Menstrual cycles may shape how injuries impact athletes, new research suggests.
Published December 17, 2025, at 7:00 GMT+1, a study found that female football players who are injured during their menstrual period tend to experience more severe injuries and longer recovery periods, even though the period itself does not appear to raise the overall risk of getting hurt.
Researchers tracked FC Barcelona women over four seasons from 2019 to 2023 in Spain’s top women’s league. Lead author Eva Ferrer, a sports medicine and female health specialist at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital and the Barça Innovation Hub in Barcelona, explains: “Our data indicate that menstruation does not increase how frequently injuries occur, but injuries sustained during menstruation tend to have worse outcomes.” Specifically, injuries sustained during bleeding days required three times as many days to recover compared with injuries during other phases of the cycle. For instance, soft-tissue injuries to muscles, tendons, and ligaments took more than three times longer to heal when they happened during bleeding days—684 days lost per 1,000 training hours versus 206 days during non-bleeding days.
The study authors suggest practical adjustments to mitigate injury severity, such as longer warm-ups, moderated high-speed workloads, and enhanced recovery support when athletes are in the bleeding phase.
What changes during the menstrual cycle?
Hormone levels rise and fall across the cycle, influencing the body in several ways, including muscle function, metabolism, and immunity. Lower estrogen may hinder muscle repair, heighten fatigue and pain, and disrupt sleep. Iron loss during menstruation can also reduce stamina and slow recovery.
This isn’t the first time hormonal shifts have been linked to worse injury outcomes in female sports. FIFA has funded a separate project to explore how the menstrual cycle relates to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in women’s football. Project researchers note that while hormones fluctuate throughout the cycle, the exact extent of their impact on injury risk remains unclear. The study plans to monitor estrogen and progesterone levels, hormones associated with greater ligament laxity and slower neuromuscular responses, to better understand potential mechanisms behind injury severity.
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