Business of Endurance

The Science of Female Performance: Challenging Sports Science Assumptions with Dr Stacy Sims

• Charlie Reading • Season 10 • Episode 3

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Today’s guest is one of the world’s leading voices in the science of female performance - and she’s here to change the way you think about training, recovery, and your body. 

Dr. Stacy Sims coined the phrase “Women are not small men” - and she’s spent her career proving why. 

In this episode, we unpack everything from caffeine and cold-water therapy to cycle-based training, menopause, RED-S, and strength training after 40. Whether you’re a female athlete, a coach, or simply someone looking to optimize health and energy at any age - this is the episode for you. 

You’ll also hear the story of how Stacy went from elite athlete to world-renowned researcher - and what she’s learned by standing at the frontlines of sport science, often as the lone voice in the room. 

This episode is packed with myth-busting, empowering science - and practical tools you can use starting today. Let’s dive in.


Highlights:

  • Women ≠ Small Men: How the moment a lab tossed her data sparked a mission to rebuild sports science for female physiology.
  • Lift Heavy, Live Long: From teens to menopause, heavy strength trains the nervous system, protects power, bones, and brain.
  • Fuel the Clock, Not the Hype: Early eating and post-training protein + carbs beat late-morning “fasting” for women’s health.
  • Beyond “Just Go on the Pill”: Track cycles, fix low energy, consider real fixes for cramps and heavy bleeds - don’t mute the system.
  • Athlete to Advocate: From Kona and World Cups to the lab bench - lived experience powering better answers for women and girls.
  • Puberty’s Performance Dip: A temporary wobble, not a verdict - relearn movement, build strength, keep girls in the game.
  • Her Why: Empower the next generation - science, not stereotypes - so daughters inherit sport that finally fits.
  • Test, Don’t Guess: Cycle-aware training, caffeine trials, and simple logs turn “generic advice” into personal performance.
  • Heat Loves Her, Ice Not So Much: Women gain more from sauna; skip the ice baths - cool water beats ice-cold shock.


Links:

Connect with Stacy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drstacysims

Connect with Stacy on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drstacysims 

Connect with Stacy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacy-t-sims-phd/

Connect with Stacy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPD55VPa1ZWx1a_nzWC2VJA

Dr Stacy Sims Website: https://www.drstacysims.com/

This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline

StacySims:

We don't really study women, we don't know enough about men, it doesn't matter, you're just a smaller version, and when you sit back and think about it, you're like, wait a second, that's not quite right.

CharlieReading:

Today's guest is one of the world's leading voices in the science of female performance. She's here to change the way you think about training, recovery, and your body. Dr. Stacey Sims coined the phrase, women are not small men. And she spent her career proving why. In this episode, we unpack everything from caffeine, cold water therapy, cycle-based training, menopause, red air, and strength training after 14. Whether you're a female athlete, a coach, or simply someone looking to optimize health and energy at any age, this episode is definitely new. You'll also hear the story of how Stacy went from elite athlete to world-renowned researcher and what she's learned by standing at the front lines of sports science, often as the lone voice in the room. This episode is packed with myth busting, empowering science, and practical tools you can start using today. So let's dive into the episode with the amazing Dr. Stacy Sims. So could I ask you a quick favor before we dive into today's episode? If you're enjoying Claire and I bringing you amazing guests, not asking you for patronage fees and not jamming the podcast full of adverts, then the best way you can help us continue to do that and to make it even better is to hit that subscribe button. And here's my promise to you when you subscribe, we'll make it our mission, along with the team that supports us, to continue to improve this podcast every week. So thank you so much for your support and for being a part of the business of endurance community. Let's dive in. So, Stacey, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you. Well, this morning for us, this evening for you, I'm assuming. So, yeah, looking forward to diving into an area that I feel somewhat somewhat out of my depth talking about, I think. But I'm gonna I'm gonna do my best and I'm I'm here to be guided by Claire when I'm putting my foot in it. But you famously championed the idea that that women are not small men, which is a term I I love, and you've built an entire scientific and educational platform around it. But what was the moment that sparked your mission to revolutionize the way that we train and fuel female athletes?

StacySims:

I'm driven selfishly, I'll admit that, you know. As a young endurance athlete and training just as hard and not finding the kind of results that I wanted, specifically went from running into rowing and we were all doing the same kind of training as the men, same kind of blocks, all gearing up for the same races, but there were a lot of times when the entire woman's boat was flat, and you know, we talk about, oh, it's that time of the month and all sorts of things, and it never really kind of came up for the men. So when I started looking at it from a perspective of being in class and learning exercise physiology and metabolism and seeing no representation of women in any of the textbooks, it was always he or they. There was never a confining aspect of talking about sex hormones or menstrual cycle. The images that we were shown were all those that really project aggression and power and strength, which are always associated with the male sex hormone. And then when I was doing a metabolism lab, I was the only woman that would participate and they threw my results out. And I was like, why are you throwing my results out? And it didn't line up with what they were expecting from a teaching lab. And I was like, wait, I am the daughter of a military officer. I know how to standardize and follow rules. I know that I did this right. And then that's where it started coming out. Well, we don't really study women, we don't know enough about men, it doesn't matter, you're just a smaller version. And when you sit back and think about it, you're like, wait a second, and that's not quite right because one, women are XX, men are XY when we're talking binary concepts, and women have a menstrual cycle. So we know inherently that people who identify as being female will have perturbations across their menstrual cycle, how that makes them feel, how it makes them react and train. And so it just did not make sense. And I came from a family who let us do things and always asking why and finding answers. And when I couldn't find them, that kind of was the trajectory to like, okay, now let's really figure this out and see if I can find some answers.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. And I and I think so. We're gonna definitely dive deeper onto what that sort of research and what you've learned and you know, all of that sort of stuff over the course of this podcast. But before we do, let's I'd just like to sort of divert and talk a little bit about your own athletic background because you've kind of mentioned a bit about your sporting background there. For those people that don't know, tell us a bit more about what you've done as an athlete. You know, what what do you consider the highlight of your sporting career?

StacySims:

I've come to realize that although I might be a type A minus, I put certain goals into play, and when I achieve them, I become disinterested. So that will tell you the preference of how I've gotten into what I do. So as a kid growing up, and like I said, being military, the only status quo was having the availability of ballet classes. So I started as a ballerina and we were stationed someplace that allowed me to have some consistency. And when I was around 13, puberty, you know, you start your body starts changing. My instructor was like, you need to choose between ballet and running, and I recommend running. Then I started the whole like running cross-country track, played a little bit of field hockey, co-ed, soccer on the offs off season of of cross country. And then when it came to university, I wasn't that excited about running at the collegiate level because I was like, Yeah, it's hard, but I want to try something new. So I got into rowing. It was relatively easy transfer for me because I felt that it was, you know, hey, this is something new, it's team oriented. So I rode all through university and then got into bike racing and triathlon. So I did triathlon full board for a very long period of time. I've done Kona a few times, I've done X Terra Worlds a few times, I've done a lot of little races here and there. And then when I started my PhD down at the very bottom of New Zealand, where it's very, very cold and I don't like swimming in cold water, I turned to bike racing. I was like, bike racing's way more fun. It's the most fun part. So raced World Cups and high-level circuits race for protein when I got back to the States. And then it got to a point where I really had to choose between bike racing on that level or career and marriage. I was like, well, you know, career's gonna pay the bills, and I really love my husband. So transferred into X-Tara. And that way my husband and I could do a lot of training together. It was a bit more interesting. And then after the week before I raced Maui Worlds, I found out I was pregnant. So that was the second time through on the new course. And so I had full intention of coming back afterwards, but life gets busy, you have a newborn, things change, career comes in. So I think that was probably the relative end of being focused on any kind of real training in racing. Now it's gravel racing or gravel biking, done some high rocks, done some CrossFit, lots of gym stuff because of that's a consistency when you're traveling so much. Yeah. So long history and endurance, and now slowly getting more into the strength side of things.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. And and so within that, what what do you think is the highlight? I mean, like you've got you've just listed so many different things there. But what do you think if you sort of look back and think that's the moment that I'm really most proud of? Where do you think that is?

