Comparison of neuromuscular performance, perceived effort, and well-being across menstrual cycle phases in female youth soccer players

Abstract

The nature of the human being, especially that of women, is complex (de Jonge et al., 2019). Various interacting variables, including physiological, biomechanical, physical, psychological, and emotional factors, constitute the nature of women. In this context, across the menstrual cycle (MC) there are fluctuations in the levels of sex hormones such as progesterone, estrogen, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and luteinizing hormone (LH), which is crucial to regulate ovulation and delimiting phases (Romero-Moraleda et al. 2019). This study aimed to compare neuromuscular performance, perceived exertion, and well-being across menstrual cycle (MC), specifically follicular phase (FPh) and luteal phase (LPh) in under-17 players from national soccer team. Thirteen players (age = 15.69 ± 0.48 years) were assessed for mean propulsive velocity (MPV) in the back squat, countermovement jump (CMJ), 10-meter time (T10). Additionally, subjective measures were collected using a well-being questionnaire (WQ) administered before training, wich evaluated muscular pain, mood, stress, sleep, fatigue and overall well-being (the sum of these five factors), as the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale after training. Just T10 exhibited only trivial to small differences between phases (p = .040; ES = 0.13), favoring LPh. Both MPV30 and CMJ showed trivial differences between phases. The remaining variables demonstrated unclear differences (p > .05) across the MC phases. Based on the results, it can be inferred that the MC phases had a discernible impact only on T10 in this sample, where participants exhibited superior performance in LPh, albeit with trivial to small effects that may lack clinical significance. Conversely, subjective measures obtained from the WQ and RPE scale indicated unclear differences between phases.