What got me interested in Thibaudeau is...

he's one of the few fitness experts around who acknowledges that women need to adjust their training depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle. This tells me he has a clue.

Thing is, I had really crappy workouts all this past week, and it never occurred to me that it was because I was in the last week of my cycle. I shouldn't have been, but my body had other ideas. Anyway, one of the things that happens to women when they're premenstrual is that their balance gets worse, and another is that their joints become more lax. This adds up to increased risk of injury. It doesn't mean "don't work out," it just means, "be careful and be smart about it."

In other words, don't do what I did last Tuesday. I felt like doing a kettlebell workout, but the routine I selected happened to involve lots of presses and snatches, both of which require a lot of shoulder stability. It was an unseasonably warm day, I'd already taught a pretty challenging cycling class ... and of course I was premenstrual although I didn't realize it. I started to fatigue much earlier than usual, and instead of being smart and listening to my body I tried to work through it. You know what's coming next: I tweaked my left shoulder during a long set of high pulls and snatches.

The shoulder's pretty much okay now, but it really prompted me to rethink my workouts. My initial assumption was that I'd gone overboard with the kettlebell training, doing too much too soon with poor technique. Then when Auntie Flo arrived a week early, I realized there was more to it than that. So I went looking for Thibaudeau's chart online, and then I read a few of his articles on female training, and since I was in the market for a new program anyway ....

Ehhh ... my decision making methodology works about as well as eeny meeny miny mo, but at least it takes longer.