Crashing my Nervous System

As I started my hard climbing journey around early 2024, I’ve created and refined a system: strength days, board sessions, recovery protocols, all tuned to maximize performance while staying injury-free. And it worked. Within a year, I hit personal bests in climbing like sending 10 V8's, performing 1-3-5 campus, and hanging 155% body-weight on 20mm half-crimp for 7 seconds. I felt like I figured it all out.

Until now.

This past month, my body broke down not from tendon strain or joint issues, but from something quieter and more unnerving: insomnia, gut problems, and a nervous system that was stuck on. It wasn’t from emotional or mental stress, and not strictly physical stress either. It was something I hadn’t accounted for: hard training over a fragile hormonal landscape called perimenopause, with a sensitive nervous system.

When my Brakes Failed

In July, on my menstrual day 4 (CD4), I felt strong, ready, and restless. I stopped bleeding, so I did what I’ve done before: a limit session at the gym that included hard problems and campus work. I was careful with loading, tracking my recovery, hitting my protein. Nothing reckless or unusual. I felt exhausted but confident, even snagged a V7 on my way out the gym that day.

Then on CD7, I did a mid-high intensity session (about RPE 6-7). Something felt off that day as I lost power, as if the 2 days of rest didn't help. On CD10, after 2 days of rest and a night of poor sleep (warning sign!), I did another climbing session (about RPE 3). By all external metrics, it should’ve been fine. But inside, something was unraveling.

That night I had my first insomnia. Then for the next few days, my sleep became very fragmented. I'd have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. And even if I’d fallen asleep, I bolted awake with my heart racing. My gut puffed up like I’d eaten raw dough. Resting a week didn’t help, and my left elbow injury, which was starting to recover, remain inflamed.

At first, I thought I’d mismanaged recovery. But something felt different.

What followed was scary as f*ck: my nervous system was running without a brake. I wasn’t just tired, I was stuck in fight-or-flight mode and unraveling with no way to fall asleep despite deep fatigue. After some choppy sleep, I incurred 5 back-to-back nights of insomnia followed by panic attacks. I had severe nervous system dysregulation from a combination of accumulated stress, hard training on a wrong cycle day, and fluctuating hormones. I went to urgent care and was prescribed gabapentin, which helped bring sleep back gradually, but things haven't been quite the same.

The Role of Progesterone in Recovery

Most training plans run on a 7-day loop. But menstrual biology doesn’t care about calendar weeks. Most women have 28-day cycles, usually ~6 days of bleeding, followed by ~6 days of high estrogen (high strength and repair window), followed by ovulation, then a surge of progesterone that drops gradually until the next cycle. This has the effect of cycling physical capacity and mood.

In perimenopause, not only do hormone levels fluctuate and decrease, upsetting physical capacity and mood, ovulation becomes less consistent, and that changes the timing of progesterone. Without a clean ovulation, progesterone doesn't get produced, or gets produced minimally. And with weak progesterone, GABA becomes weak, the neurotransmitter that calms the nervous system for sleep.

Progesterone isn’t just a fertility hormone. It helps regulate:

• GABA → calm, sleep, parasympathetic tone
• Fascia and tendon health
• Gut motility
• Body temperature and fluid balance

So when I loaded my system with CNS-demanding training — on CD4, CD7, CD10 — without getting a hormonal recovery window, I spiraled hard. My body was unbuffered from the protection of progesterone, and so cortisol spiked and soared without brakes. Forget trying to sleep, I had anxiety attacks over even the smallest things like loud noises or watching TV or the tiniest random thoughts.

Witnessing it Now

July 2025 was the first time I noticed a deeper signal from my body. Even though I've likely experienced this before, but for the first time, I noticed a failed follicular activation: early EWCM, bloating at the wrong time, sleep fragmentation, and a system that felt off despite being in what I used to think was my ideal training zone. I completely missed it because my hormones normally buffered everything, and I would just recover after resting, not thinking much of it. This time, I lost the buffer, and I couldn't recover without medical help.

Now, not everyone's nervous system responds the same way. I happen to have a highly sensitive nervous system (I'm the last person to get into a hot tub, I have to repeat the eye air-puff test at least 10 times, and I need numbing gel for normal teeth cleaning), so I crashed instead of plateauing. It's a double-edge sword: I can train less for the same gains, but it doesn't take much to tip me over the edge.

I had a capstone V8 on my mind. The plan was to peak, to push, to test power. But instead, my body offered a different kind of test; one I couldn’t just muscle through or avoid. This was the beginning of a new kind of training, rooted in precision and compassion. The capstone V8 will be gone before I fully recover and another one will take it's place. But this challenge is front and center, and when I learn how to wield my highly sensitive nervous system, I will come out even stronger than before.

Training in Perimenopause

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• CD1–5 is not a good time to train hard
  It’s a vulnerable state, with immune, gut, and CNS all running thin
• CD6–12 is my power window
  But only if ovulation actually occurs. Estrogen gives the green light. But without ovulation, there’s no back-end recovery
• Anovulation isn’t rare
  Especially in late 30s and 40s. And when it happens, loading hard can push me into a delayed crash
• Insomnia isn’t a mindset issue
  For athletic women, it’s often biological, and a direct result of pushing during the wrong hormonal terrain
• I can feel fine during the day
  And still be unraveling at night. Daytime performance doesn’t guarantee nighttime resilience

What I Do Differently Now

I no longer train by the calendar week. I train by my cycle’s biology, and I adjust when biology shifts.

• CD1–5 → Deload + Regulation
  Walks, sauna, light mobility. I protect my gut and nervous system here.
• CD6–12 → Load Window (If Ovulation Happens)
  Limit boulders, heavy strength, board power, but only if signs point to ovulation (EWCM, mood lift, strength clarity)
• CD13–17 → Modulation Phase
  Estrogen drops, sleep gets shakier. I pivot to skill work, avoid evening intensity.
• CD18–28 → Submax + Tendon Care
  I dial down intensity, favor low-RPE training, and tend to soft tissue. Sometimes add sauna.

If ovulation doesn’t happen, I pull back, even in what used to be my go-time window. Yes this reduces my available hard training window, but I'm at a phase now where precision matters more than volume. One short quality intense session beats two or three low quality ones.

I've started hormone support through Winona HRT (bioidentical combined estrogen/progesterone cream), to help restore balance. This is to rebuild my margin so that if I'm not as careful next time, I won't spiral into another crisis. But I will never ever skip reading my signals again.

This Was an Initiation

No one taught me how to train in perimenopause with a sensitive nervous system. There’s no welcome packet. No coach on the sideline saying, “Hey, you're not broken, you just need to respect your cycle and add hormonal support.”

I had to crash to learn it. But now I have a map. And if you’re an athlete in your 40s, maybe this will help you build yours too.