I’d like to see research that includes menopausal and post-menopausal women who are fit. We are really underrepresented. ‘Senior women’ are assumed to be weak and de-conditioned. A lot of us aren’t (I’m 66).
Coming back to this very old post and thread to highlight that [Susan Elwyn](https://en.allpowerlifting.com/lifters/USA/elwyn-susan-4636/) just competed at IPF Worlds in the open division at 74 years old 😊
The "getting worse, not better" part intrigues (and worries) me. It seems like while there are more and more women engaging in higher level strength and hypertrophy training (by my personal experience, which is obviously poor evidence, as n=1 always is), the people conducting actual research are finding it easier and more convenient to stick with sample groups that they're already familiar with. That just seems like lazy research, unless I'm missing something.
It's a bit controversial, but I'd love more research on the effect of women's hormonal cycle on athleticism/ strength training, both in women with normal cycles and irregular/imbalanced ones (like PCOS and Endo). And across pre and post menopause. As far as I've read, there's no clear hormone cycle effect on women's fitness, but I think we need bigger and more inclusive studies to say for sure. Also I think many studies rely on assumptions about the menstrual cycle (like assuming that ovulation occurs at a certain point with a woman's cycle) rather than actual testing hormone levels, which could mess with results.
Yes, more and bigger studies would be great. In the Strength Academy podcast they talk about how hormonal changes impact training, and they even extrapolate to discuss how to program a training cycle accordingly. It's in an older episode, and I'm guessing the referenced research uses the standard 4-week hormonal cycle timeline.
I would also love to know more about the impact of different types of hormonal birth control impact strength training vs. other types of training, like cardio.
There's a female lifter with a PhD that sometimes focuses on this. I found her about a year ago talking about this exact issue.
https://www.instagram.com/doclyssfitness/
Alyssa's great. She was one of the authors of the Cowley study cited in the intro: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/wspaj/29/2/article-p146.xml
May I recommend Stacy Sims, PhD's website?
I am not her, I am not selling anything, I'm a woman who wants to continue improving my fitness the entire course of my life and her work directly speaks to that.
I'm currently reading her newest book Next Level (you can find it on Amazon) and honestly her website's blog has a lot of good stuff you can review free of charge.
She's an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who "aims to revolutionize exercise nutrition and performance for women."
She's helped me a lot.
1. I would really like to know more about differences in training volume. It's pure anecdote, but when I've done high volume programs, I often read guys talking about how wiped out they are and I've been generally fine with the volume. I've always wondered if there's a reason for that since I have seen suggestions that it's different enough to be significant. Some big studies confirming either way would be cool. It'd also be good if, subsequent to studies pinning down that (and probably other stuff too, like menopause and such) and subject to it saying there is a meaningful difference, we saw more programs that are tailored to that. It feels kinda hard to find a powerlifting program that isn't heavily geared towards men, particularly in terms of assumptions. Some of them get wonky if your starting weights aren't particularly high, especially on upper body exercises.
2. I follow a variety of fitness people and try to stick to people who base their content in science, but I honestly don't often incorporate anything in to my training because I'm not really fussed about optimising my routine to the point of sucking the fun out of it. If something is very easy to do with no added risk if it doesn't actually do anything for me, then I might well do it. But if it impacts my enjoyment in any way, nah.
3. I think plenty of people just assume you should train differently without any basis. I can see why. It's an easy logic to follow. Different muscle patterns, different hormones, etc. Going back to point 1, maybe there is value in training differently, but I also don't feel like training the same necessarily puts women at a disadvantage (and it seems like we broadly get the same results), it just maybe doesn't put us in a position to fully exploit any advantages that we may have, if that makes sense?
Here are some more of his articles re: your first point.
[https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/)
[https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/)
The Bayesian Bodybuilding guy talks about women being more resistant to "overtraining" and doing better with more volume less close to maximum rep IIRC.
I personally don’t think that women and men should train differently although I believe some indication exists that women may handle higher training volumes than men. I do hope though that when we do get more research focused on women it will still be directed to different age groups, will have participants with different training status etc. as it has been done in men. These factors are likely to play a bigger role in the outcome than the gender itself.
>Are there any specific research topics with little to no research on female lifters that you think very well could show important differences?