StacySims:

I don't know if it is in sport because the reason why I like got to different levels where I was is because of the people around me. It's like driving and and racing with my friends and getting to, you know, getting podium and that kind of stuff was all just part of the journey. So it wasn't like an epitome, and that's what I meant. Like when I started this, it's like I don't have that ultimate, like I reach a certain point and it's fun. And when things stop becoming fun and adventurous, I want to find something else. So it's like there isn't a pivotal where you train so hard and you're like, oh, I've reached this peak, I've got this podium, I can move on. It's like, well, that was super fun. I got third in worlds, no problem. Let's go, let's go do something else, right? So it's a little bit of it's been interesting to find that out about myself, like looking at history and having conversations. And it still holds true now. I'm like, I was riding my bike so much and gravel racing and gravel riding, and now I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna do some ocean swimming, and then I'll go back. And it's just little things that are of interest now.

CharlieReading:

I think I can really relate to this. So I did Kona last year and it was like a massive tick on the on the list for me. And and then it's like right now I can't get excited about that stuff now. So now I'm going off and doing the whole adventure thing. So which we talked about a bit on the podcast and Claire knows all about. But it's it's kind of like uh yeah, I can really relate to this. So I suppose that sort of prompts a question that's the segue from one topic to the other. And that is what's the most significant lessons that you've learned through your own racing experience? And how did those moments shape the research that you've pursued in the lab?

StacySims:

Questions from femates about different supplements or products or racing strategies, things that would come up like should I use compression during training to create a little bit of hypoxia? Or what's the best way to acclimatize the altitude? Or is this should I go with a 160 crank length or a 170? Because they couldn't find the information. And myself being curious about that too, I'm like, okay, well, let's go figure this out. Let's go answer the question in the lab. And if I can't do it, then I'm going to find colleagues who can do that. So it really, my whole research line of trying to figure out all of this stuff for women has been based on real life lived experiences and trying to get the answers for people who are asking. And now it is my teammates are now coaches and they're trying to pass really good information on to the younger generation so they don't fall into low energy availability reds or a really awful team environment because we've all lived that. So now it's like, okay, what is the drive? What are the questions when we're looking for the younger generation now, too? So it's this continuous thread that just keeps coming through. I get questions from the field or I see something in research that doesn't quite make sense to apply to a woman. So let's go in and answer that. Let's go dig in and find out that answer based on the right population.

ClaireFudge:

So I love the kind of questioning brain that you've got. And actually, like there isn't those answers out there. I'm going to go and find out because you're absolutely right. In that, in that group environment, people are asking these questions, but you can't, you can't find the answers. And it's so great to see now in the world of sports, you know, since you've made such, you know, a big noise in this world of female health, that actually now we're seeing research, you know, taking place. And just the other day I was at a conference and just listening to how far it's come in terms of you know, physiologists now speaking about females and athletes and how we manage them. So yeah, so exciting to ask lots of questions today. But I want to I want to start because there's so many areas obviously we can dive into, but I want to start around caffeine. And obviously, we know that caffeine's um got lots of research behind it, but I'm really interested to hear more about caffeine and how that is metabolized differently in females and males, and why why it differs? And you know, how can our females more sensitive maybe across their cycle? Or does it change in perimenopause or in menopause at all?

StacySims:

So if we look at this metabolism of caffeine, we see that it's more driven from a genetic standpoint. That's what we'll talk, you know. What we'll hear a lot in the research is if you have two alleles of being a fast metabolizer, then you react differently from two alleles of slow. And if you have an allele of both, then caffeine doesn't really work for you. But the caveat is the woman's what we call SIP gene. So the SIP gene is how you metabolize drugs. And we see that women have a slower gastric emptying rate, and we also have a slower uptake of a lot of drugs and caffeine is included in that. So when we start looking at the effects of caffeine, the half-life of caffeine for women is a longer period of time than what it is in men. So, I mean, you'll see guys who are throwing back two or three shots of espresso right before a race, and then they're ready to go. Whereas if a woman does that, she's like, okay, waiting, waiting, waiting, and then she gets some jitters and then it kicks in. So it does have to do a lot with genetics, but we do see a precipitous change when we start to get to late perimenopause and to menopause. And there's research is going right now, looking into why this happens. But women become more sensitive to caffeine. You'll talk to women who are late peri, early postmenopause, and like, I can't, I can't have as much coffee as I had before, I'm becoming really jittery, and I feel really anxious. So if we look at what happens with caffeine in the brain and it attaches to the adenosine receptors, it has an interplay with dopamine, and we know that we're having a lot of brain changes with hormone flux, and we're seeing a dregulation of certain receptors. We're seeing a change in our actual neurotransmitters. So it makes sense that the change in those neurotransmitters, including adenosine, is going to affect the way caffeine works in a woman's body when she gets to that point. I'm really interested to follow that line of research because it is so common for women to say, I can't do caffeine anymore. Not that it interferes sleep, but it makes them very anxious and jittery instead of giving a focus and a boom, ready to go.

ClaireFudge:

I think we're hearing a lot of that in in women in this perimenopausal stage as well, and also kind of feeling a lot hotter from it in some women as well. So what I'm hearing you say, just for people that aren't kind of as science-based, is that naturally there's a genetic element to it, but naturally in females your um empty from your stomach is a lot slower, but also that the uptake is also a lot slower as well. So it might take a longer period of time than than in men. Do we know what that kind of figure may be? Like if if if um there are female athletes listening, what might that difference be? If they were going to use, for example, um a caffeine gel before a start of a race, when could they expect, or caffeine gum or whatever, when could they expect potentially that that kind of kick in to sort of start?

StacySims:

That's not if we're looking at excuse me, the caffeine, which we call up to half-life. So half-life is how long it takes for half of that amount of caffeine to be absorbed and and kick in. We see in a hundred milligrams of caffeine that half-life is 120 minutes or two hours. So we have to think about the 50 milligrams that's in a standard gel, you know, it it starts to wear off a lot faster because you'll hit that half-life probably around 90 minutes. So for women who are relatively caffeine sensitive, they're using a 50 milligram gel of caffeine or a gummy or something like that. They might not feel it until that half-life hits at that 90-minute point, or a guy will feel it within 20 to 30 minutes because it starts to hit the system and starts to have an effect on fat metabolism and your adenosine for fatigue. So there is that discrepancy of, you know, it could be an hour with a 50 milligrams, but again, it depends on how fast the woman's metabolizing it.

ClaireFudge:

That's really interesting. So it's actually really personal as well in terms of when, yeah, when that's gonna kick in.

