The other day I was walking with my sister when we passed a building site here in Bali. We stopped for a minute to watch the women that were working on site. The women, alongside men, were doing hard physical labour in the heat, hour after hour - the same demand on their bodies despite the fact that some of those bodies were moving through a monthly cycle below the surface. What struck us both was how relentless it looked - and it got me thinking about something I find myself explaining a lot. How differently a body handles that kind of daily output depending on the rhythm it is running

There is so much content out there right now about cycle syncing your workouts, matching your training to your hormones, knowing when to push and when to hold back. However, to understand why your experience of training shifts across the month, you first have to understand that male and female bodies run on two completely different clocks.

Men run on a daily, 24 hour cycle

The male hormonal system works on a daily rhythm. Testosterone, which is the dominant hormone driving energy, drive and recovery, rises to its peak in the morning and gradually falls across the day to its lowest point in the evening. Then, overnight, it resets. The next morning it climbs again. It is essentially the same pattern repeating every 24 hours, which means that from one day to the next, a man wakes up with broadly the same hormonal environment he had the day before.

This is why, in simple terms, a man can train hard at almost any point and expect a fairly consistent experience. His baseline does not move much from day to day. He might feel stronger in the morning when testosterone is high, but the week ahead looks hormonally similar to the previous week.

Women are running on both daily and monthly cycles

Our female bodies have that same daily rhythm, but they carry a second, much longer cycle on top of it. Across roughly 28 days, the levels of oestrogen and progesterone rise and fall in a predictable pattern through the different phases of your cycle. This is called an infradian rhythm.

What that means in practice is that you are not just moving through a daily wave, you are moving through a monthly one as well. In the first half of your cycle, as oestrogen climbs, many people feel more energetic, more resilient and more inclined to push. In the days before your period, as progesterone rises and both hormones then drop, it is common to feel heavier, more tired or less motivated, even when nothing about your training has changed. None of that is in your head. It is the natural shape of a system that resets monthly rather than daily. Understanding this alone can take away a huge amount of the frustration people feel when a session that was easy two weeks ago feels impossible today.

What this means for your training

The current research is reassuring. When scientists look at the best quality studies, the phase of your cycle does not meaningfully change how strong you are or your ability to build strength over time. In other words, you do not need to fear certain weeks of the month. You do not need to put your progress on hold for certain phases. You are capable of training well and getting results at any point in your cycle.

So the value of understanding your cycle is not a rigid set of rules about what you are allowed to do and when. It is awareness. It is knowing that if you feel flat in the days before your period, there is a reason. It is not a lack of discipline. It is being able to meet your body where it is on a given day rather than measuring every session against your best one.

How I would approach it

My approach is to train consistently across the month and adjust by how you feel, not by the calendar. When your energy is high, use it. Push your Strength sessions, add intensity, enjoy feeling capable. When your energy drops, you do not stop, you adapt. That might mean a Pilates session instead of a heavy Strength day, or a Mobility flow that supports your body without draining it. The work still counts. Consistency built around how you feel will always beat a perfect plan you abandon halfway through.

The reason the LEAN Method works with such a broad range of people is that it is built to flex. Strength, Pilates, Cardio and Mobility sit together in one structure, so there is always a way to train that matches your energy on the day, rather than a single setting you either hit or miss. You get to keep showing up, through every phase, without forcing your body to perform to a rhythm that is not its own.

Find your LEAN Method Program here

Lilly