when things happen less regularly can lead to significant benefits, either discovering that your period isn’t a big deal, or realising that small, timely adjustments at the right time can lead to a much happier and successful approach to your sport.

Tracking and Personal Pattern Recognition

Modern training diary and period-tracking apps make it increasingly easy to record patterns in mood, fatigue, performance and sleep. Over a few months, these records become a personal dataset that can transform training effectiveness and event performances.

At Endurance Bike & Run, we integrate this into our training planning spreadsheet, which includes a female-specific column. You can download a copy by following this link (look for the women's planner tab).

Tracking your responses and feelings gives an understanding that can then be incorporated into the planning tools. Over time, the process can be iteratively improved as feedback and adaptation becomes better and better understood. Learning when recovery takes longer, and how nutrition or stress affects each phase.

Unfortunately, no amount of tracking and planning can change the date of your events, so another big part of the process is accepting that things might not be perfect on race day, but knowing that in itself will give you the ability to cope.

“Awareness is empowerment. When athletes log how they feel and recover across several cycles, they make smarter decisions and are able to take more control.”

Figure 1. Example menstrual-cycle overlay in intervals.icu.

Manual entries for Period and Ovulating phases allow an athlete to visualise how fitness, fatigue, and mood vary over time. This example demonstrates how manual inputs and subjective notes reveal trends that guide better planning decisions. Data shown for demonstration purposes only.

Figure 2. Example daily wellness log.

Simple manual ratings for sleep, soreness, fatigue, stress, and mood provide the subjective context behind the training data shown in Figure 1.

Applying Awareness to Training Plans

Once patterns are visible, you can make small, strategic adjustments:

• Schedule testing or hard intervals during known high-energy phases.
• Use recovery or technique work during low-motivation days or when fatigue trends upward.
• Adjust nutrition — slightly more carbohydrates and hydration in the luteal phase, if that works for you, for example.

These refinements help you focus on training consistently well rather than occasionally perfectly, and consistency is what builds endurance performance.

“Individual awareness isn’t just a women’s issue; it's fundamental for everyone.”

Download our planning spreadsheet and pair it with your training plans to test your theories and turn self-awareness into performance insight.

3. Translating Awareness into Training Plans

The foundation of effective training: your body adapts to the situations you place it in. The “right situation” depends on the individual; not just gender, but genetics, age, training history, sleep quality, nutrition and mental load.

At Endurance Bike & Run, every athlete profile starts with a conversation, not a test protocol. Data (power, heart rate, training load) is paired with narrative: how someone feels, recovers, eats, and manages stress. No algorithm can know what actually works for an individual human being.

Tracking is Useless Without Action

Recording how you feel through your menstrual cycle, recovery trends, and training responses is valuable only when it influences decisions. Small, well-timed adjustments make the biggest difference. It’s not about rebuilding your training plan each month, it’s about recognising when to lean in and when to ease off. What small things can you do better each week that compound into performance gains in the future?

Tracking doesn’t replace training plans, it makes them smarter.

Integrating Tracking with Planning

A problem with many training diary applications is that they don’t pick up trends underlying basic training data very well. With so many AI tools and wellness metrics available, it’s surprising how few platforms highlight the patterns that matter.

Perhaps one of the best tools to use is intervals.icu, see Figures 1. and 2. It is possible to configure their fitness graph to include both measured and subjective metrics as custom charts that align with given time periods. Looking over several months can start to give valuable insights when combined with review of fully subjective, free form comments about life events and feelings.

At Endurance Bike & Run, we use AI tools to look for patterns and triggers to create our Traffic Light system for our Premium clients. With a bit of ingenuity you can do this for yourself by exporting training data or taking a screenshot of the training data graphs and combining that with a download of your daily comments, or even better, an online journal of daily thoughts and feelings.

As you start to understand all these factors and identify what is most at play you can include that in your plan. The women-specific column allows you to see where you are in your cycle and make additional notes about energy, mood, or recovery. It requires some manual input to highlight important events and information but the effort is worth it to see everything in your planning process.

A simple method works best:

• Use colour codes to highlight energy levels (green for strong, yellow for neutral, red for fatigued).
  
  
• Add brief comments—for example: “felt flat, bad sleep” or “good energy, strong legs.”
  
  
• After a few months, patterns emerge. You may notice you’re often tired in week three, or that your long rides go best just before ovulation. That’s powerful feedback.
  
  

Once patterns are visible, adjust training days instead of sessions. For instance, if hard workouts regularly land on low-energy days, shift them forward or back by a day or two. This simple tweak can prevent burnout and increase consistency.

One simple way of dealing with your period if you find you struggle just before it starts, like many people, is to plan an easy week for the week you expect it to start. Keep it flexible and adjust the subsequent weeks once you start your period.

Creating Training Cycles in the Real World

There is a lot of complex discussion about periodisation in sports training, phasing and all sorts of other ‘scientific’ stuff. However, we find that there are often natural structures in life that either outweigh the theory or completely remove certain options.