StacySims:

I have I have women who are wanting to use caffeine on the back half of a 70.3 or an Iron Man race, but they're not really sure how that's going to affect them. So we do a somewhat low, not quite depletion run in a training block. So maybe an hour on the bike and then they're gonna go for a 90-minute run. And they're relatively low fueling because I want them to have the same sensation as the back half of a run. And they'll take caffeine and then they'll realize either it makes them very hypoglycemic, like really quickly, or if it gives them a steady state. And that's something really important to know because caffeine clears blood sugar really quickly because you're having a switch into fat metabolism, and fat metabolism requires blood glucose or requires glucose. So then they'll know, okay, if I use caffeine, I have to have X amount more carbohydrate with that caffeine in order not to hit a spike and then drop off. So that's where some of that individual play comes into account. Men can do it too, but again, they're not quite as sensitive to that hypoglycemic effect as women are.

CharlieReading:

Does this relate to uh I remember hearing you talk about a sleep kind of supplement in the US where the dosage was all around the the male dosage and females were having crashes in the morning because of the dose? Is this is this the same thing that's going on here that the female is is using up the caffeine kind of more slowly than the male? Is that is that is that the the idiot in the room is kind of asking for what's going on?

StacySims:

Yeah, it's when we look at most of the metabolism or the uptake of of drugs, and like I said, caffeine is one of those. It's all based on your standard male and body composition of standard male. So what you're talking about, Charlie, is the ambient incident where people were taking a standard dose of ambien and women were waking up in the morning still drugged from it. So this is why they are crashing. Another way I like to explain it is my husband and I both had similar hip surgeries by the same surgeon. He's an 84 kilo guy, I'm a 59 kilo woman. We get sent home with the exact same drug and the exact same dosage. So it's like, and my friend who's a vet, she's like, that's wrong because we have to dose by body weight for dogs. It's really wrong. And in the way that we approach drug metabolism and drug dosage. So caffeine is in that. Like we see that the standard dose is 50 to 100 milligrams in a gel or caffeinated drink, and that can be way too much for some women, and it could be just enough for some men, or some men might need to do more than that. And it comes down to sex differences in SIP gene and gastric emptying or how fast it hits the system, um, the half-life. And again, if we're looking at across the menstrual cycle, there are differences too. If we think about the high hormone phase of the menstrual cycle, where we have a greater reliance on free fatty acids and we have a higher core temperature, and we don't have as much carbohydrate available, then it hits the system faster and affects women at a greater intensity than if they were in the low hormone phase, where they have more of the carbohydrate available to kind of buffer the clearing through the blood.

ClaireFudge:

It's just that it, you know, it's just fascinating when you're talking about this for so many years, women have not had this information available. And just, you know, you talking and hearing all the research and reading all the research out there, it just makes so much sense when you're reading it. Like, my God, this is like, you know, this jigsaw's coming together. So it's it's fascinating to hear you talk about it. And actually, when we're talking about research, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but you've published over a hundred journals, I think. Is that is that right? I think I'm now up to just shy of 120 journal. Amazing. And when, you know, talking about research, obviously a lot of as you started out, you know, a lot of the research has been in men, particularly when we're looking at sports and and physiology. Um I know there's a lot more research now being done in in females, which is amazing. But what, you know, what are the main assumptions in in research out there in men that just don't, you know, apply to women? I know you've just touched on a little bit of it there.

StacySims:

Yeah, I kind of want to redo all the research in sports science, especially for women. And I say that because I bring it back to like a historical perspective, right? If we think about the modernization of medicine, modernization of sport, and who was in the room when they were designing studies, it was men, right? So you're thinking about there was no even context of what is a menstrual cycle or hormone perturbations or the fact that a woman doesn't age in the same kind of linear fashion as a man. So if we think about things like I'm looking at VO2 and VO2 tests, we see that there's a difference in the uptake of VO2 and VO2 VO2 because women in the stages that they put a lot of women through, it's not optimal for our muscle morphology. What I mean by that is our muscle fiber type, because being born XX versus XY means that as XX, you have more endurant fibers. So you don't have as many of those glycolytic fibers, you have better oxygen carrying capacity. And so when we're looking at the stepwise increments for a VO2 test, it's optimized for the male body, but not for the woman's body. So there are things like basic protocols that I'd like to redo. And, you know, I could spend another two career decades of just redoing protocols. And we don't have that, and I don't have the time to do that. So we do have to just take a pause and say, okay, so if this VO2 test is optimal for my body, maybe we have to relook at the stepwise increments, or maybe I start at a higher power output because I can hold that for a much longer period of time. And same with lactate and lactate testing. Women don't have as much glycolytic capacity as men because we don't have as many of those fast twitch fibers. So we aren't able to produce as much lactate, but that doesn't mean that we can't hold high percent of our oxygen, our aerobic ability at a high power output. It just means that we don't pay attention so much to that lactate curve. So there's there we could go on for the rest of the podcast.

ClaireFudge:

Just a quick, just a quick follow-up on that. I've heard you talk before and listen to you speak about, you know, obviously we we haven't got all of this research with females, but it doesn't mean to say that things aren't different or it doesn't exist. And I've talked to you, I've I've heard you talk about, you know, extrapolating or taking data from kind of the medical science world and bringing it into sports. Can you talk to us a little bit about kind of what what that means in terms of taking evidence from somewhere else and kind of applying it to the sports world with women?

StacySims:

Yeah. So if we look right now at sports science, and yes, I'm very excited to think that there's a lot more research coming out, but when we're looking at the research, a lot of the cut points are based arbitrarily, which it might have come up in one or two sports science studies and it's been held true. If we look, for example, at trying to determine what our luteal phase is, if we look at sports science cutoffs, they'll say you have a viable luteal phase if you are 16 animals or higher. If we look in the fertility research, it fluctuates between eight and 20. So if we're doing research or trying to determine if a woman has a viable luteal phase and we're going with sports science cutoffs, then we might miss the mark. But if we're going with all the tried and true, really for the fertility research, then we can take that over and say, yep, here are our variations. We know that progesterone is in a pulse, it's not standard and static. So that's what I mean when we're looking at outside of the sports science research, we're looking for best practice that's going to apply specifically to the female physiology. I wouldn't take someone who's sedentary and obese and take their testing protocols and apply to the athletic population. But when we're looking at specific cutoffs on general population or active population, and we dig into the appropriate endocrine or fertility research, then we can pull that over. Yeah, which makes makes complete sense.

CharlieReading:

Yeah. I I mean I think I I think it's fascinating. And I think it's like we we did a we did an episode a long time ago with Dr. M. Ross talking about how females are not the research is just not done on females. And and so this is this is brilliant in terms of trying to correct that. But it I can I get that it's a really slow process to do because it's I mean, it's it's it's there's a huge amount of research that needs to be done. One of the things that so I I mentioned you before we started recording that my youngest daughter, who is a keen track cyclist, 16 years old, I got her to do some of my research for me. So she's been reading your book raw. But I'm fascinated by the fact that uh in those teenage years, I think I I heard you say a stat that 60% of girls drop out of sport during their teenage years. And that whether that's kind of body image staff or whether that's their body changing and they're not performing in the same way. So, what do you think are the biggest contributors to why these kids drop out? And how can parents, coaches, and communities help to reverse that trend?