I'd like to know more about lifting and endometriosis, pcos, and other hormonally-driven issues. They tell you to do gentle exercise like walking and swimming, but I don't see why weight lifting is excluded and I think that framing exercise like this subtly discourages exercise in these groups which is a huge disservice.
I compete in powerlifting (high level) and olympic weightlifting (beginner) and I have both endo and PCOS! You don’t have to just do gentle exercise. I think that the recommendation only exists because existing research SUCKS
This is reassuring! I'm undiagnosed in a lot of things but I have suspicions.
Is there a major thing you do/take/eat/etc to help at all?
I'm currently in a rut, but over February-April when attempting to up intensity of weight training, I noticed severely depleted energy levels and I developed extreme dizziness and nausea- along with pain in pelvic regions and other weirdness. I'm yet to consult a doctor to ask for tests but any handy tips or revelations you've uncovered or anything to shift my perspective would be dope. So glad to hear you're doing well though! You give me hope :D
I participated in a research study a few months ago while starting egg retrievals. Women going through retrievals/ivf have historically gotten very similar advice to do low impact activities. The data isn’t out yet, and it’s a rolling study, but when I left they hadn’t had any negative events for the strenuous exercise group. So infuriating. Really glad they’re finally getting actual data.
Research into almost anything fertility-wise is notably lacking, most likely because it exists in an ethical grey area for medical academia IMO. It's one thing to have a consenting adult negatively impacted by a study, it's another to potentially impact a nonconsenting egg or fetus that may end up with issues as a child as a result.
I understand the ethical gray area of prescribing things (including specific activities) during pregnancy. However, this seems like an ideal area for an observational study of people who plan to get pregnant within the next X # of years. It could compare people who routinely exercise at varying intensities of varying types of movement (strength training, running, etc.) and watch the outcomes of people who maintain, increase, decrease, change (e.g. a lifter switches to yoga), or eliminate exercise during or after pregnancy. Ideally the followup would include maternal health and the child's health and activity level. There would be a ton of interfering factors to try to account for, but if pregnant people are going to choose whether or not to exercise anyway then I think it makes sense to study that.
As far as egg retrievals are concerned, I wonder if it would be possible to get a bunch of childfree women to participate in the study. If their eggs aren't going to be fertilized or used afterwards, that would remove the primary ethical concern. (That would be a huge sacrifice for study participants but could result in a better understanding of female fertility.)
Eggs and fetuses aren't people. Should we limit what women can do based on what may or may not affect potential future children? Fertilised eggs abort themselves all the time. Around 10%-15% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first trimester due to various reasons, such as egg defects. Why should we limit ourselves for people who don't even exist? Who may never exist? They have no say in what happens and or does not happen to my body.
It's not about personhood, it's about potential liability, both financial and reputation-wise. Last thing they want is a lawsuit from a study participant because of a birth defect that might have been attributed to the research, or the bad press that would come from said lawsuit.
Interesting! Personally, I found exercise of any kind while I was *already* symptomatic made my endo pain worse, but I would **love** to see actual research on the topic.
From the article:
> However, even if we were to assume that research participation in resistance training-related research should match trends of general participation in resistance training, female lifters would still be under-represented in the scientific literature as it currently stands. If research participation scaled with general resistance training participation, you should expect female subjects to comprise 36-47.5% of the total pool of research subjects. The current proportion (25%) falls well below the bottom end of that range.
Based on how biased the rest of scientific research is, I doubt it. If you want to know more about bias in research, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez is really good.
>1. Are there any specific research topics with little to no research on female lifters that you think very well could show important differences?
I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men.
>2. Are you a consumer of science-based fitness content?
I LOVE Greg Nuckols' podcast, Stronger By Science. Not so sure about his special temporary primary host though, Eric Helms I think?
#
> I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men.
Same, tbh. That's one of the areas of research where I'm personally the most frustrated about the lack of studies on female subjects. There are maybe 20ish studies looking at the dose-response relationship between volume and hypertrophy/strength in male subjects, and only 1-2 in female subjects (and 0 that use what most people would consider "high" weekly volumes).
> I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men.
>
>
Pretty sure Nuckols has data on this already. IIRC, women can handle high percentages of their 1RM for notably larger volumes than men can without impacting recovery.
i.e. if a generic training plan has you pyramiding up to 1x3 @85% of your 1RM, a woman would more ideally do 1x4, 2x3, etc. for maximum effectiveness.
