Luo Shifang Wins Gold While Menstruating: How Much Does Menstruation Really Affect Female Athletes’ Performance?

Peng Deng for Sanlian Lifeweek

Being able to discuss it openly, rather than treating it as a topic that shouldn’t be brought into public spaces, is just the beginning.

At the Paris Olympics women’s 59kg weightlifting competition on August 8, China’s Luo Shifang won gold by breaking three Olympic records: snatch (107kg), clean and jerk (134kg), and total (241kg), securing the 28th gold medal for the Chinese team at these Olympics.

Notably, Luo revealed after the competition that she was having her period during the event. She had made extensive preparations in advance and told herself this might be the most challenging competition of her career. To her surprise, once she got on stage, she “felt fine” and became much more relaxed.

Luo’s achievement while menstruating highlights the challenges faced by female athletes and raises an important question: How much does menstruation really affect athletic performance?

This question has puzzled the sports world for years.

First, we need to understand what menstruation really means for female athletes. While most people focus on the days of menstrual bleeding, a complete menstrual cycle is much longer and consists of three phases: the follicular phase (starting from the first day of bleeding, lasting 13-14 days), ovulation phase (lasting 16-32 hours), and the luteal phase (lasting about 14 days, ending before the next period)[1].

In other words, we should consider female athletes’ experiences throughout the entire menstrual cycle. During this process, women experience hormonal fluctuations, including changes in estrogen and progesterone levels. These hormonal changes affect various physiological functions, such as muscle strength, cognitive ability, temperature regulation, inflammatory response, and metabolism, which may influence athletic performance[2][3]. Some past studies have indeed supported the conclusion that “menstruation can negatively affect female athletes’ performance.”

For example, a paper published this year in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living studied 128 British female track and field athletes. The results showed that nearly 80% of athletes experienced at least one common menstrual symptom, such as bloating, lower back pain, or pelvic pain. Moreover, 76.8% of athletes believed that their menstrual cycle negatively affected their performance at certain stages, particularly during the premenstrual phase (late luteal phase) and menstrual phase (early follicular phase)[4].

A review study published by an Australian research team in 2021 also indicated that female athletes felt their performance declined during the premenstrual and menstrual phases, mainly due to premenstrual symptoms such as fatigue and lack of concentration[2].

Beyond potential performance decline, female athletes are also more prone to injuries during certain phases of their menstrual cycle. Their musculoskeletal tissues, including muscles, tendons, and ligaments, are affected by cyclical hormonal fluctuations. Posture control and neuromuscular coordination can also be disrupted, both of which increase injury risk. Data shows that during the late follicular phase, the incidence of muscle and tendon injuries in female athletes is twice that of normal times[5].

However, when focusing solely on objective measurements, current research findings don’t point to entirely consistent conclusions.

Some studies have found that the menstrual cycle affects female athletes’ performance in strength sports but shows no significant impact on aerobic and anaerobic exercise[2]. Other research indicates that the menstrual cycle might reduce female athletes' endurance capabilities but doesn’t significantly affect their performance in jumping and sprinting[6].

A few studies even suggest that menstruation might enhance performance for certain female athletes. This is because women’s cognitive abilities may improve somewhat during menstruation, leading to fewer mistakes and faster decision-making. For ball sports, this could actually be an advantage[7].

This ambiguity is why some papers note that due to differences in research design and methods, there remains controversy over whether menstruation affects female athletes’ performance. Many studies rely on self-reporting from female athletes to assess the impact of menstruation but lack objective physiological data for verification. Beyond research methods and measurements, different studies also vary in their definitions of menstrual cycle phases[3].

In short, there’s no definitive conclusion yet on whether menstruation affects performance. Individual differences among female athletes make it almost impossible to arrive at a “standard answer.” However, the inconvenience female athletes face during menstruation, common symptoms like menstrual pain, and emotional issues caused by hormonal fluctuations all add extra burdens to their pursuit of excellence.

Unfortunately, female athletes cannot reduce menstruation’s impact through “hardworking.” Research has found that whether an athlete is affected by menstruation has little correlation with their athletic level[8].

Meanwhile, most female athletes lack sufficient knowledge about handling menstruation during competition and don’t know how to adjust their diet and training load according to their menstrual cycle[9]. Hormonal contraceptives, which can regulate menstruation, are not considered a routine solution by most athletes. In a study involving 1,086 female athletes (from 57 sports), although 60% of respondents had used various hormonal contraceptives, only 18% said they considered these medications in their training and competition plans[10]. Of course, hormonal contraceptives haven’t become the magic cure as some might imagine, for understandable reasons. First, concerns about side effects may make many female athletes hesitant to use these medications[10]. Second, for events with intensive schedules (like tennis, which has competitions almost every week), regulating menstruation has limited significance.

Moreover, athletes taking hormonal contraceptives don’t necessarily perform better than their peers who experience natural menstrual cycles. According to a review analyzing 42 studies, hormonal contraceptives might even lead to a slight, though not significant, decline in performance for users[11].

Beyond personal factors, difficult communication about menstruation with coaches, especially male coaches, also troubles female athletes. In fact, in a survey of German female athletes, only 8% recalled their coaches ever asking about their menstrual regularity, and only 54% of respondents said they would be willing to discuss their periods with their coaches[12].

If private discussions are already this difficult, public discussions are even more challenging. Until recent years, period shame remained severe in the sports world. When British tennis player Heather Watson attributed her first-round exit at the 2015 Australian Open to menstruation, mainstream English media described it as “breaking a taboo”[13][14].

Against this background, major official organizations have also been quite conservative. Until 2023, Wimbledon, which strictly enforces its “all-white clothing” rule, finally allowed female tennis players to wear dark-colored undershorts on court[15]. Until then, female players at Wimbledon had to worry about visible blood stains during their periods.This probably explains why Fu Yuanhui’s candid discussion about menstruation during a post-race interview at the Rio Olympics swimming events sparked considerable social media reaction[16].

At this year’s Paris Olympics, besides Luo Shifang, other Chinese female athletes like Zhang Yufei and Chen Yuxi have also discussed menstruation’s impact on competition[17][18]. In recent years, international athletes like French handball Olympic champion Estelle Nze Minko and New Zealand golfer Lydia Ko have also spoken up about this issue[19]. These statements aren’t signs of “weakness.” On the contrary, through this frankness, we can better see female athletes’ relentless pursuit of “faster, higher, stronger.”

In English, “menstruation” is sometimes called “period.” But this wave of attention and discussion about female athletes’ menstruation issues shouldn’t be hastily concluded with a period. Being able to discuss it openly, rather than treating it as a topic that shouldn’t be brought into public spaces, is just the beginning. We are still far from the day when female athletes and all women can live without being troubled by menstruation, but giving this phenomenon the discussion space it deserves is an important step toward finding solutions.

Images in this article are used under Getty Images' Embed feature license for non-commercial purposes.

Original Article (in Chinese)

References

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