StacySims:

If we look at what's coming up in the conversation now, we have one end and we're having a loud voice in perimenopause and menopause, and it's you know, just now coming into vogue. If we look on the other end at puberty, no one's really talking about that. And we need to because this is where we see epigenetic changes because you know your bot whole body's changing, your biomechanics are changing, center gravity is changing, limb bones will grow faster than what your core strength will come up. And so there's so many different things from a physicality perspective that make young girls feel very uncomfortable in their usual sport. Their performance declines, they don't know what to do, they're not re-taught how to throw, how to run, how to jump, how to land, how to pedal. So they feel very uncoordinated now. The biggest wish that I have is just for people to understand this is a temporary decline. Because when boys hit puberty, they have this acceleration of an increase in performance. But for girls, maturity is very arbitrary because not everybody matures at the same age in the same fashion. So there's a temporary decrease in performance. If we acknowledge that and go, you know what, we're going to do some functional strength training here so you can relearn how to use your body appropriately and put an emphasis on being strong and powerful, not on body weight, because we have so much change in body weight. So if we bring an empowerment voice into it, and so instead of going, it's a girl push-up, we say it's a modified push-up. And we're not defaulting to the boy as being the norm, but we're like, okay, those are that's what the boys are doing. But we know inherently that there are differences in the way girls respond to instruction, the way girls respond to intensity. So we have to look at the culture of what we're doing. Well, example I like to use because my daughter's a football/slash soccer player, when they're doing corner kicks, you will see the boys team and the boys are lining up one by one to do corner kick practice and they're really aggressive and they are challenging each other. But the girls are like, Yeah, no, I'm not doing that until you go two by twos. Because now they don't feel like they're the focus of attention. Now they're just out there with their friends. So it's just a variation in the coaching that we're doing. So if we can take that perspective in the in the puberty years, so we're teaching the girls to be strong, we're understanding that it's a very delicate time with sociocultural things that are going on and all the external influences that girls have from social media and magazines and just cut through the noise. Say, look, we know there's a temporary decrease. Let's work on the whole functional strength, and then you're gonna accelerate on the other side. And this decrease is maybe nine months, could be up to a year, and just understanding that it's just temporary. It doesn't mean that you suck at your sport, it doesn't mean you need to drop out, it just means we are aware of this, and there are things that we can do to improve this temporary blip, and then you are definitely gonna succeed on the other side.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. That's that's really interesting. One of the so you mentioned within that strength training, Bromwyn, my daughter, is getting some conflicting advice here, going from her cycling coach, it's like you don't lift heavy, and then from the school sort of S and C coach, it's yeah, you do lift heavy. And and I and I get that they're kind of probably more attuned to training the kids that are playing rugby than they are a track cyclist. So for teenage girls, should they be lifting heavy? And when I say that, you know, what I'm probably talking about Bromin squatting 100 kilos when she weighs 60 kilos. What where do what are your thoughts around this?

StacySims:

Things great. I'll bring it up with the science. So if we're looking at learning to lift heavy, it is a journey, right? And so if she has a history of functional training, like learning movement, having a lighter load and more reps, then she's got that neuromuscular connection and she has those motor pathways. So now it is about how do we get more power and strength, especially as a track cyclist. You have to do that by really tapping into the central nervous system and the way that the nervous system recruits muscle fibers. So by lifting heavy, if she's had that background of the neuromuscular stimulation from lighter loads, it's absolutely safe and it's beneficial to something like track cycling because you have to be able to get up and sprint at a very high power output. If we're looking at someone who's a runner, it might be better to do more fringe contrast type training where we're looking at a heavier load right into a playoff movement into more endurance stuff. So you're having a mix of what's going on to get that power without overloading when you don't necessarily need to overload in someone who's a runner. So there's different concepts that we have to look, sports specificity, but the whole basis of having that history of Of it could be two years, it could be one year of having lighter loads and learning to move, then you're on your way to the journey to learn how to lift heavy properly. So if I look at track cycling, I'm like one of the best things they could do is have this big block of just base strength development through more reps and lighter loads. And then when they hit the actual preseason, they're doing really heavy threes and twos so that they're just stimulating that central nervous system to be able to boom hit that power when they need it.

ClaireFudge:

I think we're we're definitely, you know, Charlie, listening to you talk about your daughter. I think we're we're definitely seeing this movement in sport and younger athletes doing a lot more S and C. So to hear you kind of back that up with, yeah, that's absolutely brilliant to hear them, hear them doing that is fantastic. So I want to I want to stay on this conversation about lifting and strength whilst we're here. Obviously, yeah, you you talk a lot about perimenopause and menopause and how women should change what they're doing in a shift from maybe kind of this endurance or cardiovascular into sort of more strength work. There's many athletes that are in their, you know, female athletes in their 40s and men as well, actually, that are still competing, you know, from an endurance point of view. How does that, those heavy lifting principles, how can how can an athlete still include that in their training if they're still ultra running or doing Iron Man training, for example, when they're in their 40s, 50s, 60s?

StacySims:

Yeah, I get that question all the time. Because that's like the bulk of the people that I talk to are all endurance athletes, and they're like, What? How do I put in heavy lifting? So we look the primary reason when we say heavy lifting for perimenopausal women is the very first thing that goes is the way that your muscle contractile proteins attach to each other. So if we think about myosin and actin, and these are two proteins that create a muscle contraction when they bond together. And the stronger that bond, the stronger the contraction. We have a dysregulation or a change in the way myosin bonds to actin when we start to have perturbations in estrogen. Estrogen goes up and down, up and down. So myosin becomes dysregulated. This is why so many women complain about not being strong before they see a loss in lean mass. So have a change in the strength component first, and then they'll have the loss of the tissue a year or two years later. So if we're talking about maintaining our strength and our power, for example, going from a four-minute K run pace at ease to now all of a sudden struggling at a five-minute K pace, that's the loss of the strength. So if we are doing some episodes of heavy lifting, especially preseason, off season, and then you just have maintenance during the heavy blocks of endurance, then we are able to keep that pace down because we have the strength. How do we incorporate in like a race condition or like the block that's after base? We do things like some heavy lifting, posterior chain deadlifts into hip thrusts, into incline hill run. Because then you're taking the fatigue from the heavy lifting and putting it into your running form, which you need to come off the bike and run well. So we look sport specificity of how do we put in some heavy lifting that's gonna benefit your direct sport. If you're an ultra runner, we look, okay, you have to be able to be strong and robust to remain one uninjured and two finish a race. So let's put in some really good strength training blocks. And it's not that you're gonna stop running, it's how do we incorporate it into your running program so that maybe the heavy lifting is part of the hill day, so that you're getting that fatigue like I was describing. So it's just a reimagination of what and how you are training to implement it.

ClaireFudge:

Yeah, I think that's really, really useful. And for the listeners that that are still competing, I think it's I think it's yeah, really interesting. Sally, I think you had a follow-up to that, didn't you?

CharlieReading:

I did. So I'm just sitting here thinking that this this is brilliant advice for somebody that has a specific sport, i.e., they're an ultrarunner or they want to do Iron Man. If they're just conscious, they're just focused on longevity and they're going through this phase in a perimenopause phase, and they're just looking for the ideal kind of blend of strength, endurance, what would you think that would look like if you could design a training program really high level for somebody to go and I know they're probably this is I'm about to say something I think I'm gonna get slapped for, a standard female in the barimenopause stage. What would that well there is no standard, but that's okay. Well, I walk straight into that with the avatar in general.

