FEMALE ATHLETES
Coaching women means understanding when female physiology matters — and when it doesn’t
Being female can affect training.
But it doesn’t mean every training decision needs to revolve around hormones.
Women still need the fundamentals of good endurance training: appropriate load, progression, recovery, strength, fuelling and enough consistency over time to adapt.
Where good coaching becomes more individual is recognising that female physiology can sometimes change the picture — and knowing when it’s relevant to the athlete in front of me.
That might mean menstrual symptoms, hormonal contraception, perimenopause or post-menopause.
It might mean bone health, fuelling, recovery or maintaining muscle and strength as we get older.
And sometimes?
It might have absolutely nothing to do with being female.
The important part is working out what actually matters for you.
You’re an individual first
There is a lot of information aimed at female athletes now.
Some of it is useful.
Some of it takes an emerging piece of research and turns it into a rule that apparently every woman should follow.
And some of it can leave women wondering whether they’ve been training incorrectly their entire lives.
I don’t think that’s helpful.
The evidence around female physiology and endurance training is developing all the time, and in some areas we simply don’t have enough good research yet to make the confident claims you’ll sometimes see on social media.
So I won’t automatically change your training because you’re in a particular phase of your menstrual cycle.
I won’t assume every woman going through perimenopause needs the same training prescription.
And I won’t blame hormones for every bad session, tired week or unexpected change in performance.
Instead, we’ll look at your experience, your symptoms, your training and the wider context.
Because your body is giving us information.
Our job is to understand what that information is actually telling us.
When female physiology does matter, we don’t ignore it
Not making everything about hormones doesn’t mean pretending sex-specific factors don’t exist.
They do.
For some athletes, they can have a significant effect on training, recovery, health and performance.
That might include:
Menstrual cycle and symptoms
If your cycle affects how you feel or perform, that’s useful information.
Rather than prescribing training according to a generic cycle calendar, we can track your individual patterns and make decisions based on what actually happens to you.
Perimenopause and menopause
Midlife can bring changes in sleep, temperature regulation, recovery, body composition, menstrual bleeding, mood and other symptoms that can affect both training and everyday life.
That doesn’t mean you suddenly need an entirely different form of endurance training.
But it may mean we need to look more closely at recovery, fuelling, strength, training load and how everything fits alongside what’s happening outside sport.
Fuelling and bone health
Under-fuelling isn’t simply a performance problem.
Consistently failing to provide your body with enough energy can affect recovery, adaptation and health, including bone health.
That’s why fuelling isn’t something I treat as an optional extra to the training plan.
Strength as we get older
Strength training matters throughout life, but maintaining muscle, strength and physical capability becomes increasingly important as we age.
For an endurance athlete, that isn’t just about racing faster.
It’s also about building a body capable of continuing to do the things you love for years to come.
Training for the athlete you are now
One of the things I hear from women — particularly as they get older — is frustration that their body doesn’t respond exactly as it once did.
Sometimes the instinct is to fight it.
Train harder. Eat less. Add another session. Try to force the old response back.
I’d rather we get curious.
What’s changed?
What hasn’t?
What does your body need now?
And what can we do with the body, life and circumstances you actually have rather than constantly comparing them with an earlier version of yourself?
Getting older doesn’t mean lowering your expectations of what you’re capable of.
It may mean getting better at understanding what allows you to perform well.
Evidence matters. So does the person standing in front of me.
I’ve coached female endurance athletes across different ages, stages of life, abilities and ambitions.
I’ve also spent years learning about female physiology — and continuing to update that knowledge as the research develops.
But I don’t believe being knowledgeable means pretending science has answered questions it hasn’t.
Where the evidence is strong, I’ll use it.
Where it’s uncertain, I’ll tell you.
And where your own experience gives us useful information, we’ll pay attention to that too.
That’s how I approach all my coaching:
Evidence gives us a starting point. Your individual response helps us decide what happens next.
You don’t need a “female training plan”
You need training that works for you.
Your sex is part of that picture.
So are your goals, training history, health, work, family, sleep, stress, nutrition, confidence, available time and about a hundred other things that make you an individual rather than a demographic. 😂
Sometimes being female will materially affect the coaching decision.
Sometimes it won’t.
Good coaching is knowing the difference.