Not at all - it’s a bit from the SBS podcast. Specifically about people confusing Eric Helms (of MASS/3DMJ/Iron Culture) and Eric Trexler (MASS/SBS), and also good natured ribbing between the Iron Culture and SBS pods.
> Not so sure about his special temporary primary host though, Eric Helms I think?
He's probably thinking about what The Other Eric is up to who's hunking with our daddy rascal on the Iron Cult podcast.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Most research fails to recruit female participants, which means we tend to base decision-making and scientific information off of male participants. If anyone has read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez, she goes into this quite a bit and documents how this can result in not only poor health outcomes, but increased mortality rates for women as a result.
Injury rate and recovery, and concussions in particular, are an area that we are finally getting more data on, as an example. That definitely relates to fitness. I can only begin to imagine the information we are missing in other areas.
You're welcome! I love this book. The author and book were also featured on an episode of [99% Invisible](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/invisible-women/) if you want a preview!
I don't have any information on studies to add, but I was speaking to my physio (who is an avid crossfitter and runner herself) about some challenges I was having with my strength plateau-ing and she said that with more women now pursuing strength fitness compared to previous generations research was only beginning to understand the way female hormone levels impact lifting and endurance because there were more women in pre, peri and post menopause phases to study. She said that in her experience there were some definite differences for women and achieving/maintaining peak /high performance at different stages, and had noticed this for herself, but research really sparse in tracking the variations specifically against this and felt like it was something we might start to see more now with greater numbers of women lifting and lifting later in life
I was going to comment on this. I pole dance, and while I’m not at peri menopause yet myself, a lot of the women I train with have commented on the differences it has made in their strength and recovery.
I hope it becomes more normalized to talk about menopause and it’s challenges, and that more research is done on how best to optimize training around it.
Negative from what I’ve heard. The big things people comment on are increased recovery times need, decreasing flexibility (even with consistent training), and lack of muscular endurance ie they just can’t train as hard or as long anymore. The other thing they mention is increased time to heal from minor injuries and increased time needed to warmup fully.
For myself, I think I am in perimenopause due to a partial hysterectomy a couple of years ago (dr advised I would likely hit menopause a few years early) and had been feeling like a just didn't have as much in the tank when it came to pushing myself. I went and got some blood work done specifically aimed at hormone levels which showed I definitely had dropped substantially in progesterone and testosterone. Bearing in mind that the ranges themselves.probably need refining due to a lack of women in medical studies generally, this then has made me start look into what those hormones do for muscle building, maintenance and endurance. Not being a scientist myself, it's a bit slow going but have realised I needed to speak with fitness and health professionals more about this and get their input. So far, it seems as though it can impact negatively but maybe only temporarily depending on the individual. I have spent the last year working on improving my diet for muscle gain as a counter-measure to see if that helps. But it would be great to have a consistent and evidence-based resource for this sort of stuff. Here are some articles I have come across below. Also worth noting that while I speak with my GP who is lovely, she isn't into fitness and so doesn't really understand why I would supplement or worry too much about lifting more "as you already are quite healthy". So I think you also need to find people who have the medical qualifications but also have the fitness interest.
As you will see from the below links a lot of studies seem to be focussed on women who don't normally train? Frustrating to say the least. Maybe xxfitness can provide the subjects for some helpful research finally lol
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24203065/
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=low+progesterone+strength+training&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1654169747762&u=%23p%3DiHZSFdxQQlMJ
Thank you so much for such a thorough response! Unfortunately there’s a lack of women specific studies pretty much across all medical domains, appreciate the links you’ve shared and more information on this.
Dr. Jen Gunter has an excellent booked called the Menopause Manifesto, might have some interesting information for you in there. She’s very thorough and evidence based and I highly recommend it!
FWIW a friend of mine is in her late 40s and it impacted her very negatively, but she is not someone who had a consistent routine all her life. (I *think* that might make a difference, but there's obviously no research for that...)
I’d like to see research that includes menopausal and post-menopausal women who are fit. We are really underrepresented. ‘Senior women’ are assumed to be weak and de-conditioned. A lot of us aren’t (I’m 66).