StacySims:

We have to look at okay, if we want to be muscle-centric and have very strong bones and live to be a hundred or older than a hundred, still independently living and having all of our cognition and reducing Alzheimer's risk, we have to look at putting in the heavy strength training. One to because of the dysregulation we have with the myosin that I was talking about earlier. But other is when you are tapping into lifting heavy loads and you are really stimulating the central nervous system, you're also tapping into neuroplasticity. So we see that there's an increase in your brain neurotrophic factor, which is your miracle row for your brain, but also you are really stimulating the neural pathways. And I tell people, like lifting heavy is like doing Sudoku, but it's not only just for your brain, it's for your body too. Because if you are developing strong grip strength and you are being overall strong in all of your muscle without necessarily having a lot of lean mass, that's still way better to be able to continue through life because you have better proprioception, you have stronger bones, you have stronger ligaments and tendons that respond to the lifting. And then we pepper in some endurance. Endurance, I call it the soul food. It's like not the bread and butter of what you do. So we look at heavy lifting three times a week and we put in some high intensity work a couple of times a week, and then you're like, all right, I'm gonna go out with my friends for a really long ride. I'm gonna go do coffee ride. Sweet, do that. That's fine. I don't ever want to take away someone's love. But if we're looking at how do we optimally age, we have to look at what we're doing now that's going to allow us to age in a way that we want to without getting old. So I work with a company that is now specifically looking at athletes who are wanting to keep being competitive and age well. So, what are we doing now and how do we change it? So 10 years from now, you can still be competitive if you want. Otherwise, you're still being able to do high rocks on a whim if you want to, or you want to go on a big hike up the summit, then you can. Because if we aren't changing what we're doing, and our body is just really complacent in the type of training that we're doing, we're not challenging it enough to be able to do that in 10 years.

ClaireFudge:

I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about, you know, your body kind of is then in this place where it's not challenged and you constantly have to change things. You know, what you did as a 20-year-old isn't going to work throughout that, you know, throughout that life stage. So staying on the kind of the area of perimenopause and menopause, I mean, you've been a massive voice and still are a champion in terms of the area of of menopause and and perimenopause. What do you think? I mean, it's so overwhelming with the amount of information and social media and influers and influencers, or the information that's out there. But what's what's the the biggest misconception or myths that you hear about training and nutrition when it comes to menopause and perimenopause?

StacySims:

That you don't have to change anything. It's one of the things where I'm like, yes, you do. The whole fasting conversation and intermittent fasting is another one that is a hot button for so many. Like diet and nutrition is such a culture that when you start pushing those buttons, it really comes out. And then I think the third one is that everyone should be using menopause hormone therapy because then you don't have to really change up anything. All of those things are wrong. Because if we look at first having to change your training and nutrition is paramount. I mean, part of the training is what I just talked about. But the other is we see there's a significant change in our gut microbiome in the late perimenopausal years. So we start to see an increase in the gut bugs that promote obesity and a decrease in those that are more associated with a lean and a lean body and a really good body composition. And that's primarily because of our sex hormones, because we have a second pass of our sex hormones. So it goes into the liver, liver binds it up with sex hormone binding globulin, it gets shot into the intestines via bile. And then we have sex or are we have little bugs in there that will unbind them and shoot them back out as viable sex hormones. So as we go through perimenopause, we don't have as much sex hormone coming in, then we lose that diversity. And because the body's under such stress from the change in the hormones, we're seeing an uptick in the amount of bacteria that crave simple carbohydrate. And that increases that obesogenic phyla. And so women are starting to put on more body fat. And it's like, okay, what's going on here? And unfortunately, we're in that diet culture where then people will start to go on crazy diet trends where they won't eat, or they'll delay their food intake, or they'll look at ways of like really trying to restrict to lose body fat. And we see that has a massive impact again on gut microbiome. So it's not really instigating any change, but is creating a lot of sickness and stress. So if I could have perimenopausal women understand the one key thing they need to do is take care of their gut. How do we take care of our gut? Lots of fibrous, fruit, and veg. And the second thing is protein, because if we don't have enough protein, we're not going to be able to keep building our lean mass and maintain by lean mass, I also mean bone, because we become more anabolically resistant. So that means our body isn't as responsive to protein and strength training because we have this dysregulation of our sex hormones that's happening in perimenopause.

ClaireFudge:

I mean, I I hear so many women still, like in this phase of wherever they are in that kind of perimenopause stage, going, God, my body has really changed. Like I'm now, I was I've never had fat in places I've got fat. What do I do about it? And you're absolutely right. This kind of panic of, I'll just cut back calories, I won't eat carbohydrates, fast. With fasting, I there's a lot of women that are looking at fasting as a way for health, longevity. You know, there's so much written now about fasting, isn't there? How do women navigate fasting? And what I mean by that is is there a better time? You know, what would your advice be in terms of that fasting period? And when is it very important that they are eating? You know, should they fast, you know, until lunchtime? Or actually, is breakfast or having something first thing in the morning very important?

StacySims:

Yes, having something first thing in the morning is really important. Part of it is our circadian rhythm. So circadian rhythm can be reset through food intake and night and or you know, light and darkness. And if we are holding food intake until 11 or 12, we're effectively having a phase shift of our circadian rhythm. So the body is like, oh, wait, I'm not supposed to be awake yet because I haven't had any food. And we see in the literature in both men and women, but more robustly in women, that if you hold a fast till noon or after, you actually do not garner any of the benefits that you see in the literature for fasting, meaning that you're not going to get any kind of blood sugar control, you're not going to have the telomere changes, you're not going to have a change in gut microbiome, you're not going to have more parasympathetic drive. You actually end up with more obesogenic outcomes because the body is under a significant amount of stress. And then you have an eating window that's counter to what your circadian rhythm is wanting you to do. So the way that I describe it is when you wake up within a half an hour of a natural wake up, you have a peak of cortisol. Cortisol's good. We want cortisol, it wakes us up and it allows us to function, but you do want to have some food to come in so that you don't hold that peak because we want our blood sugar to be regulated. We want the body to understand, yes, there's some food coming in, we're able to do some things. And then you want to look at when your training is. We want to fuel appropriately for training. So you want to have some food before, you want food afterwards, because that's another driver of circadian change. Really, when we talk about fasting, I like to bring it back down to time restricted eatings, what our grandparents say normal eating, but now we have the fancy words of time restricted, where you have breakfast, you fuel throughout the day, you have dinner, and you don't have any food after dinner. If we end up having a really late night session, because you know, track session is on a Tuesday night and it starts at 6:30, then we don't get home till 8.30 or 9 p.m. and we need dinner. Let's try to bring dinner earlier. And then we're having a recovery snack or mini meal. So it doesn't interfere as much with our sleep as if you were to have a heavy meal. And then you're going to have that overnight fast where you're having a 12 to 13 hour overnight fast if you're eating during the day and not eating after dinner, except for the occasional late night session where you have to have that mini meal.

CharlieReading:

And that mini meal being something like a protein shake, for example, would that be what you're talking about or something else?

StacySims:

Yeah, but real food's better. So if you could have a bowl of low-fat Greek yogurt with some nuts and berries and apples, that's great. Or eggs on toast, that's also a good thing. So it's a protein and fiber, that's what you're after, because then that's going to help with all the reparation. We also see if you're going to be using supplements like collagen, right? You want to take it at night when you're going to be able to dose for all the reparation. But protein shake in a pinch, that's fine. But we want to get some fiber and some protein in from a real food standpoint so that you have slower digestion and your body's able to like use it appropriately and you don't wake up with hypoglycemia.

CharlieReading:

Okay. And and you mentioned about the sort of training. So for those people that want to train first thing in the morning, but they don't want to train fasted. What would you what would be a sort of a light snack or something to have before training so that they're not doing fasted training?

