Women's cycling needs its own conversation because the physiology is genuinely different — not worse, not weaker, but different in ways that matter for training, recovery, fuelling, and long-term health. Hormonal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle alter how your body responds to hard training. Perimenopause and menopause reshape recovery and body composition. Bone density is a real and under-discussed risk for any cyclist, and it accelerates after menopause. The good news: every one of these is manageable when you understand what's actually happening and train accordingly.
Here's the thing nobody tells you: most cycling training advice is built on research done almost exclusively on men. The default "serious cyclist" in the literature is a 25-year-old male. That means the plans, the recovery timelines, the fuelling recommendations — they're all calibrated for a hormonal profile that roughly half the cycling population doesn't have. This isn't a complaint; it's a blind spot, and we've spent a lot of time on the podcast working to fill it. Conversations with Tayler Wiles, who lived the professional women's peloton and its gaps first-hand, and Sharon Madigan, who has spent years studying how female athletes should actually fuel and recover, have shaped how we cover this ground.
In this guide:
- Why women's cycling needs its own conversation
- Training around the menstrual cycle
- Perimenopause and menopause
- Bone density — the hidden risk
- Nutrition differences for female cyclists
- Strength training for women cyclists
- Bike fit for women
- Building community
- What the experts say
- Frequently asked questions
Why Women's Cycling Needs Its Own Conversation
It's not about making things easier or softer. It's about accuracy. A woman training through her luteal phase with the same intensity targets as her follicular phase is working against her own biology, not with it. A woman entering perimenopause who doesn't understand why her recovery has changed will blame herself — or worse, train harder to compensate, which makes everything worse.
The cycling world is catching up, but slowly. The research base on female endurance athletes has roughly tripled in the last decade, and what it shows is consistent: women respond to training differently across the cycle, need different fuelling strategies, face specific risks around bone health, and benefit from strength work in ways that go beyond what male cyclists get. None of this means women can't train hard. It means training smart looks different.
→ Read the full guide: Cycling Training Around the Menstrual Cycle
Training Around the Menstrual Cycle
Let me break this down. The menstrual cycle creates two broad windows with different hormonal environments, and those environments change what your body does well.
| Phase | Days (approx.) | Hormonal Picture | Training Implications |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follicular (including menstruation) | 1-14 | Oestrogen rising, progesterone low | Higher pain tolerance, better carbohydrate utilisation, favours high-intensity work — VO2 max intervals, sprints, heavy lifting |
| Luteal | 15-28 | Progesterone high, oestrogen declining | Higher core temperature, greater fat oxidation, reduced top-end capacity — better suited to endurance work, moderate intensity, technique focus |
This isn't a rigid prescription — individual variation is enormous, and some women notice almost nothing while others feel every shift. The point is to track, notice patterns, and stop fighting the days when the legs feel heavy for no obvious reason. There probably is a reason.
The practical step: log your cycle alongside your training for three months. You'll start to see your own version of the pattern above. Then you can plan your hardest sessions into the days that support them and stop beating yourself up on the days that don't.
→ Read the full guide: Cycling Training Around the Menstrual Cycle
Perimenopause and Menopause
This is the section that barely exists anywhere else in cycling. Perimenopause typically begins in the early-to-mid 40s and can last a decade. During that transition, oestrogen and progesterone become erratic before declining permanently at menopause. The effects are real and wide-ranging: disrupted sleep, changed body composition (more central fat storage), slower recovery, mood changes, and reduced ability to build and maintain muscle.
Here's what matters for training: the hormonal environment that supported easy adaptation in your 30s has changed. You haven't become less disciplined. Your biology has shifted, and your training needs to shift with it.
The adjustments that work:
- More recovery between hard sessions — what used to need 48 hours may now need 72.
- Higher protein intake — anabolic resistance increases, so you need more protein stimulus to maintain muscle.
- Strength training becomes non-negotiable — it's the primary tool for maintaining muscle mass, bone density, and metabolic health through and beyond menopause.
- Sleep protection — disrupted sleep is common and directly undermines recovery. Treat it as a training variable, not a lifestyle inconvenience.
The message is the same one we repeat everywhere on this site: you're not done. But the approach needs to evolve.
→ Read the full guide: Menopause and Cycling Performance → Read the full guide: Perimenopause and Cycling Training Adaptation → Read the full guide: Hormones and Recovery for Female Cyclists Over 45
Bone Density — the Hidden Risk
This one is serious, and it catches cyclists off guard. Cycling is non-weight-bearing. Unlike running, walking, or lifting, it puts almost no mechanical load through bone. Over years and decades, that matters — and it matters a lot more for women, because oestrogen decline after menopause accelerates bone loss.
The combination of years of cycling as your primary exercise, low body weight, and post-menopausal hormonal changes creates a genuine osteoporosis risk. It's not theoretical. DEXA scan data from endurance cyclists consistently shows lower bone density than age-matched non-athletes, which is the opposite of what you'd expect from someone who exercises 10+ hours a week.
The fix is straightforward: lift heavy, do some impact activity, and don't under-fuel. Two strength sessions a week with compound movements (Bulgarian split squats, step-ups, hip thrusts, single-leg Romanian deadlifts) loaded progressively will maintain and in many cases improve bone density. Adding 10 minutes of jumping, skipping, or running a few times a week provides the impact stimulus that cycling completely lacks.
And fuelling matters here too — chronic under-eating (low energy availability) directly suppresses the hormonal signals that maintain bone. RED-S is a bone density issue as much as it is a performance issue.