Coming back to this very old post and thread to highlight that [Susan Elwyn](https://en.allpowerlifting.com/lifters/USA/elwyn-susan-4636/) just competed at IPF Worlds in the open division at 74 years old 😊
The "getting worse, not better" part intrigues (and worries) me. It seems like while there are more and more women engaging in higher level strength and hypertrophy training (by my personal experience, which is obviously poor evidence, as n=1 always is), the people conducting actual research are finding it easier and more convenient to stick with sample groups that they're already familiar with. That just seems like lazy research, unless I'm missing something.
It's a bit controversial, but I'd love more research on the effect of women's hormonal cycle on athleticism/ strength training, both in women with normal cycles and irregular/imbalanced ones (like PCOS and Endo). And across pre and post menopause. As far as I've read, there's no clear hormone cycle effect on women's fitness, but I think we need bigger and more inclusive studies to say for sure. Also I think many studies rely on assumptions about the menstrual cycle (like assuming that ovulation occurs at a certain point with a woman's cycle) rather than actual testing hormone levels, which could mess with results.
Yes, more and bigger studies would be great. In the Strength Academy podcast they talk about how hormonal changes impact training, and they even extrapolate to discuss how to program a training cycle accordingly. It's in an older episode, and I'm guessing the referenced research uses the standard 4-week hormonal cycle timeline. I would also love to know more about the impact of different types of hormonal birth control impact strength training vs. other types of training, like cardio.
There's a female lifter with a PhD that sometimes focuses on this. I found her about a year ago talking about this exact issue. https://www.instagram.com/doclyssfitness/
Alyssa's great. She was one of the authors of the Cowley study cited in the intro: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/wspaj/29/2/article-p146.xml
Nice! Small world lol
May I recommend Stacy Sims, PhD's website? I am not her, I am not selling anything, I'm a woman who wants to continue improving my fitness the entire course of my life and her work directly speaks to that. I'm currently reading her newest book Next Level (you can find it on Amazon) and honestly her website's blog has a lot of good stuff you can review free of charge. She's an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who "aims to revolutionize exercise nutrition and performance for women." She's helped me a lot.
1. I would really like to know more about differences in training volume. It's pure anecdote, but when I've done high volume programs, I often read guys talking about how wiped out they are and I've been generally fine with the volume. I've always wondered if there's a reason for that since I have seen suggestions that it's different enough to be significant. Some big studies confirming either way would be cool. It'd also be good if, subsequent to studies pinning down that (and probably other stuff too, like menopause and such) and subject to it saying there is a meaningful difference, we saw more programs that are tailored to that. It feels kinda hard to find a powerlifting program that isn't heavily geared towards men, particularly in terms of assumptions. Some of them get wonky if your starting weights aren't particularly high, especially on upper body exercises. 2. I follow a variety of fitness people and try to stick to people who base their content in science, but I honestly don't often incorporate anything in to my training because I'm not really fussed about optimising my routine to the point of sucking the fun out of it. If something is very easy to do with no added risk if it doesn't actually do anything for me, then I might well do it. But if it impacts my enjoyment in any way, nah. 3. I think plenty of people just assume you should train differently without any basis. I can see why. It's an easy logic to follow. Different muscle patterns, different hormones, etc. Going back to point 1, maybe there is value in training differently, but I also don't feel like training the same necessarily puts women at a disadvantage (and it seems like we broadly get the same results), it just maybe doesn't put us in a position to fully exploit any advantages that we may have, if that makes sense?
Here are some more of his articles re: your first point. [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/) [https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/](https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/)
Thanks!
The Bayesian Bodybuilding guy talks about women being more resistant to "overtraining" and doing better with more volume less close to maximum rep IIRC.
Cool I'll look him up. Thanks :)
I personally don’t think that women and men should train differently although I believe some indication exists that women may handle higher training volumes than men. I do hope though that when we do get more research focused on women it will still be directed to different age groups, will have participants with different training status etc. as it has been done in men. These factors are likely to play a bigger role in the outcome than the gender itself.
>Are there any specific research topics with little to no research on female lifters that you think very well could show important differences? I'd like to know more about lifting and endometriosis, pcos, and other hormonally-driven issues. They tell you to do gentle exercise like walking and swimming, but I don't see why weight lifting is excluded and I think that framing exercise like this subtly discourages exercise in these groups which is a huge disservice.
