Lessons from ROAR, by Dr. Stacy Sims

Credit: John Arano

ROAR: Top 3 Takeaways on Women’s Health and Fitness

Two men in their thirties host a podcast series discussing a book about how women athletes should eat and train. It sounds like the setup to a mansplaining joke, doesn’t it? 

100 Year Athlete’s Ben Van Treese and Alex Wetmore, PhD, are not experts on any aspect of womanhood (just ask their wives). However, they wanted to be better coaches to everyone in the 100YA/OTM community, and the differences between male and female athletes were an afterthought in their  college course on exercise physiology.

So, Ben and Alex decided to learn from the best in the business: Stacy Sims, MSC, PhD, author of ROAR: How to Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Unique Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong, Lean Body for Life. 

We recommend that all women with an interest in fitness read this book. In the meantime, here are our top takeaways from ROAR:

1. Eat More Protein, Especially Following Menopause

Women are more catabolic than men, meaning they turnover protein more rapidly in their muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments. To get into an anabolic state—one in which those same tissues grow—women need to be more strategic with protein intake. Sims recommends 15-20 grams of protein within the half hour before training and up to 60 grams post-training.

These recommendations are especially important for postmenopausal athletes, who find it relatively harder to recover from training. Their bodies become more efficient at breaking down protein and less efficient at synthesizing it into tissues like muscle. Here’s the thing: if you don’t consume enough protein to fuel your training, your body will divert whatever is available from your musculoskeletal system to your internal organs. That means a lot of your hard work will be wasted.

2. Time Training with Menstruation

For the purposes of training, we can think of the menstrual cycle in two distinct phases: low hormone and high hormone. The low hormone phase (“follicular”) takes place before ovulation, typically from day 1 to 14 in a 28-day cycle. The high hormone phase (“luteal”)  follows ovulation and spans day 14 to 28. Estrogen and progesterone production ramp up around day 12 and reach peak levels about 5 days before a person’s period begins. 

Athletic performance usually peaks during the low hormone phase, but that can vary from person to person. During the low hormone phase, athletes are likely to experience max power, speed, and strength, so it makes sense to program the most intense training sessions during that stretch. That said, women experience hormonal fluctuations differently, and 28 days is only the average for a cycle, which can range from 21 to 35 days. Dr. Sims recommends tracking not just the cycle but how you feel each day using smartphone apps like FitrWoman.

3. Toning is Not Strength Training

Why does strength matter for women as they age? Around 30-years-old, women begin to lose muscle density, which is not a good thing. On average, a woman’s lean mass drops about 3% per decade from age 30 to 80, while her strength drops about 30% from age 50 to age 70, says Sims. Then, at age 70, strength plummets. So does bone mineral density (i.e., your bones break more easily).  

The good news is that losing lean mass, strength, and bone mineral density is a choice. Women who strength train—and train hard—can not only prevent that decline but make gains.

Training strength is not “toning,” aka, lifting light weights at high reps. Toning only works slow-twitch (Type I) muscle fibers, which you'll keep even if you don't train them. Toning will not develop lean mass and strength, nor will it preserve bone density. It won’t even make you look “toned” (that takes the right genes and right strength program). To train those fast-twitch muscle fibers (Type II)—the kind that fade if untrained—you need to lift heavy loads. 

For more, pick up ROAR or check out the 100YA Podcast on Apple or Spotify