Perimenopause & Training

There often comes a time where training starts to feel different. Not worse, not impossible — just different. The weights that once felt manageable feel heavier, recovery takes longer, and your energy can feel inconsistent from week to week.

For many women, this is the stage of perimenopause, and it can have a real impact on how your body responds to training.

During this phase, your hormones — particularly oestrogen and progesterone — begin to fluctuate rather than follow a predictable pattern. Some weeks they may be higher, some weeks lower, and sometimes they can drop quite suddenly.

Oestrogen plays a big role in muscle repair, recovery, and joint health, so when levels dip, you may notice more soreness, slower recovery, or even small aches that weren’t there before.

Progesterone helps regulate your nervous system and sleep, so fluctuations can lead to disrupted sleep, increased fatigue, and a reduced ability to recover between sessions.

You may also notice changes in cortisol (your stress hormone). During perimenopause, your body can become more sensitive to stress, which means high-intensity training without enough recovery can leave you feeling more drained than usual.

None of this means you should stop training. In fact, strength training becomes even more important during this stage to support muscle mass, bone density, and overall health.

What does need to change is how you approach it.

Instead of pushing harder and expecting the same results, this phase is about training smarter.

That might mean adjusting intensity, allowing more recovery, or focusing on quality movement and consistency over chasing numbers every session.

The goal remains the same — to feel strong, capable, and confident in your body.