Page 10 - 2021 AMA Summer

GUESTWRITER
this fluctuates from day to day, month to month, it is to be expected that our cycle and symptoms may too. This understand- ing that our hormones respond to our environment is the basis for understanding that our menstrual cycle is a barometer of our health.
A BAROMETER OF HEALTH
Our bodies want to maintain balance (called homeostasis) and a big part of this is budgeting energy. This has been a key part of our evolution. If we expend more energy than we take in then we disrupt this balance (known as low energy avail- ability) and our body starts to tighten its budget. It is easy for us to understand that moving around and using our muscles takes energy. But what we often overlook is everything that goes on behind the scenes. All of our biological processes such as muscle protein synthesis, essentially adapting to the training we do, and the menstrual cycle, also take energy. When our energy balance starts to go into the negative our bodies favour movement (the evolution of this is easy to grasp... we may need to escape from danger even if we haven’t had enough food), and starts to pull resources away from our other biological processes. When this happens, we may get tired, get frequent
injuries, and not make the strength gains we might expect from training. These can be hard things to monitor as unless we have a good understanding of our “norm”, it is hard to spot a deviation from it. This is where we are lucky to have a menstrual cycle, as it can act as a barometer of health. Deviations, such as an unusually long or short cycle, change in flow, or missed periods may be an indicator of low energy availability. It is important to note that this is a diagnosis by elimination and you should seek medical advice to rule out other potential reasons. How might we optimise our climbing and training if we find our cycle is deviating from whatever is normal for us?
Reducing the volume of training (this is both length of session and number of sessions per week to allow more time for recovery)
Try increasing energy intake and bunch carbohydrates around training (carbohy- drates are the main fuel for high intensity exercise, which the majority of climbing is!)
Zoom out and look at everything that sits in the “energy out” box to try to balance the energy equation (many things require
energy and it may not be your training or nutrition that has changed but a new job, emotional stress, or physical commute!)
As climbers why should we care about our menstrual health? Ultimately, if we are in a state of low energy availability we will not be adapting to our training as well as we could. This is very straight forward. The better question is how do we monitor our cycle so that we can gain an under- standing of it?
TRACKING
The first step to understanding your cycle, and therefore optimising training and climbing around it, is tracking. This is the process of monitoring your experience throughout your cycle. Thinking about the menstrual cycle, climbing and training all at once can be overwhelming, but we can break it down into manageable chunks with tracking. Through tracking we get to know our cycle dates and symptoms. When we do this for an extended period (around 3-6 months) we can start to see a pattern emerging. Doing it for a few cycles is important as the common symptoms associated with the menstrual cycle (fatigue, slower recovery, poor sleep, reduced coordination) can be caused by a number of things! This tracking information allows us to “pick the low hanging fruit” when it comes to our climbing and training, as we know what cycle phase has the biggest impact on our mental or physical performance.
It is important to remember that there is a lot of variation when it comes to the menstrual cycle, so we cannot be prescrip- tive when it comes to what symptoms are experienced when, and what impact this may have on climbing. Tracking is about finding our individual pattern. Through tracking we can build an awareness of the cues our bodies give us at different phases of our menstrual cycle and in itself can be a powerful tool, helping us be objective rather than judgemental of fluctuations in performance and mindset throughout our cycle. With this tool we can start to make cycle-wise climbing choices. No one likes the idea of “not doing”, and it may be perceived as “lazy” or “lesser”, but if by making some informed climbing decisions we optimise our climbing experience throughout the majority of our cycle, we may end up enjoying and progressing in climbing more consistently.
Maddy in Action
10 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER