MTB TRAINING: SHOULD WOMEN TRAIN DIFFERENTLY TO MEN?

Most exercise physiology research has been mainly done on men, or if women are included, no distinctions tend to be made between the results for males and females. Sometimes women’s fluctuations in hormones are deemed ‘too hard to study’ to let women be included in studies. So if they are, it tends to be women on an oral contraceptive (which reduces the natural hormone fluctuation) or women in the low hormone phase of their menstrual cycle (during this phase women are more like small men). The results from these studies have then been applied to both men and women, without any thought being given to the appropriateness of these recommendations for female athletes.

We all know that there are hormone differences between men and women. These hormone differences manifest themselves in a host of different physiological ways.

To understand how these affect the body you need to know that