Training Through the Menstrual Cycle, Without Euphemism

At the Paris 2024 Olympics, weightlifter Mirabai Chanu finished fourth in the women’s 49kg category, missing a bronze medal by a single kilogram. She was on the third day of her period during the competition. “It was my third day of the period and that also affects you a bit,” she said afterward, naming it directly.

Badminton player Ashwini Ponnappa has described the same problem in more general terms: “Even we cannot understand how our body is going to react on those days… we have to deal with that anxiety every month.” She has also pointed out that this factor rarely gets built into training or tournament planning in the first place. It is treated as something to push through quietly rather than something to plan around.

What is happening

Hormone levels shift across the menstrual cycle, and those shifts are physical inputs to training, not an excuse or a state of mind. Energy, pain sensitivity and, for some athletes, measurable strength and endurance can all vary by phase. A study of Indian endurance athletes’ menstrual cycle practices, knowledge and communication was published in a peer-reviewed sports science journal. It found that most athletes in the study had limited formal knowledge of how their own cycle interacted with training, despite living with its effects directly. That gap is what this article is trying to close: a real physical effect, with limited structured knowledge about it.

What Indian athletes have said, without euphemism

Track athlete Dutee Chand has described the practical accommodation her training makes: “We are given rest for 1-2 days during periods and we train less due to the pain.” She added that training hard through it can affect the body negatively rather than building resilience.

Long jumper Anju Bobby George has been specific about what it cost her competitively: she got her period just before her event at the 2002 Indo-World Championships, competed through cramps and weakness and finished seventh. The same thing happened at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, where she finished fourth. She has said she could never tell anyone the real reason at the time, competing and losing without being able to name why.

Squash player Joshna Chinappa has framed the difference a coach relationship makes: whether an athlete tells her coach she is not feeling right during a period “is the equation you share with your coaches.” Some athletes described coaches who reacted with irritation when a girl, especially one with a heavy period, asked for a day off training. That reaction makes the problem worse. It teaches athletes to hide something that affects performance.

What this means for training, practically

Contraceptive pills to shift period timing around a major competition are not common practice among Indian sportswomen, and Anju Bobby George has warned that they can affect both performance and health rather than solve the problem. The more consistently useful approach, the one that shows up across these accounts, is planning:

• expecting lighter, heavier-feeling days early in a period
• building rest into the schedule around them, rather than fighting through the same load regardless of where an athlete is in her cycle
• treating a coach who reacts badly to a day-off request as a real problem worth addressing

Speaking to a Coach or Selector Who Holds Your Future covers how to have that kind of conversation. Recovery as Strategy covers the wider physiology of load and rest.