🏋🏻♀️ Does Perimenopause Turn Down Your Power?
I remember the exact moment I noticed my power was off. It was the first day of the Titan Tropic Cuba, a six-day mountain bike stage race on the sub-tropical island. I was chasing the lead group, who had just swept through a right hand bend leading into a short steep kicker. I got out of the saddle and punched down on my pedals to pop up and over the top and there was decidedly no pop. It wasn’t exactly a fizzle. But perhaps more like a strong peep.
I remember thinking, “Huh, that’s weird.” My next thought was, “Did I age overnight?” I was 47 at the time, and confess, I wasn’t really doing any real or consistent resistance training. I never really needed to. Or maybe I did and didn’t know it, which is what I’ve since discovered and a new study on sex hormones and female neuromuscular function across the lifespan suggests.
Form Follows Function
We talk a lot about muscles here and how maintaining muscle mass is key to healthy aging. But muscle function matters too—especially for sports performance—and neuromuscular function is a major factor. Neuromuscular function is the interaction between your nervous system and your muscles. Efficient neuromuscular function allows for optimal muscle activation, coordination, and force production, which are essential for generating high levels of power–the ability to produce force quickly. Like, you know, punch it over a climb.
To determine how neuromuscular function changes across a woman’s lifespan, and examine the potential role of menopausal hormone changes, a team of researchers mapped neuromuscular function, body composition, lifestyle, diet, and primary sex hormone concentrations in 88 females ranging in age from 18 to 80.
In a nutshell, they found a non-linear and accelerated reduction in neuromuscular function that occurs during the fourth decade and coincides with menopause onset associated with changes in sex hormone concentrations.
Specifically, the steepest declines in muscle strength, power, and torque occurred around ages 43 to 47, which aligns closely with perimenopause. The decline started before major muscle mass loss, which suggests that functional impairments precede structural muscle changes. Importantly, these declines occurred even after controlling for age, activity (the women in the study exercised about 44 minutes a day on average), and protein intake, suggesting sex hormones play a key role.
Optimal Muscle Activation
The researchers of this study concluded that: “Interventions aimed at mitigating declines in ovarian hormones and their subsequent effects on neuromuscular function after menopause should be further explored.”
That said, it’s important to note that they also found no significant associations between hormone replacement therapy or hormonal contraception with any of the neuromuscular outcomes. So, as with muscle mass, it’s not as simple as using hormone therapy.
So, what to do? Some loss of muscle mass and function is inevitable with age for everyone and with the menopause transition for women. It stands to reason that the more muscle you have and the more highly tuned your neuromuscular function, the better off you are in the long run. That means regular heavy and high intensity resistance training.
If I could go back and change one thing, I’d have gotten serious about regular strength training earlier. It’s the one thing I suggest everyone within earshot (or eyeshot) of me do.
When I got back from Cuba (where I finished just off the podium every day), I joined a CrossFit gym, learned to lift heavy, and started a practice of regular resistance and plyometric training. My power improved, my pop returned, and I achieved a few more podiums in the seasons that followed. More importantly, nine years later, I feel well-positioned to maintain power into my older years. And that’s what it’s all about.
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