Menstrual Cycle Insights

Menstrual Cycle Insights goes beyond cycle and symptom tracking to coach you on your sleep, strain, and stress based on your current phase and how that aligns with biometric changes. It’s part of our investment in women’s health, performance science, and research.

The menstrual cycle is considered a vital health indicator and causes dramatic hormonal shifts throughout the month, producing different physiological responses. In some phases, you may be more able to take on strain, work out harder, and experience higher gains, while in other phases you may need more rest and recovery. By using Menstrual Cycle Insights, you can understand each phase of your cycle and get recommendations about your training and recovery routines. 

What is menstrual cycle tracking

Menstrual cycle tracking is the practice of monitoring your cycle phases to understand how hormonal changes affect your body's physiology, including sleep, performance, and stress levels. This goes beyond basic period prediction to provide actionable insights for optimizing your health and training throughout each phase.

WHOOP Menstrual Cycle Insights offers three core capabilities:

• Phase-based coaching: Tailored Strain and Sleep recommendations and predicted symptoms for each cycle phase
• Biometric tracking: Monitors how HRV, RHR, and recovery change throughout your cycle
• Educational insights: Science-backed guidance developed with female physiology researchers

Understanding your menstrual cycle phases

Your menstrual cycle is divided into four phases:

• Menstruation phase: Endometrial shedding, where hormone levels are lowest 
• Follicular phase: Rising estrogen levels can support higher energy and greater capacity for strain
• Ovulation: Your fertile window, where your LH levels surge
• Luteal phase: Follows ovulation until your next period begins, when rising progesterone can impact sleep, recovery, and stress tolerance

Understanding these phases is key to aligning your lifestyle with your body's natural rhythms.

Benefits of Menstrual Cycle Insights

Your health and body are unique – and Menstrual Cycle Insights is designed with that in mind. It helps you better understand how your body changes across your cycle, offering personalized insights that support how you feel, rest, and recover each day. 

Built in collaboration with leading researchers in female physiology, Menstrual Cycle Insights is grounded in science and tailored to each phase of your cycle – so you can make informed choices that align with what your body needs.

By bringing clarity to your cycle, Menstrual Cycle Insights turns period tracking into a deeper understanding of your health, helping you move through life’s phases with confidence and care.

Key benefits include:

• Performance timing: Know when to push hard and when to prioritize recovery
• Consistency: Build sustainable training habits aligned with your physiology
• Goal achievement: Optimize daily choices based on hormonal patterns
• Plan ahead: Anticipate symptoms and period start so you’re not caught off guard

Menstrual Cycle Insights provides:

• Phase-based Strain and Sleep recommendations, as well as stress tolerance guidance
• Period start date and phase predictions based on your cycle patterns, even if you have an irregular cycle
• Educational insights for each cycle phase about food, sleep, training, work, mood, and sex
• Symptom logging, like headaches, cramping, or bloating, with visualized patterns over time
• Predicted potential symptoms, using your physiology and past logs to predict, so you know what might be coming and prepare
• Menstrual phase tracking, including ovulation 
• Phase-specific trends over time for biometrics, including skin temperature, Resting Heart Rate (RHR), Heart Rate Variability (HRV), and Recovery
• Context-aware guidance to support your training, recovery, and everyday decisions with AI coaching via Daily Outlook that adjusts to your symptoms and phase

Who can use Menstrual Cycle Insights

Menstrual Cycle Insights is available to all members who menstruate, with features that adapt to your life.

• Without hormonal birth control: Receive period and symptom predictions based on natural hormonal fluctuations
• With hormonal birth control: Track cycles and symptoms to identify trends in physiological data without requiring ovulation-based predictions

Take control of your cycle with Menstrual Cycle Insights

Understanding your menstrual cycle is about more than just knowing when your period will arrive. It's about unlocking a deeper understanding of your body's unique patterns and using that knowledge to optimize your performance, recovery, and overall well-being. By moving beyond basic tracking to personalized, physiological insights, you can take control of your health every day of the month. Ready to see how your cycle affects you? Join WHOOP.

Frequently asked questions about menstrual cycle tracking

How to access Menstrual Cycle Insights

You can enable Menstrual Cycle Insights directly within the WHOOP app. Find it on the Home screen or in the Health tab. You can also turn it on by navigating to More > App Settings > Hormonal Insights and toggling the feature on. Once you complete the short onboarding process, you can access your cycle data and coaching from the Home screen and Health tab at any time.

How accurate is menstrual cycle tracking?

Accuracy depends on the method — basic calendar apps provide estimates, while platforms like WHOOP that use physiological data like skin temperature, RHR, and HRV offer more precise cycle phase detection.

Can I use this feature if I have irregular periods?

Yes — tracking physiological trends through biometrics can help identify cycle phase shifts even when timing isn't consistent month to month.

How does cycle tracking help with workout planning?

It helps you align training with your body — focusing on high-intensity workouts during the follicular phase and prioritizing recovery during the late luteal phase. For members who are menstruating, the optimal day Strain recommendation factors in your cycle phase to reflect how ready your body is to take on Strain. 

Menstrual Cycle Insights provides phase-based training recommendations based on how hormone levels change throughout your cycle:

• Early follicular phase (during your period): estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest levels, allowing you to build more muscle and make bigger gains than in other phases. Whatever exercise you do, you’ll see better gains during your period than in any other phase. 
• Late luteal phase (just before your period): your body is less able to take on additional strain, and it may be a good time for an active recovery day

How does cycle tracking help with sleep coaching?

Sleep patterns also shift throughout your cycle. In the week before your period, you’re more likely to experience lower quality sleep and more time spent awake than the rest of your cycle. Sleep optimization tip: plan for more time in bed during your premenstrual week to offset potential sleep disruptions.

What's the difference between basic period tracking and comprehensive cycle insights?

Basic tracking predicts periods and ovulation, while comprehensive insights integrate physiological data to show how each phase affects sleep, recovery, and strain capacity with personalized coaching.

Is menstrual cycle data private and secure?

Yes — menstrual cycle data is kept private and secure, used only to provide personalized insights and improve your experience. Read our WHOOP Privacy Principles.

Menstrual Cycle Insights should not be used for conception or contraception, and all phases, including the ovulatory phase, are estimates. Menstrual Cycle Insights is not a medical device and cannot diagnose or manage medical conditions. It does not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor for health concerns and never delay or modify medical care based on its information.