StacySims:

We're all the 5 a.m. swimmers, right? It's like you don't want to swim with a full meal. A lot of people don't even want to go to the gym with a lot of stuff in their stomach. So it doesn't have to be a lot. It can be like the infamous protein coffee that's been circulating, where it's a scoop of protein powder and cold brew coffee with some almond milk. That's a, you know, an easy thing to have in the fridge. Caveat, I just said probably not protein powders, but you know, in a pinch, you could do that. You could also look at having a couple of tablespoons of low-fat Greek yogurt and half a banana, or even that's too much. You can look at making a small smoothie that you're going to drink in the morning. It could be, you know, 250 mil smoothie that you've had with some berries and some yogurt and some non-dairy milk so that you don't have too much sitting in your stomach. Those tend to be really easy go-tos. And so you're getting some protein, some carbohydrate, maybe 150, 200 calories, and then boom, you go. But if you're someone who's like, I absolutely cannot have any of that stuff in my stomach before I go, then you can look at having some amino acids in your drink and having a real breakfast as soon as you get home. Now, the amino acids are really important for women because we tend to go through more amino acids when we're exercising than men do. And it also helps bring up the amount of circulating amino acids. It's like you've had a big protein hit before. Protein water comes into play in that if we're talking about what kind of stuff to put in a bottle.

CharlieReading:

Okay, brilliant. Thank you. And thinking about all of this stuff and thinking about my daughter again. So there's obviously a lot of talk, talk around the importance of hormone replacement therapy around preparing many pauls. But for younger athletes, there seems to be when she's had any sort of irregularities with her periods, it's like just go on the pill. And that seems to be the quick and generic answer that gets thrown at teenage girls, from what I understand. What are your thoughts around that and advice sort of to find out more about what's going on?

StacySims:

Because I feel like because doctors are so pressed for time, they can't really get all the information. And I feel like it's such a prevailing myth that if there's a misstep in a in a young girl's period, they go on an OC and they get passed out like Skittles. But we have to realize that most girls' menstrual cycles are going to be irregular for the first five years after they get their first one. So that's where this misconception of training too hard is making your period irregular any teenage girl. Like if they're eating appropriately and they're not in low energy, that irregularity is still going to be there. So we have to be very careful and conscious that we're not just automatically putting them on any kind of contraception. If they're having severe bleeding or they're having severe cramping, that's something to talk about. There's ways of handling heavy menstrual bleeding or maharanja, and it doesn't necessarily mean going on an oral contraceptive pill. If someone is going, yeah, great, Stace, but I am in bed for two days with severe cramping and I just can't do anything and I don't know what to do, then talk to your physician. There are definitely things you can do because having a period doesn't mean you miss out on life and you shouldn't feel like you're, quote, period prone where you're complaining about cramps and stuff. It shouldn't interfere. And I think that's the other misconception that young girls will have really heavy periods and complain about having severe cramping. And that's just a small minority of them. But knowing that it's irregular and you can do things like track your menstrual cycle and see how you feel, symptomology, you're going to get more insight into if you are regular, when it's coming, because we see that younger girls are regularly irregular for the first five years. And then they'll set into a normal rhythm. So if a GP is like, here, take a normal contraceptive pill, take a pause and say, Is this really appropriate for my daughter or have your daughter take a pause and say, Is this really appropriate for me? How is this going to interfere with my training? Is it, you know, is this really going to address my irregularity because it's not a real bleed? It's downregulating her own endocrine system. So when we see things like that, we know that there's a change in the amygdala. We're talking about growing and developing brains. And if we're putting an exogenous hormone like an oral contraceptive pill into the mix, it shuts down your endocrine system as it's trying to develop. And that's a it's a big worry for a lot of girls as they get to be older and they're like, wait, I was put on an oral contraceptive pill when I was 15 and now I'm 25. What happened? Right. So it is a significant conversation to be had.

CharlieReading:

And so what would be the so for those sorts of situations, whether it's heavy bleeding, whether it's cramps, whatever, what would be some of the strategies that people could use to deal with that that isn't an oral contraceptive?

StacySims:

If we're looking from a pharmaceutical or medical thing, you can look at acid, which is a blood coagulator. You can start taking the first day of bleeding, so you don't have as heavy a bleed. And that also helps with cramping. If we're talking about really severe PMS or premenstrual syndrome, we see that low vitamin D levels are a contributor. So you want to get your blood tested for that. Each case is a little bit individual. I know that the Australian Institute of Support and the UK equivalent and bases have really good resources on that. New Zealand's putting one out too to really normalize what is the menstrual cycle, how do you track it? So there's some fantastic resources from some of the sporting bodies and the governing bodies that you can get into now because there's been such an interest in what is the menstrual cycle and how does it affect performance? Does it affect performance and how do I track it?

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. And so I suppose I'm just going back to my A-level biology, which was 30 years ago, and thinking it was just a 28-day cycle, and that was kind of like everyone was the same. And clearly what I've learned by listening to you is that that isn't the case. What are the extremes? So, like I know chatting to to my girls, it it can be as short as every two weeks, but is that something outside the norm, or is that something to be worried about, or is that just, you know, what what are those variations?

StacySims:

So I'm talking about every two weeks, and that's a regular thing, then they need to get checked out because then that is something that's way too short. We see a normal menstrual cycle can be anywhere from 21 to 40 days. What lengthens is the first phase, the follicular phase, the low hormone phase, because the body's becoming really stress resilient in order to have an environment where we can produce a really viable egg. If we start seeing a shortening of the cycle periodically, and so we go from a 40-day cycle down to 28, and 28 becomes 21, and then it starts getting shorter and shorter, then that's something to do with ovulation and the luteal phase. We call it a luteal phase deficit, and we need to get that checked out. But for the most part, you're going to have a variation month to month of two to three days. And you can see if someone is under a lot of exam stress or travel stress, then that might even extend out to 40 days instead of their usual 32 days. So we have to keep an eye on what is our allostatic load or our overall stress, because that can significantly impact the length. But knowing that your normal variation is, you know, 21 to 40 days and you fall within that, it's fine. If you start having subsequent changes of getting really, really short or really, really long, then that's something to get checked out.

ClaireFudge:

I I I think now in the world of like in the world of more kind of senior or professional sport, we're seeing certainly in in the UK, like a, you know, a lot more testing. I think there's still for me quite a lot of confusion about when to test, who's testing, who's talking about those results and what and what it means. But it's really nice to see that, you know, people are talking about it and and tracking and talking to athletes about it. I want to jump into another area for me. Cold water and cold water swimming. We see so many women now cold water swimming. I know my mum for one lives by the coast. She's now started, you know, what we call bobbing, you know, cold dipping and swimming. And there are so many women that really enjoy it. But I have heard the research now, some newer research around we should, you know, this cold exposure and heat exposure. So now as athletes, we should be doing both. I'm interested to know from your perspective, what should we be aware of as women with regards to these extremes of temperature? And actually, are we any different when it comes to cold and hot? We are.

StacySims:

There are significant six differences in thermoregulation. So if we think about cold exposure, I think I created an international shitstorm when I was talking about how women don't need to do or yeah, shouldn't be in ice water. Cool water is fine, but ice water is too cold. Because we see the research that goes back to the early 2000s showing that when women are below around 10 degrees Celsius, that it's too much of a stress and they actually don't garner any benefit from cold because it creates significant vasoconstrictive response, which is a threat. Like it's so cold it causes a sympathetic drive and threat. If we get into 10 as a cool water, then we start to see not as severe a constriction. And a lot of the benefits that you hear about cold water plunge or ice water plunge that we hear in the male data of better parasympathetic, better metabolic control, better mood, better immunity, although the responses are not as robust as men. We know this. Like you can still do cool water and get benefit, but it's not going to be as intense a benefit as if you were a man. When we turn to heat, women do better in the heat because, again, of sex differences and thermoregulation. You can put a man and a woman who are equally fit, so they have the same relative body composition and fitness level. And a woman will go on a sauna and after 10 minutes, she's like, sweet, I'm just now starting to warm up. And a man's like sweating profusely, going, Oh, I gotta get out. And again, it has to do with sex differences. We see that women will vasodilate first, and so they're trying to offload heat into the environment and they don't have as much of a sweat response. Their sweat glands don't produce as much sweat. It takes a longer period of warming up before they will start sweating, and they don't lose as much body water when they are sweating as when we look at men. So if we think about it as an advantage in racing, women do better in humid conditions, hot humid conditions than men, because they don't rely as much on sweating. But if we're talking about it from like a health standpoint, women can spend more time in the heat. And this is a stress that will extend all your heat shock protein responses, your metabolic responses, all the benefits that we see with heat exposure. If we want to use it as a training stress, this is really ideal for both men and women, is after a training session, going into a sauna for 10 minutes to extend your training stress without a metabolic workload on the muscle. Because what happens when you hit a really hot environment is you're having blood flow go away from your muscles to your periphery to try to offload the heat, which drives your heart rate up, drives your core temperature up, and extends that training stress. So it's strategies to get a little bit more out of those hard sessions. And again, also we can look to heat for heat acclimation for those who are going from the southern hemisphere to cohen interrace. Like, how do I adapt to hot and humid conditions? Well, we can look at using the sauna for acclimation, but there is a difference between what men should do and what women should do. Because men, again, find the heat a much harder stress, so that it doesn't take as long for them to acclimatize as it does for women. Those are your big environmental extremes.

CharlieReading:

I'm listening to this thinking I should have come and had a chat with you before I went to Kona, because I could I reckon I could have come up with a whole lot more better strategies for acclimatization. But but it's fascinating how that differs between and I can really relate to that sauna story of you know, like Carol and I will be in the sauna, and I have got literally sweat pouring off me, and I I've got to leave, and she's only just started just getting warmed up. So that is that's really interesting. And yeah, it just it there's just so much, it's clearly so much to explore. And like I said, we we did talk about this on the podcast a long time ago, but um, there's clearly a long, long way to go. And one of the things I'm I'm sitting here uh wondering uh from a business point of view, so to change tactics again, that there's uh you you've when I when I was doing the research, I was like super impressed about how the fact that you've been on so many of the of the top podcasts that are out there. You've obviously got two brilliant books that are really well recognised. Um what is it on your and yet there would be lots of other people, particularly with the sort of science background that you've got, that never get that exposure. So what what do you think which element or what do you think, what strategy do you think got you into the limelight as successfully as you have have managed to do?

StacySims:

Just think part of it was naming. Like my TED talk came out right before the pandemic hit. And so everyone was looking online for information and we put out courses based on Roar around the pandemic. So we had an uptick in our book sales, and then one of the biggest conversations that came out of everyone reading Roar is wanting to know more about menopause. So creating a course and writing the book for active hairy and post-menopausal women right at the time where everyone started talking about menopause. So a lot of it was timing. But my husband will always say, well, Stacey's superpower is the fact that you can read the science, look across the different fields, accumulate it, synthesize it, and then bring it back out to a person to be able to simplify it and talk at a different level. So you'll see, like if I'm talking with Andrew Huberman, it's more deep dive into science. But then if I'm on Mel Robbins, I'm not going to talk about myosin dephosphorylation and those kinds of things that you could have a deeper science. I'm gonna say they just don't adhere very strongly, right? Which is good, but it also brings out a lot of haters because then you get the clickbait and you get the small snippets and they miss the nuances. And I feel a lot of people have lost the ability to look at science objectively and understand that when you're looking at something on social media, it's different than having the full conversation. So I think the other part of it is just being able to take the hate for all of my colleagues who are doing the research, still boots on the ground so they can do their work and just keep pushing out the good research, and then I'll disseminate it and put it out there for them.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, I I think it's I mean, it's it's fantastic. And I I know Bromwyn has got a huge amount out of reading. Raw, Carol, my wife has been reading next level and also got a huge amount out of that. So I think it's fantastic, but I think it's we'll dive deeper into the outro about what you've talked about there. But this whole kind of TED talk through to book, to course, to podcast, I just think it's, yeah, I think it's fascinating, and you've clearly done an excellent job. Now, one of the ways that we wrap up this podcast is obviously we've talked about your books, but what books have helped you on your journey? What books do you find yourself recommending to other people, or what books stood out in kind of helping you?

StacySims:

There are a couple of The Invisible Woman is another is one that I really liked and resonated. Just talking about the historical perspective of medicine and women being excluded and having really good insights into things like aspirin for heart disease and how it was tested on men, and then they're saying, Yeah, what works for women. So a lot of those kinds of things. But in general, I really like. Like like Dave Grohl's Foo Fighter biography. There's a lot you can learn from that. I find a lot of those kind of open up and really get into the backstory of people really interesting because I feel you aren't really living life as a human if you don't have a lot of life experiences. So the more that you can draw on other people's life experiences through books or their conversations, the more it gives you insight into what you're doing in your own life and how you can relate to other people and bringing some of that empathy into the lived experiences. So yeah, read Dave Grohl's book.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. Loving that record. I like I love to Duff McKagan, the bass guitarist from Guns N' Roses. His autobiography is absolutely brilliant, as is Bruce Dickinson's, the Iron Maiden singer. So I'm definitely going for the Dave Grohl one. And I'll I'm going to delegate the Invisible Woman to well, actually, we should both read that, really. We should both read that one. That's awesome. And then we also have a closing tradition on the podcast where we get the last guest to ask the next guest a question without knowing who that question is for. And you get a question from the legend that is Julie Moss, the crawl of fame. So Claire has Julie Moss's question lined up.

ClaireFudge:

Yeah. Okay. So Julie asked, What is your why? Why are you willing to endure?

StacySims:

Your why is sort of the inquisitive mind that I have of really wanting to understand and unlock all the things. But I think the drive and passion is when I look at women who are struggling and they don't have to, like trying to empower women through education. As I'm getting older, seeing peer groups who are experiencing struggles, it's like, well, here these are the these are the solutions. Here's the education behind it. But the biggest thing is my daughter and her peer group. I don't want them to have to experience all the toxic sporting culture that we've had to endure. I really want to instigate change to make their lives easier and then their kids' lives easier and bring more equity and parity between the sexes, not saying women are better than men and men, you know, I don't want any of that. I want the common conversation and women to have the same amount of respect that's offered to men when they walk into a room.

CharlieReading:

Brilliant. I think it's fantastic. It's been amazing chatting to you, but I think what you're the work you're doing is is brilliant and and really empowering. And as you know, the the father of two girls, I think I I couldn't agree with what you've just said more than I do. So obviously, I would I would definitely tell people to go check out RAW and next level. But where else can people find out more about you? Or how do they take these courses if they want to do that? You know, tell me where to send people.

StacySims:

Yeah, you can come to our website, go stacysemins.com, and I use the Royal Week because it's a team, it's not just me. And you can find out all the stuff that I'm doing. We have a newsletter that you can sign up to if you want. I think the one that goes out tomorrow is all about hydration in the heat and how to race in the heat. So to really trying to put out solid science-backed information that people can use. Yeah. And you can troll through and find all the courses, you can find out where I'm speaking. And if all of that seems like it's too much and hard work, then you can find us on social media.