For example, most of us have different activities at weekends and during the week even if we aren’t constrained by our own working weeks. Events are often at weekends and if we want to join social or other group sessions these may occur on certain days. For that reason, some form of weekly cycle makes sense.

This also helps us learn and adjust the routines. If you are always tired on Tuesdays you don’t want your hard session on that day, or if you do, you need to change the rest of the week to make yourself not tired on Tuesdays, if possible.

Our bodies also like routines and habits, so having a weekly routine makes it easier to stay consistent by removing complications, obstacles and part of the decision process.

Once you have a weekly routine, the rest is often dictated by other factors like events, personal commitments and of course any hormonal cycles at play.

You can use the planning spreadsheet, or any other training planner to include these commitments and overlay your menstrual cycle to make sensible decisions about specific training sessions and volume. 

Figure 3. Integrating menstrual-cycle awareness into a structured training plan.

A simplified version of the EBR planning spreadsheet showing how weekly training structure, colour-coded intensity, and cycle tracking can coexist in one view. The “Cycle Tracker” and “Focus/Notes” columns prompt awareness and flexible adjustment without altering the overall training rhythm.

A Practical Example

In this example, the athlete uses a four-week cycle tracker to flag when a period is likely to begin. Heavy training blocks are maintained, but the plan allows small adaptations: reducing volume slightly or swapping an interval session if fatigue is higher than expected. Over time, this simple colour-coded view helps identify patterns between cycle phase and recovery, turning awareness into consistency.

The specifics of volume and training sessions will be dictated by your event goals and the specific areas you are working on at any given time.

When life stress, irregular cycles, or contraception make timing unpredictable, create a catch all approach that can come into play, or it may be that your analysis allows you to predict the start of your period based on skin temperature, HRV or trends in sleep patterns coming from wearable tracking technology. Or maybe your partner just spots some change in mood.

Use all the data available to make the best decisions possible and remember, training doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to keep happening.

Real World Scenarios

• Scenario 1: Race week coincides with your period.
  Focus on familiarity: practice your race-day routine during a similar cycle phase beforehand. Use hydration, electrolytes, and simple carbohydrate fueling to offset fluid shifts and cramps. Adjust expectations slightly but race confidently, being aware means you have planned for it.
  
  
• Scenario 2: Irregular or suppressed cycle.
  When the calendar offers no guidance, rely on body signals: fatigue, sleep, and motivation levels. Continue tracking perceived exertion and stress; these are still measurable and actionable, even when cycles aren’t easy to deal with.
  
  
• Scenario 3: Perimenopausal athlete.
  Cycles may lengthen, shorten, or disappear. Recovery variability increases, so flexibility matters more than timing. Prioritise hydration, protein intake, and regular deload weeks. (For further reading on menopause and performance, see Clare’s blog post ‘'Women Who Train and Race: Special Considerations')
  
  

Each scenario reinforces the same truth: knowing yourself beats following a formula.

How Coaches Apply this at EBR

EBR coaching combines structured data with real-world context. The process is a conversation tool, athlete logs patterns, coach reviews trends, and together they plan small course corrections. The process is cyclical: plan → observe → adjust → learn.

The goal is not to predict every high or low, but to reduce surprises and make each training block a little more effective than the last.

Bring together what you’ve tracked and what you’ve learned:

• Download: the Planning Spreadsheet and combine it with your current training plan.
  
  
• Reflect: note two or three trends from recent months.
  
  
• Book: a chat with an EBR coach to review your plan and learn how to adapt your training rhythm to your personal physiology.
  
  

Remember: Awareness isn’t about restriction, it’s about freedom. The more you understand your rhythms, the more flexible, confident, and consistent you become as an athlete.

4. Female Physiology in the Real World: Dealing with Unpredictability

Not everyone experiences a regular 28-day pattern, and that’s completely normal. Cycles can vary due to stress, energy deficiency, illness, contraception, perimenopause, or simply genetics. The key is to stay curious rather than frustrated.

Working with Irregular Cycles

If your cycle length varies each month, tracking is still valuable, you will begin to see trends over time. Focus less on exact dates and more on symptom patterns like sleep disruption, fatigue, mood, or temperature changes. These signals still reflect underlying hormonal rhythms even if the calendar doesn’t.

Use your EBR spreadsheet or preferred app to log these cues alongside your training load. Over several months, the irregularities themselves may become predictable enough to anticipate adjustments.

Adjust your training plan once your period starts so that you have the best data to work with moving forward.

Amenorrhea or Suppressed Cycles

If your periods stop for more than three months (not due to contraception or menopause), it may signal Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) ,  a mismatch between training stress and energy intake. Persistent fatigue, illness, or declining performance are other warning signs. This is not something to push through. Seek advice from a GP or sports professional and adapt your diet and activity levels to prioritise recovery and nutrition before resuming heavy training.

