What I’m learning about supporting the female athlete
Something I keep coming back to in my kinesiology classes is how much happens in the body that we cannot see from the outside. We can watch an athlete perform, see the weight she lifts, or notice changes in her appearance. Understanding what she needs takes more curiosity.
I recently worked on a school project exploring female athlete physiology, and I wanted to share a few things that stayed with me. As a former dancer and now a movement teacher, I find this research interesting because it gives me more to consider about the people I teach—and my own relationship with training.
The same cycle can feel very different
You have probably heard advice about matching your workouts to your menstrual cycle. I understand the appeal. Having a clear explanation for why one day feels strong and another feels exhausting would be helpful.
There is physiology behind some of these conversations. Across a naturally occurring, ovulatory cycle, estrogen generally rises before ovulation, while progesterone rises afterward. These hormones influence more than reproduction.
Oosthuyse and Bosch (2010), for example, describe how estrogen may reduce reliance on muscle glycogen—the carbohydrate stored in muscle—and favor greater fat use during some exercise conditions. However, the review also acknowledges limitations in the evidence, including mechanisms supported more strongly by animal research than direct human measurements. A possible change in fuel use does not automatically mean a faster race or stronger workout.
I found the athletes’ experiences just as interesting. Brown and colleagues (2021) interviewed 17 elite female athletes. In this small sample, 71% reported abdominal cramps and 65% reported bloating. Some adjusted training around symptoms, while others described some of their best competition results while menstruating. These percentages describe those participants, rather than female athletes as a whole.
What stayed with me was that performing well and feeling well are not always the same thing. Someone may complete a demanding session while managing discomfort nobody else notices.
For me, the useful question becomes: what does this particular athlete experience, and what helps her? A cycle calendar might begin that conversation, but it cannot answer it for her.
What are we asking the body to run on?
The part of this project that made me think most about dance and other appearance-focused environments was energy availability: the dietary energy left for the body’s ongoing functions after exercise is accounted for.
I keep thinking about the contradiction of asking someone to train harder while encouraging her to become smaller. Where is the energy for that work supposed to come from?
Food has to support the training session and everything happening around it. When intake repeatedly falls short of those demands, the consequences can extend beyond feeling hungry or tired. The International Olympic Committee’s consensus on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) identifies reproductive dysfunction, impaired bone health, and reduced performance among the possible consequences of prolonged or severe low energy availability.
The menstrual changes discussed in my project helped make this connection more concrete. Di Gioia and colleagues (2025) describe disturbances that can include absent or infrequent periods, cycles without ovulation, and shortened luteal phases. Some changes may happen without an obvious difference in the timing of bleeding. There can be more happening physiologically than an athlete realizes.
A lost period deserves medical evaluation. Underfueling is one possible explanation, but other causes need consideration too.
What are we praising?
This research made me question what we sometimes recognize as dedication. A smaller body, fewer rest days, or the ability to push through exhaustion can attract praise. None of those observations tells us whether someone is adequately supported.
Research on body composition practices in sport connects pressure to reduce body weight or fat with body dissatisfaction and disordered eating symptoms. Inappropriate body composition goals can also contribute to low energy availability. That does not mean every change in body composition is harmful. It means the reason for pursuing it, the methods used, and the athlete’s health all matter.
As a movement teacher, I want to be thoughtful about what my words reinforce. I would rather recognize growing strength, developing skill, or someone communicating that she needs an adjustment than assume a change in appearance means progress.
What does “getting your body back” actually mean?
Pregnancy and postpartum brought another version of this question into the project.
Marken and colleagues (2025) interviewed five world-class athletes about pregnancy and motherhood. Two participants described substantial weight loss while combining breastfeeding and training, but their experiences differed. One described strong physical capacity and career achievements; another described excessive training, unwanted weight loss, and concerns about her body. Their accounts cannot establish what caused those differences, but they show why weight alone tells an incomplete story.
Di Gioia and colleagues also discuss pelvic floor function, urinary leakage, and bone health during lactation. These are reasons to consider comfort, symptoms, fueling, and the progression of training when thinking about recovery.
Iowa soccer player Meike Ingles offered a personal example that stayed with me. In a University of Iowa profile, she described the frustration of rebuilding strength after childbirth and said it took two years to return to her previous level. That was her experience, rather than a timeline every athlete should expect to follow.
So when I hear “getting your body back,” I think we need to ask what we are actually measuring. Looking familiar in a photograph does not tell us how someone feels when she runs, lifts, jumps, or gets through her day.
These are topics I want to keep learning about. Studying physiology gives me more context, and teaching reminds me that the person in front of me will always have an experience a textbook cannot fully describe.
I want Mavericks of Movement to be a place where that curiosity belongs—where we can care about progress, ask questions about the body, and leave room to adjust as we learn.
References
Brown, N., Knight, C. J., & Forrest, L. J. (2021). Elite female athletes’ experiences and perceptions of the menstrual cycle on training and sport performance. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 31(1), 52–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.13818
Frotscher, B. (2025, August 22). Iowa’s soccer mom, Meike Ingles, balances competition with motherhood. Iowa Magazine. https://magazine.foriowa.org/story.php?ed=true&storyid=2559
Di Gioia, G., et al. (2025). Female athletes: A state-of-the-art review of multiorgan influence of exercise training. The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 65(5), 681–700. https://doi.org/10.23736/S0022-4707.24.16265-2
Frotscher, B. (2025, August 22). Iowa’s soccer mom, Meike Ingles, balances competition with motherhood. Iowa Magazine. Read the profile
Marken, M. Z., et al. (2025). Experiences and perspectives on pregnancy and motherhood in elite athletes—a qualitative study. Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 33(1), Article 2501832. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2025.2501832
Mountjoy, M., et al. (2023). 2023 International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) consensus statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-106994
Oosthuyse, T., & Bosch, A. N. (2010). The effect of the menstrual cycle on exercise metabolism: Implications for exercise performance in eumenorrhoeic women. Sports Medicine, 40(3), 207–227. https://doi.org/10.2165/11317090-000000000-00000
Additional reading on appearance pressures: Best practice recommendations for body composition considerations in sport to reduce health and performance risks.