CharlieReading:

And which is the social media to track you down on?

StacySims:

Personally, I'm gonna say LinkedIn because LinkedIn tends to be very objective when people are having conversation. There's not the whole negativity and you know, kind of when you go to Instagram and Facebook, all of that that happens. Although I am on Instagram and Facebook, but LinkedIn is a more collegial way of having conversation and and reaching out.

CharlieReading:

Amazing, Stacy. It's been really fascinating chatting to you. I love the work that you're doing. Love listening to you on other podcasts as part of the research for this. So yeah, huge congratulations to getting to where you are. But yeah, keep up the amazing work and thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's been great. So, what did you make of that amazing interview with Stacy Sims?

ClaireFudge:

Well, I think I've been indulging myself in the last few weeks of our podcast, is what I'm gonna say. But amazing to speak to to Stacy, you know, in the world of physiology and and metabolism, like she is such a loud voice. And yeah, to speak to her was just brilliant today. You know, like when we start out and we were asking her about her background, I didn't know until we did this research how much background she had in sport and the cycling and Iron Man background. So I can see now kind of her journey towards maybe how she got to where she where she is now. And just that inquiring mind, you know, actually, like when you're in a group of you'll know this from being in a group of men as well, like there's always those questions, isn't it? And then you go, well, why does that happen? And I think definitely in this group in a group of women, there is always like that's it feels really unfair. Like, how can men do that and women can't, in terms of like changes in body composition? And you know, her inquiring mind has got her to where she is, you know, being having a you know a doctorate and uh teaching, lecturing and being this loud voice. So yeah, it was it was fascinating to see where she's come from, I think, for me as well.

CharlieReading:

Yeah, and I I think I think it's kind of highlights how I I was just thinking about it, thinking, you know, she's she's risen to really quite big fame in sort of the last couple of years, hasn't she? And and I was thinking, why is that how I always will think, well, why? And obviously she's got like you say, she's got this brilliant foundation in sport, like across so many different aspects, but at a really high level. So racing Kona multiple times, X Terror Worlds, all of that sort of stuff is is like super impressive, but it gives her, then when she applies that scientific mind, it gives her the ability to kind of look deeper. But then I think also just at the end of the conversation, it came out that, you know, I want my daughter to have a better understanding and approach and support than I was getting at her age. So that that kind of created the full circle for me. It was like, okay, that's the why, really, isn't it? That's what's now driving her more than ever before, I think. And I think what's fascinating from a business point of view is how, you know, actually, if you think about it, really the TED talk seems to have driven the the initial conversation. That that's what went viral. But sh but it from a marketing point of view, you then have to have these what I would call attraction marketing devices for people to go, all right, that was good. Now I want to learn more. And that's her books and that's her courses. And then having other platforms in addition to the TED Talk, like the podcasts, has and almost the attraction marketing devices give her the opportunity to go on the podcast. So I think that whole full circle is really brilliant. So yeah, I think fascinating. What from a science point of view did you really pull out from from the conversation?

ClaireFudge:

I think it's, you know, the the world of science and research in female health, you know, has exploded, but actually she has been one of the first voices in it. You know, when when you know I was attending conferences or looking at new research, her name come came up a lot. So so many years ago, you know, this was happening. So it was amazing to actually speak to her and get to kind of the nitty-gritty of actually what does that mean? You know, what does it mean for us as females to take away and and do? I think just going back to your talking about how she got to where she was, like I absolutely agree, like this TED talk at the beginning and then having all of those like marketing attraction tools. I think also, and I'm gonna say this, and she talked about the haters out there, is she has stood up and been what was at the beginning a little bit controversial about research and female health and actually really standing for something. So I think that is also if you're willing to stand up for what you believe in and the research she's doing has got her to where she is, despite you're gonna have those haters that don't believe in it or don't want to follow what she's saying. So that is really interesting from a business perspective for me, how she's she maybe didn't uh start out to try and do that, but actually that's what she's done. And and I feel that's kind of where she's got her her kind of standing as well.

CharlieReading:

But she also pointed out that it was also a timing thing, wasn't it? And she has been talking about this at a time where it it's kind of it's suddenly, it suddenly got the traction that it wasn't getting 10 years ago.

ClaireFudge:

And I th I I think the um the pieces of research that I kind of try and take away and and speak to my clients about is particularly that she brought up today about this, you know, the differences in our fueling. Like we do need to have carbohydrate like before and after training and that little bit of protein. And so it was really great to hear her say, like, it you don't have to have a full meal, like that this is not what we're talking about. We're just talking about a little something. You know, what she was talking about, maybe even 15, 30 grams of carbohydrate, but with a little bit of protein in, and it's tiny amounts. So it's really good to hear her talking about, you know, that this isn't about overfueling, it's just saying just have a little bit to decrease that stress cortisol before you start training. So yeah, what she was talking about with the science was was great. What did you think about the caffeine conversation as well? That was right at the very beginning, wasn't it, about the differences in caffeine.

CharlieReading:

I think it's fascinating. Absolutely. Like, and when she was talking about it, I I'd it reminded me of the conversation I'd heard her have on another podcast where she'd talked about the sleep, the sleeping tablet. And I was like, well, actually, this is really interesting, isn't it? Because the female body's clearly dealing with, I mean, like caffeine is obviously a drug, maybe it's a good one, but I uh I'm biased at all on that. But fascinating how the female body deals with that drug very differently to the male body, and both whether that's a look, you know, this is a health thing, so therefore you need to take less of it, or you kind of, you know, I I took from that that a female would need to stop drinking coffee earlier in the day than a guy because that half-life is gonna impact their sleep longer as a female than a male, but also from a sports point of view, going, well, okay, I need to use this strategically differently to the guys because it's gonna, it's gonna impact my performance in a different way. That's that's fascinating. And that's we've never had that conversation on the podcast before.

ClaireFudge:

And I and I think this comes back to like this this very kind of, you know, there's a lot so much data out there that is very is very generalized. And actually, when it comes to females, what you know, really what she was kind of saying is this is what the data is showing us, but actually it also within that is very like personalized, like a different one woman is going to respond slightly differently to another. And we actually don't know, you know, whether it's gonna take up to 90 minutes to kick in or an hour to kick in. But only can you know if you go out and test it yourself and understand. And I think that's what it comes back to is actually, you know, tracking. You know, you were talking about your daughters and particularly your daughter cycling, you know, actually tracking what's going on from a from a menstrual cycle point of view, how, you know, how she gets on with caffeine or supplements that she takes is one of the best ways for her to be able to, and and for a female to be able to actually find out what does your body do with with supplements, with sleep, with fueling, um to be able to work it out.

CharlieReading:

I think the the mo the the like having had now a few minutes to sort of reflect on this conversation, it's one of those conversations where we could have sat down for a whole day with her. So the questions would have, I mean, we probably did half of the questions that we'd pre-prepared. And now that we're just sitting here talking, it's like, oh, but there's all of these follow-up questions. And I could say, you know, and if I'd got Carol on one side and Bromin on the other side, I'd be like, right, well, we have all of these different questions to come out, one from the teenage and one from the kind of the middle aged. And you're like, yeah, there's I mean, brilliant, but but so many more follow-up questions. Yeah, a fantastic episode, loads to learn, and loads to kind of realize that we need to learn more on and and dive deeper into. So more on that on the on the podcast in the future. Um, in the meantime, everyone at home, keep on training.