For more on RED-S, see the IOC consensus statement (Mountjoy et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2018) or Clare’s article on the EBR blog

Contraception and Cycle Awareness

Hormonal contraceptives alter or suppress natural cycles, which can make tracking tricky. Under these circumstances, tracking and journaling is still important.

Conventional metrics like fatigue, mood, HRV and RPE may overwhelm the specifics of your hormonal cycles but understanding what factors are important, what trends are good and not so good is fundamental to maintaining consistent training, progression and performance.

Some people find they can still detect patterns related to pill breaks or long-term hormonal shifts. Consistency is more important than perfection, use feedback to inform your training rather than trying to fit a fixed model.

Perimenopause and Menopause

As athletes approach menopause, cycles become irregular before stopping entirely. Oestrogen and progesterone fluctuations can affect sleep, temperature regulation, and recovery. 

Figure 4. Recovery factors, balancing physiology, load, and lifestyle for optimal adaptation.
Image © Endurance Bike & Run, adapted for The Endurance Playbook.

Training principles remain the same: stress and adapt, but recovery demands may change and increase. Like with general trends in combating age related changes, include more strength work, adequate protein, and longer rest between intensity days. Hydration and thermoregulation strategies (cooling, electrolytes) also become more important than ever.

However, many factors impact on recovery and wellbeing so learn about yourself and remember that your menopause is just one factor, albeit important, among many.

Flexibility and Self-Compassion in Practice

The common thread through all of this is adaptability. Irregular cycles, perimenopause, or recovery from amenorrhea all test an athlete’s patience. 

However, following the general principles of understanding, flexibility and compassion as performance tools will keep you training through change rather than fighting it.

Coach’s note: Self-awareness isn’t soft; it’s strategic. The more you understand how your body behaves under different conditions, the better you can respond.

5. Case Study: Karen Darke — Science Meets the Real World

Karen Darke’s story highlights how even at the highest level of sport, individuality trumps formula.

During her time as a professional cyclist with British Cycling and Scottish Cycling, we participated in a Scottish Institute of Sport study exploring female performance across the menstrual cycle.

The findings mirrored what many experienced coaches observe in practice: although hormonal theory offers broad guidance, there is so much variability in mood, energy, and recovery between athletes, and even between cycles in the same athlete, that the only workable approach is individual tracking.

Karen’s period was regular, and she generally felt consistent in mood and performance across phases, but we found that the most effective approach wasn’t to schedule sessions strictly around cycle phases. Instead, we built flexibility into her plan, allowing her to back off slightly when premenstrual fatigue appeared and push again once she felt strong.

The theoretical strengths and weaknesses associated with each hormonal phase were never defined clearly enough to justify moving away from specific training objectives for her goal events. Instead, the focus remained on the fundamentals targeted training stimulus, recovery, and open communication.

Takeaway: Even at world-class level, the best strategy is awareness, flexibility, and trust in personal feedback — not rigid adherence to hormone-phase templates.

6. Key Takeaways

• Gender matters — but individuality matters more
• Track, don’t assume. Use data, feedback, and intuition to guide training
• Context is king. Life load, stress, and sleep can override physiology
• Listen, learn, adjust. Self-awareness is a performance skill

7. Next Steps

• Download: The Training Planner Worksheet to start mapping your physiology, energy patterns, and recovery
• Explore: your personal physiology, Recovery and Training with Hormonal Awareness
• Book: A free discovery call to let us help you work towards your potential

Integrating the Individual Lens

The lessons from this chapter reach beyond women’s physiology. The same principles apply to every endurance athlete including men navigating stress and fatigue, masters athletes balancing recovery, or younger riders learning how to listen to their bodies. Physiology is just one lens; personality, schedule, and life load complete the picture.

Awareness is the universal performance tool. Whether you are tracking your cycle, your recovery, or your mental energy, the goal is the same: understand your own rhythms, then work with them. That is how endurance performance and sustainable progression truly develop.

Final Thought: The best athletes don’t chase numbers; they build understanding that supports consistent progress. The more you learn about yourself, the better you can train, recover, and perform.

Ready to find out what you're capable of when you do the important things consistently? Alli's transformation started with an honest conversation about what was really possible. Yours can too.

Book a time for a free, no obligations consultation with me using the form below.

Personalized Coaching Support

For the most comprehensive approach, our 1-1 Coaching Services offer fully personalized guidance tailored to your unique physiology, lifestyle, and goals. Working directly with a coach provides:

• Customized training adjustments based on your specific responses
• Expert interpretation of your progress markers and fatigue signals
• Personalized implementation of the Traffic Light System to monitor outside stressors
• Accountability and motivation to maintain consistency
• Real-time modifications to your plan as life circumstances change

This personalized approach represents the gold standard for implementing sustainable training principles, as it adapts continuously to your evolving needs and responses.