The female monthly cycle and how it impacts training and competition is a conversation that athletes and coaches should have. The reality is that it can be awkward for both parties, so to avoid awkwardness it usually gets pushed aside. Which means that female athletes can feel isolated in navigating this part of their life. We should also include perimenopause and menopause in that conversation as it will affect most females at some point.   As a coach I do believe that we need to have these conversations, and that they should not be awkward.   Education is a big part, so to help us better understand the ways in which training and competition can be managed, I have invited Dr Natalie Brown onto the show as a guest. Natalie is a research assistant for the Welsh Institute of Performance Science. She works predominately with Sport Wales, leading on research with female athletes and the impact of the menstrual cycle on sport participation and performance. In this conversation with Natalie we talk about:   To truly understand the patterns of your monthly cycle, track it for at least 3 cycles Lifestyle factors have a huge influence on the severity of your monthly cycle Carbohydrate supplementation prior to HIT sessions might mitigate some symptoms Menstrual cycle apps are good, but listening to your body is better Perimenopause is ‘chaos’ but healthy lifestyle factors can help How to arrange your training during the menopause HRT for females? It depends! Some guidance for coaches on how to open a menstrual cycle/menopause conversation with their athlete   To find out more about Natalie Brown and her work please visit these channels: Instagram Optimal.Period  Website www.optimalperiod.com,    You can find some other really good resources at the following links: Podcasts The Female Athlete,  For continued education please check out Menstrual cycle online coaching modules: UK Coaching resources   I also asked Natalie to recommend a book. This is her choice: Good for a Girl Lauren Fleshman   To contact Beth regarding Life Coaching, please visit her website at BethanyWardLifeCoaching.uk.   Sports Nutrition questions - if you have a sports nutrition question that you would like answered on the podcast, please email it to me via [email protected]. Join our SWAT/High Performance Human tribe using this link, with a happiness guarantee! You can watch a brief video about the group by going to our website here, and join our SWAT High Performance Human tribe here. Purchase a copy of my High Performance Human e-book featuring more than 30 top tips on how to upgrade your life. If you would like to help offset the cost of our podcast production, we would be so grateful. Please click here to support the HPH podcast. Thank you! Visit Simon's website for more information about his coaching programmes. Links to all of Simon's social media channels can be found here.  For any questions please email [email protected].