or too long, women have been marginalized in the sport science and medical fields. Ever since I was an undergraduate student, I have been asking, “Why?” and trying to find answers to make training and nutrition more successful for my friends and me. As an athlete racing and training at a high level, I also wanted to make sure I was getting the results I wanted from the hard work I was putting in. Once I began asking that one little question, I started hearing responses like, “Why do you want to study women when we don’t know enough about men?” So I doubled down and made researching women’s specific physiology and fitness and nutrition my life’s work. Why? Because women are not small men! We deserve research—and answers—all our own.

This was the philosophy behind my first book, ROAR, which focused on working with the hormonal fluctuations that occur around the menstrual cycle. Now, in Next Level, we’ll talk about those topics but really dive deep into what happens as those periods start to come to an end.

This book is for everyone entering, currently in, or already through their menopausal years. As you’ll see in a few pages, menopause is just one moment in time: the moment when you’ve been period-free for a full year. But all the hormonal fluctuations that cause the symptoms we associate with menopause start years—sometimes many years—before that moment. The guidance you need for optimal performance remains pretty much the same from the time you start experiencing symptoms to when you are technically “postmenopausal.”

What you’re really doing when you act on the advice in this book is picking up the slack and starting to do the work that your fluctuating and dwindling hormones have always done. Simply put, your hormones are messengers that tell your body what it needs to do to stay healthy and strong. They tell your muscles to grow and your bones to form, and they help control your temperature, appetite, and fat storage. As we enter our menopausal years, those hormones start going a little haywire. Some messengers go missing, while others hang around. Some work goes undone, while other functions receive only some of the messages they’ve come to rely upon. The system is on the fritz. The symptoms that make you feel like you’re turning into a furnace in the middle of the night, the MIA mojo, and the body composition shifts are really your hormones sending out a distress call—an SOS signal for you to give them a hand because they simply can’t perform their functions the way they used to.

So that’s where we come in. There is so much you can do to help those hormones and stimulate positive, powerful metabolic processes in your muscles, bones, and other cells to ease your symptoms. Although throughout this book we talk about the “menopausal” woman, we mean women in peri- through post- menopause.

Next Level is divided into two sections.

“MENOPAUSE EXPLAINED”: In part 1, you’ll find a deep dive into the underlying causes of menopause: the hormonal changes that are causing all the symptoms you’re feeling. We’ll also talk about those symptoms—what’s “normal,” what may require medical intervention, and the impact on your wellness and performance. Once you understand the hormonal players in menopause, you’ll be better able to work with them to minimize unwanted symptoms, pump the brakes on many age-related losses, and improve your health, fitness, and performance.

“MENOPAUSE PERFORMANCE”: Part 2 is what you really came for: what to do about symptoms! This section covers all the ways in which you can work with your changing physiology and maximize your fitness and performance (and ultimately your health and wellness) during menopause. It includes discussions of hormone therapy, nonhormone supplements, strength training, cardio training, pelvic floor and vaginal health, sleep and recovery, motivation and mental health, what to eat, when to eat, how to hydrate, and much more.

We pull it all together with concrete advice for tracking your menopause changes and identifying what’s working (and what’s not). What we provide here is the framework for your menopause action plan. You’ll also find sample exercise routines, fueling strategies, and more. Consider this guidance that you can use for the rest of your life.

And a quick peek behind the scenes: This book is in my voice (Stacy), and I bring the science and research to the table. Selene has shaped the content to make it easily digestible.

CHANGING THE CONVERSATION

We have many goals for this book, but the biggest one is to bring menopause out of the shadows. Too many women feel ashamed to say they are menopausal or to talk openly about this important time of life. Selene and I want Next Level to do for menopause what ROAR did for menstruation: normalize it!

As Selene shares in the foreword, if you’re looking for information from mainstream media outlets about how to maximize your performance during menopause, you’d better pack a snack…and some binoculars. You won’t find many coaches, trainers, or other experts in the fitness space giving straight-up advice on how to work with your physiology to maximize your fitness during menopause. Few even utter the word at all.

