British Rowing athlete and part time Researcher, Kyra Edwards, talks about the findings of her latest research project, and how she and others in the team see the menstrual cycle.
- Unsurprisingly, she found that women who menstruate naturally experienced fluctuations with a range of over 3% in their RHR and over 6% in their HRV.
- RHR and HRV were optimal on the first day of a period, effectively a woman’s ‘best’ time to perform on average. Interestingly, these markers become increasingly worse through the cycle – by 0.2% and 0.4% on average per day for RHR and HRV respectively.
- These rapidly reset four days before the next period, returning to the same baseline as the start of the cycle at a rate of 0.7% and 1.7% of RHR and HRV respectively.
You can find the full details here - highly recommend giving it a read - really interesting stuff! Being an athlete that bleeds - British Rowing Plus