What do your Zone 2 heart rate, brand of bike or type of run shoe have in common? How about race fueling techniques, and Garmin-recommended training zones? They can all be perfect but mean absolutely nothing when it comes to your athletic performance. This can be especially true if you’re a woman in midlife experiencing the years surrounding menopause. How does menopause impact athletic performance?
The Midlife Athletic Puzzle: Why Your Training Isn’t Working
You can do all the right things. This can include following the perfect diet (whatever that means) or adhering to your training plan exactly as Training Peaks shows. Running form flawless? Sure. You may look at your nutrition and refine your protein: carb ratio for recovery as well. This may not matter if you’re experiencing menopause, or the years leading up to or after it. If you are, then you are familiar with the ever uphill battle to:
- Recover from your workouts
- Get decent sleep
- Not feel moody and unmotivated
- Beat the belly bloat
- Have the sort of energy only your 10 year old seems to operate with.
This is a sample of the way that menopause can impact athletic performance for women.
Gut Health: Your Secret Weapon for Energy and Recovery
Why is this? If you’ve read “Gut Healing for Female Athletes”, then you’re familiar with the pervasive impact gut health has on athletes’ energy and hormone balance. And for female athletes in particular, changing hormones–and even changes in the way we produce those hormones–can lead to
- Strong inflammatory processes, and
- Special complications when it comes to how our bodies respond to stress.
To make matters worse, women who actively seek additional medical care are often met with undermining statements. These can include phrases such as “Everything looks normal”, or something that implies the problem is “all in your head.”
The fact is, if you’re a female athlete in this stage, then you know without a doubt that everything is not normal. This is not all in your head.
So what is an athlete experiencing menopause, or the years around it, to do?
If you are a woman existing during menopause, or the years around it, your body is making clear, tangible shifts in its physiological processes. These shifts are related to inflammation, stress response, and hormone balance. Making these changes have a direct impact on your energy and athletic performance. It is therefore of utmost importance to implement practices in your life that reduce stress and inflammation and bring balance to your body. While this will look different for every woman, the general principles below are a great place to start:
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Self-Care for Athletes: The “Goddess First” Approach
Shift your mindset around stress. In my book “Powerful, Not Tired“, I introduce what I call the “Goddess First” principle. This is a new way of looking at nurturing our bodies and minds through intentional self-care. We can reduce stress in our lives, bolsters, our response to stress, and bring balance to our energy and hormones. An important point here is that self-care is not selfish. In fact, self-care can be one of the most selfless, loving things you can do for the people and the activities in your life that you love. When we do this, we begin to tear down the impact of stress on our bodies. Reducing stress improves our ability to recover and convert our nutrition to energy and improved performance.
Good Gut Health: The Balancing Power For Your Hormones
Heal your gut and follow up with good nutrition. Your gut is not only your second brain–it’s an incredibly balancing force for your hormones and recovery. Unfortunately, endurance sports culture often supports practices that destroy our gut health. These mindsets can include “outrunning your diet”, taking in way too much alcohol or caffeine or losing sleep in the name of getting in your training. Another may be stressing your body to the point that you become inefficient in creating and processing energy.
“Modern Living” in general can bring lasting damage to the gut. The result is that you can eat that “perfect” diet, but your gut is in no place to receive it. The solution is to first create a targeted plan for healing your gut. This may or may not involve targeted supplementation. From there a balanced, whole-food diet, filled with fiber-rich, nutrient-dense foods is important.
Practical Tips for Reducing Inflammation in Midlife
Implement daily practices that reduce inflammation in your body. Reducing inflammation is absolutely imperative for women trying to navigate menopause and the years around it. Its impact on your hormonal health and overall energy are endless. Some of my favorite practices include deep breathing meditations, breath retention practices and massage gun protocols. I also love stretching in the morning, and hip-opener yoga postures in the evening. Inflammation-reducing practices can also include amping up your electrolytes and hydration, reducing caffeine, and creating better sleep routines.
Menopause Doesn’t Mean Defeat: Reclaiming Your Athletic Power
Menopause, and the years leading up to it and after, do not have to be a struggle. You do not have to feel helpless and defeated by your health and hormones. Taking intentional measures to reduce stress and inflammation, and to heal your gut and hormones, can lead to energy and motivation as an athlete in midlife that you didn’t think could be possible. Being proactive can help you minimize the impact that menopause has on your athletic performance.
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