This should come as little surprise when you consider all the negative connotations still carried by “the change of life.” There’s so much silence because there’s still so much stigma surrounding menopause.

Heck, doctors barely talk about it. A 2019 study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that of 177 resident physicians in family medicine, internal medicine, and even obstetrics/gynecology who were surveyed, 20 percent received zero lectures on menopause during their training. Fewer than 7 percent reported feeling prepared to help manage the care of women through their menopausal years. And that’s the modern-day medical field. Those are physicians, many trained specifically in women’s health, we’re talking about.

Not long after ROAR came off the press, the idea that women are not small men (and therefore shouldn’t be eating and training like them) started picking up steam, along with the concept of “period power”: the finding that women can actually nail personal records (PRs) and be at the top of their game when they’re “on their period.” Women came to understand that they feel draggy during certain days of the month, not because their fitness is bad, but because their physiology is shifting in ways that make exercise feel harder. They also learned what to do about it. If you understand your physiology, you can work with it; if you can work with it, you can optimize it.

Just because your periods are slowing down and stopping doesn’t mean you have to. We are way past the point of valuing women based on the workings of their wombs. Athletically, women in their forties are still in their prime. We see that in inspirational athletes like seven-time world champion Rebecca Rusch, now in her early fifties, who didn’t even start her career as a professional bike racer until she was 38; five-time Olympic veteran Dara Torres, who, at 41, was the oldest swimmer to make the team; and Shellie Edington, a 57-year-old CrossFit games athlete who was ranked number one in the world in Masters Women 50 to 54 in 2015, after only picking up the sport when she was 46.

With the right training, nutrition, lifestyle strategies, and the power of the mind (which only gets better with age), women in their fifties and beyond can still chase podiums and elite-level performances. Just ask 56-year-old Laura Van Gilder, one of the winningest riders in American cycling. “I don’t look at myself as a fifty-something-year-old athlete,” she told Outside magazine. “Mentally, at the start line, I’m very much the same as the 17-year-old I’m racing next to, and I want to accomplish the same thing that person does.”

We are not going to sugarcoat anything. It’s not realistic to say that by following the guidance and advice in this book, you won’t face any of the challenges that come with aging. That’s nonsense. There are no time machines. But you will understand what’s going on with your body and you will be able to take concrete action to minimize the most disruptive symptoms that come with the hormonal fluctuations of the menopausal years so that you can feel and perform at your best.

Because honestly, I’m not about that whole “60 is the new 40” thing (or whatever the age of the moment is). I believe that you don’t need to be younger. We all need to be okay exactly where we are. Forty is 40. Fifty is 50. Sixty is 60. There are a million ways to be 40, 50, and 60 (and 70 and 80!), and we’re going to help you be a badass wherever you fall on that spectrum. Sure, at some point, your 5K times are not going to be what they once were. But that doesn’t mean you need to put your competitive goals behind you.

From the legendary triathlete Sally Edwards, who at 74 is a CEO, bestselling author, and triathlon hall-of-famer, to the 60-year-old at your local YMCA who regularly laps the high school kids in the pool, women prove every day that our best years can be ahead of us no matter how old we are now.

So to all you forgotten athletes, silent sufferers, and active women daunted by the approaching transition into menopause—enough with trying to stop the clock. That’s not the goal of this book. I want to enable you to get through the transition in a positive manner, discovering newfound freedom and power. I want you to be able to say, “Yes, I’m in menopause. Yes, I’m aging. But I understand this transition. I can work with it. I can be strong, and I can do all these new things.”

You’ve accumulated hard-earned wisdom and power over the years. You’re higher on the totem pole of life. There are countless opportunities that lie ahead. Let that power and wisdom shine through, uninterrupted by hot flashes, bad sleep, and muscle loss. Menopause doesn’t have to be the end of you kicking ass at the gym, on the trail, in the saddle, or wherever you work out. Just bring your health and training to the next level as you reach this next level of life.