Australian Beach Volleyball champion Mariafe Artacho del Solar, a two-time Olympic medalist and competitor in the Paris 2024 Olympics, explains the advantages of using her menstrual cycle to enhance performance.
Many athletes use the pill to skip menstrual cycles, but this approach can limit their potential to 90%. In contrast, understanding and optimizing hormonal fluctuations through your natural menstrual cycle can provide benefits comparable to traditional performance-enhancing methods or substances.
Our menstrual cycle influences every aspect of our lives. By leveraging its ups and downs, and the significant benefits of hormonal changes, your body offers a natural, effective performance-enhancement (1).
How old are you?
Mariafe: I’m 30 years old.
Where do you live?
Mariafe: I’m now based in Brisbane but lived in Sydney for 8 years and Adelaide for 9 years before moving to Brisbane in 2020.
How long have you been a professional athlete?
Mariafe: I became a professional athlete in 2018. After finishing high school in Sydney in 2011, I moved to Adelaide to pursue beach volleyball full time.
How long have you been an Olympian?
Mariafe: My first Olympics was in Rio 2016, I was 22 years old. I also competed in Tokyo 2020 Olympics and going for my third in Paris.
Has beach volleyball always been your sport?
Mariafe: I love sports in general, I have always been an active person. Since I was a kid, I was always outside playing and moving around. I played all different ball sports but gravitated more towards volleyball because my sister also played.
How often do you train?
Mariafe: I train full time Monday to Friday.
Obviously, you can’t organise the competitions around your menstrual cycle – how do you manage it if you’re bleeding and competing?
Mariafe: I just go with it. I’ve never been pro skipping my period, so I’ve always just received it with open arms and dealt with it, it’s not easy sometimes.
What are the hard things about your menstrual cycle and training and competing?
Mariafe: The lower back pain as well as the ovary pain and sometimes headaches and feeling extra tired and low in energy.
How do you work with them?
Mariafe: Communication with my team is important, so everyone is aware of where I’m at in my menstrual cycle and how I’m feeling. It’s something we can control more at training but definitely harder to during tournament.
How does ovulation affect your performance?
Mariafe: This is usually the stage where I feel the best and strongest.
How does bleeding affect your performance?
Mariafe: I don’t feel too bad, sometimes I do feel more tired and slower, especially during the first day of bleeding but often I switch on my athlete’s mindset and just have to deal with it.
How is your training affected by the follicular phase?
Mariafe: During this phase is where I feel the best and strongest and have more energy.
How is your training affected by the luteal phase?
Mariafe: Definitely more tired during this phase and training at a high intensity is more challenging.
What is your favourite part of the menstrual cycle and why?
Mariafe: Definitely the follicular phase as I feel the best in energy levels, training performance and in general I feel the best.
Does your travel affect your menstrual cycle?
Mariafe: I’m pretty consistent, I haven’t found travelling an issue with my cycle.
What would you say to a younger version of you about training and competing with her menstrual cycle?
Mariafe: To listen to my body and to be ok with communicating how you feel.
What encouraging words can you offer female athletes about training and competing and managing their menstrual cycle?
Mariafe: I think it’s really important to normalise talking about it. Then to really be in tune with your body and listen to its needs.
What do you wish you knew about the menstrual cycle when you started out on your professional athlete career?
Mariafe: I wish there was more education on it then and normalising talking about it. As well as trying to work together with our coaches around our menstrual cycles as best we can. I know it’s a bit more challenging when you have more than two athletes in the team and everyone is on different cycles but talking about it and having more conversations about it is a good start.
How would you like to see the menstrual cycle viewed and treated in women’s sport?
Mariafe: As a female athlete, when working with the menstrual cycle in women’s sport I think it’s important to include the cycle in an athletes training plan. Within my team, we acknowledge when each team member will be coming into the end of their luteal phase so the strength component of their training will taper, their time on the sand will reduce and we monitor their jumping load.
Whilst we can’t control these elements within the competition phase of our sport, when we are training and have the ability to monitor and adapt the load when one of us is not feeling our best, we do so and I feel as though coaches within female high performance sport can do things like that to help their athletes feel at their best when like I said, it is possible to control the elements and load on the athlete.