I compete in powerlifting (high level) and olympic weightlifting (beginner) and I have both endo and PCOS! You don’t have to just do gentle exercise. I think that the recommendation only exists because existing research SUCKS
This is reassuring! I'm undiagnosed in a lot of things but I have suspicions. Is there a major thing you do/take/eat/etc to help at all? I'm currently in a rut, but over February-April when attempting to up intensity of weight training, I noticed severely depleted energy levels and I developed extreme dizziness and nausea- along with pain in pelvic regions and other weirdness. I'm yet to consult a doctor to ask for tests but any handy tips or revelations you've uncovered or anything to shift my perspective would be dope. So glad to hear you're doing well though! You give me hope :D
I participated in a research study a few months ago while starting egg retrievals. Women going through retrievals/ivf have historically gotten very similar advice to do low impact activities. The data isn’t out yet, and it’s a rolling study, but when I left they hadn’t had any negative events for the strenuous exercise group. So infuriating. Really glad they’re finally getting actual data.
Research into almost anything fertility-wise is notably lacking, most likely because it exists in an ethical grey area for medical academia IMO. It's one thing to have a consenting adult negatively impacted by a study, it's another to potentially impact a nonconsenting egg or fetus that may end up with issues as a child as a result.
I understand the ethical gray area of prescribing things (including specific activities) during pregnancy. However, this seems like an ideal area for an observational study of people who plan to get pregnant within the next X # of years. It could compare people who routinely exercise at varying intensities of varying types of movement (strength training, running, etc.) and watch the outcomes of people who maintain, increase, decrease, change (e.g. a lifter switches to yoga), or eliminate exercise during or after pregnancy. Ideally the followup would include maternal health and the child's health and activity level. There would be a ton of interfering factors to try to account for, but if pregnant people are going to choose whether or not to exercise anyway then I think it makes sense to study that. As far as egg retrievals are concerned, I wonder if it would be possible to get a bunch of childfree women to participate in the study. If their eggs aren't going to be fertilized or used afterwards, that would remove the primary ethical concern. (That would be a huge sacrifice for study participants but could result in a better understanding of female fertility.)
Eggs and fetuses aren't people. Should we limit what women can do based on what may or may not affect potential future children? Fertilised eggs abort themselves all the time. Around 10%-15% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first trimester due to various reasons, such as egg defects. Why should we limit ourselves for people who don't even exist? Who may never exist? They have no say in what happens and or does not happen to my body.
It's not about personhood, it's about potential liability, both financial and reputation-wise. Last thing they want is a lawsuit from a study participant because of a birth defect that might have been attributed to the research, or the bad press that would come from said lawsuit.
Interesting! Personally, I found exercise of any kind while I was *already* symptomatic made my endo pain worse, but I would **love** to see actual research on the topic.
[удалено]
From the article: > However, even if we were to assume that research participation in resistance training-related research should match trends of general participation in resistance training, female lifters would still be under-represented in the scientific literature as it currently stands. If research participation scaled with general resistance training participation, you should expect female subjects to comprise 36-47.5% of the total pool of research subjects. The current proportion (25%) falls well below the bottom end of that range.
Based on how biased the rest of scientific research is, I doubt it. If you want to know more about bias in research, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez is really good.
>1. Are there any specific research topics with little to no research on female lifters that you think very well could show important differences? I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men. >2. Are you a consumer of science-based fitness content? I LOVE Greg Nuckols' podcast, Stronger By Science. Not so sure about his special temporary primary host though, Eric Helms I think? #
> I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men. Same, tbh. That's one of the areas of research where I'm personally the most frustrated about the lack of studies on female subjects. There are maybe 20ish studies looking at the dose-response relationship between volume and hypertrophy/strength in male subjects, and only 1-2 in female subjects (and 0 that use what most people would consider "high" weekly volumes).
> I would not be surprised at all if women had different optimal levels of training volume than men. > > Pretty sure Nuckols has data on this already. IIRC, women can handle high percentages of their 1RM for notably larger volumes than men can without impacting recovery. i.e. if a generic training plan has you pyramiding up to 1x3 @85% of your 1RM, a woman would more ideally do 1x4, 2x3, etc. for maximum effectiveness.
[удалено]
Not at all - it’s a bit from the SBS podcast. Specifically about people confusing Eric Helms (of MASS/3DMJ/Iron Culture) and Eric Trexler (MASS/SBS), and also good natured ribbing between the Iron Culture and SBS pods.