→ Read the full guide: Bone Density and Cycling After Menopause
Nutrition Differences for Female Cyclists
Women aren't small men, and the differences in how female athletes should fuel are more than cosmetic. Three things stand out.
Iron. Women lose iron through menstruation. Endurance exercise increases iron demand. The combination means female cyclists are significantly more likely to be iron-deficient — and iron deficiency crushes endurance performance long before it shows up as clinical anaemia. Get tested. Don't guess.
Energy availability. Relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) disproportionately affects female athletes, and the threshold for harm is lower than most riders realise. Energy availability below 30 kcal/kg of lean body mass per day begins to suppress hormonal function, impair recovery, and damage bone. Chronic mild under-fuelling — the kind that feels like "being disciplined" — does more damage than most training errors. Sharon Madigan has been particularly clear on this: eating enough isn't a weight-gain risk, it's a performance requirement.
Substrate use. Women tend to oxidise proportionally more fat at moderate intensities than men, which has implications for how you fuel endurance rides. But the high-intensity fuelling requirements are the same: carbohydrate is still king above threshold.
→ Read the full guide: Cycling Nutrition — Why It's Different for Women
Strength Training for Women Cyclists
Everything we say about strength training for cyclists applies to women — and then some. The case for heavy compound lifting is even stronger for female cyclists because it addresses three risks simultaneously: muscle loss with age, bone density decline, and the metabolic changes that come with perimenopause and menopause.
The programme doesn't need to look different. Bulgarian split squats, hip thrusts, single-leg Romanian deadlifts, presses, single-arm rows — loaded heavy, 4-6 reps, with full recovery between sets. Two sessions per week, year-round. The fear that heavy lifting will "bulk up" female cyclists is one of the most persistent and most wrong myths in the sport. The hormonal environment doesn't support it, and the rep range is about force production, not hypertrophy.
→ Read the full guide: Women's Cycling Strength Training Guide
Bike Fit for Women
Women typically have different proportions to men — often longer legs relative to torso length, different pelvic geometry, and different shoulder width. A bike designed around average male proportions with a shorter stem and narrower bars bolted on is a compromise, not a fit.
Saddle selection matters more, not less. Pelvic geometry differs, and the "women's specific" saddle category is too broad to be useful — the right saddle is the one that supports your sit bones and doesn't create soft tissue pressure, regardless of what the marketing says. A proper bike fit with someone who understands female anatomy is worth every penny, and it's worth redoing if your body has changed through pregnancy, menopause, or a significant shift in training.
→ Read the full guide: Bike Fit for Women Cyclists — The Complete Guide
Building Community
One of the strongest things to come out of the growth in women's cycling is the community around it. If you're getting into cycling or coming back to it, finding a group — whether that's a local women's ride, an online community, or a structured training group — makes the difference between sticking with it and drifting away.
The Not Done Yet community on Skool includes women at every level, from first sportive to racing, and the conversations around training through hormonal changes, fitting cycling around family, and dealing with the bits of cycling culture that still haven't caught up are some of the most valuable threads in the group.
→ Read the full guide: Women's Cycling Community — Getting Started
What the Experts Say
Tayler Wiles — former professional cyclist, now one of the most articulate voices on the structural and physiological challenges women face in the sport. On the podcast, Tayler was direct about the gap between how women's cycling is talked about and how it's actually experienced — from pay disparity to the lack of research on female-specific training. Her perspective grounds everything we cover on this page in real-world experience.
Sharon Madigan — sports nutritionist specialising in female athlete performance. Sharon's work on energy availability, iron status, and fuelling through hormonal transitions has shaped how we talk about women's nutrition on this site. Her central message: under-fuelling is the most common and most damaging mistake female cyclists make, and fixing it produces bigger performance gains than any supplement or training tweak.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I train differently around my cycle?
Yes — but "differently" means adjusting expectations and timing, not doing less. The follicular phase (roughly days 1-14) tends to support high-intensity work better: higher pain tolerance, better carbohydrate utilisation, and a hormonal environment that favours adaptation from hard efforts. The luteal phase (roughly days 15-28) is better suited to endurance and moderate-intensity work. Track your cycle alongside your training for a few months and you'll see your own pattern. The goal is to work with your physiology, not against it.
Does menopause affect cycling performance?
It can, but far less than most women fear — and the effects are manageable. The hormonal changes of perimenopause and menopause affect recovery speed, body composition, sleep quality, and the ability to build and maintain muscle. Performance doesn't have to decline if you adjust: more recovery time between hard sessions, higher protein intake, consistent strength training, and deliberate sleep protection. Women who make these adjustments continue to improve well past menopause.
Why is bone density a concern for cyclists?
Because cycling is non-weight-bearing. It doesn't load your bones the way running, jumping, or lifting does, so years of cycling as your primary exercise can leave you with lower bone density than you'd expect. For women, the oestrogen decline after menopause accelerates bone loss, making this a compound risk. The countermeasures are clear: heavy strength training twice a week, some impact activity (even brief), and adequate fuelling — chronic under-eating directly suppresses the hormones that maintain bone.
How is nutrition different for female cyclists?
Three key areas. First, iron: menstruation and endurance exercise together increase the risk of deficiency, which silently destroys performance. Get your levels tested regularly. Second, energy availability: women are more susceptible to RED-S, and the threshold for harm is lower than many riders realise — eating "clean" and "light" is often just under-fuelling by another name. Third, substrate use: women oxidise proportionally more fat at moderate intensities, which affects fuelling strategy for long rides, though carbohydrate remains essential above threshold. The overarching point is that the standard male-default nutrition advice leaves real gaps for female cyclists.