I’ve been a lifelong lover of sport and always strive for improvement. Getting stronger has been a huge goal over the last 10 years and that’s where powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting came in. I was coached by men who never asked me about my cycle, whether I was on birth control or not. They didn’t seem to also consider my previous injuries. I was given a 12 week program to follow, where I inevitably got badly injured. I couldn’t lift for months on end.

I was beating myself up about it pretty bad when I started to get to the bottom of what had caused it. Aside from adjusting how often I lifted, I needed to adjust when I trained heavy, and when it was wiser to pull it back and rest. Turns out, there are times in our cycles when we are far more prone to injury, something I wish I had known getting into strength and conditioning as a woman.

Once I embraced my naturally cycling hormones, tracked them, and worked with them rather than against them, I recovered and came back stronger. I want more women to have access to the information that I never got from my coaches