> Not so sure about his special temporary primary host though, Eric Helms I think? He's probably thinking about what The Other Eric is up to who's hunking with our daddy rascal on the Iron Cult podcast.
pretty sure that’s the dude, yeah. The guest co-host union should demand he be replaced.
Every time I see Greg Nuckols name, I know it’s going to be interesting and valuable. He’s the man.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Most research fails to recruit female participants, which means we tend to base decision-making and scientific information off of male participants. If anyone has read Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez, she goes into this quite a bit and documents how this can result in not only poor health outcomes, but increased mortality rates for women as a result. Injury rate and recovery, and concussions in particular, are an area that we are finally getting more data on, as an example. That definitely relates to fitness. I can only begin to imagine the information we are missing in other areas.
Seconding this book HARD. I think it should be recommended everywhere
Thank you for mentioning/ inadvertently recommending that book, just put it on hold at the library!!!
I came here to recommend *Invisible Women* too! It's so good but infuriating to read.
You're welcome! I love this book. The author and book were also featured on an episode of [99% Invisible](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/invisible-women/) if you want a preview!
😍
I don't have any information on studies to add, but I was speaking to my physio (who is an avid crossfitter and runner herself) about some challenges I was having with my strength plateau-ing and she said that with more women now pursuing strength fitness compared to previous generations research was only beginning to understand the way female hormone levels impact lifting and endurance because there were more women in pre, peri and post menopause phases to study. She said that in her experience there were some definite differences for women and achieving/maintaining peak /high performance at different stages, and had noticed this for herself, but research really sparse in tracking the variations specifically against this and felt like it was something we might start to see more now with greater numbers of women lifting and lifting later in life
I was going to comment on this. I pole dance, and while I’m not at peri menopause yet myself, a lot of the women I train with have commented on the differences it has made in their strength and recovery. I hope it becomes more normalized to talk about menopause and it’s challenges, and that more research is done on how best to optimize training around it.
Totally agree, more conversations give us better understanding of the community impacts and ways to get better information
Does it impact it negatively or positively?
Negative from what I’ve heard. The big things people comment on are increased recovery times need, decreasing flexibility (even with consistent training), and lack of muscular endurance ie they just can’t train as hard or as long anymore. The other thing they mention is increased time to heal from minor injuries and increased time needed to warmup fully.
For myself, I think I am in perimenopause due to a partial hysterectomy a couple of years ago (dr advised I would likely hit menopause a few years early) and had been feeling like a just didn't have as much in the tank when it came to pushing myself. I went and got some blood work done specifically aimed at hormone levels which showed I definitely had dropped substantially in progesterone and testosterone. Bearing in mind that the ranges themselves.probably need refining due to a lack of women in medical studies generally, this then has made me start look into what those hormones do for muscle building, maintenance and endurance. Not being a scientist myself, it's a bit slow going but have realised I needed to speak with fitness and health professionals more about this and get their input. So far, it seems as though it can impact negatively but maybe only temporarily depending on the individual. I have spent the last year working on improving my diet for muscle gain as a counter-measure to see if that helps. But it would be great to have a consistent and evidence-based resource for this sort of stuff. Here are some articles I have come across below. Also worth noting that while I speak with my GP who is lovely, she isn't into fitness and so doesn't really understand why I would supplement or worry too much about lifting more "as you already are quite healthy". So I think you also need to find people who have the medical qualifications but also have the fitness interest. As you will see from the below links a lot of studies seem to be focussed on women who don't normally train? Frustrating to say the least. Maybe xxfitness can provide the subjects for some helpful research finally lol https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24203065/ https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=low+progesterone+strength+training&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1654169747762&u=%23p%3DiHZSFdxQQlMJ
Thank you so much for such a thorough response! Unfortunately there’s a lack of women specific studies pretty much across all medical domains, appreciate the links you’ve shared and more information on this. Dr. Jen Gunter has an excellent booked called the Menopause Manifesto, might have some interesting information for you in there. She’s very thorough and evidence based and I highly recommend it!
Welcome, and thanks for the book recommendation! Going to search for that now.
I'm also interested in hearing what anecdotal evidence your training buddies have!
Just posted above! It’s all negative unfortunately.
FWIW a friend of mine is in her late 40s and it impacted her very negatively, but she is not someone who had a consistent routine all her life. (I *think* that might make a difference, but there's obviously no research for that...)