The field of women’s hormonal health and exercise has undergone a revolutionary change thanks to technology. Long an under-explored and unexplored area, attitudes have recently been changing, fueled in part by high-profile female athletes speaking openly about their experiences in training and competition.
Several resources are now available to women seeking support on how best to exercise and feel their best during each phase of their menstrual cycle. One of the leading apps in this space is Jennis, which helps users take advantage of their hormonal health. Check out what the app does and how you can use it for your health and fitness.
what is jennis
Jennis is the creation of British heptathlon Olympic champion Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill. It was inspired by the athlete’s experience of having to adapt her own training program while pregnant with her first child.
The Jennis app provides personalized fitness and nutrition advice for women, allowing them to use their hormones to their advantage by exercising in different ways at different times during their menstrual cycle.
On the Jennis website, Ennis-Hill explains, “I created Jennis to show that through open speaking and other movements, we can take back power over our bodies, our symptoms, and our hormonal health.”
Getting started with the Jennis app
When you first open Jennis, you’ll be asked to fill out a questionnaire that includes questions about your period and cycle length, how many days before your period you get PMS symptoms, and your health goals. At this stage, you can add any medical diagnosis that affects your menstrual health, such as: B. PCOS, endometriosis, fertility problems or uterine fibroids. You can skip as many of these questions as you like, but the more information you provide, the better the personalized advice will be.
Download: Jennis for iOS | Women’s Health and Fitness for Android (subscription required, free trial available)
Using the Jennis cyclemapping function
During your menstrual cycle, your hormones fluctuate in four phases, and there are several online resources to help you feel your best during each phase of your menstrual cycle. Of course, you can track your menstrual cycle with your iPhone’s Health app, and there are some great free period tracking apps for Android too.
However, Jennis goes beyond just monitoring and recording these details. It uses an innovation called cyclemapping that gathers specific information to offer exercise and lifestyle recommendations based on your phase.
Start Jennis every day and go to the Today section. Here you will find your activity goal for the day. The recommended exercises are categorized according to your point of view on the menstrual phase, so they fall in a range from active recovery to high exertion. They also agree with the activities you nominated as your favorites in the first questionnaire.
Log all daily symptoms, moods and activities directly from this page or by tapping the black circle with a plus button. The more you do this, the better your referrals will be over the coming months. During your first month of using Jennis to track your menstrual cycle, you’ll build a database that you can easily access in the “Trends” section of the app for a complete picture of your hormonal health. Several other apps help you monitor and understand your hormonal balance.
How to start with Jennis Fitness
The easiest way to get moving with Jennis is to take one of the daily exercise recommendations, which are based on the activities you selected as your favorites in your first questionnaire and are tailored to your hormone levels. You will receive a top match suggestion among other alternatives.
Like the Gentler Streak app, Jennis integrates active recovery periods into your training regimen, reducing the likelihood of overtraining and resulting injuries. These align with times when your energy levels and motivation may be at their lowest. You’ll likely get yoga and stretching if you have cramps or bloating during your period. Then there are anti-anxiety breathing exercises and running workouts for those PMS days.
A range of HIIT and strength training exercises suit you when your estrogen levels are at their highest, while LISS and running sessions are great for your progesterone spikes. In addition to individual workouts, there are a number of 30-day challenges if you wish to join an extended guided program.
Choosing the best Jennis fitness workout for you
First and foremost, it is advisable to follow Jennis’ daily recommendations. However, once you know your own cycle and what types of exercises work best for you at each stage, you may want to create your own program. Therefore, you can also use Jennis like you would any of the more traditional workout apps and browse the categories to find your favorite activities.
There are two ways to do this. Look for the Select sessions that suit you button on your Today page, or navigate to your profile page where you can switch the app from Jennis Cyclemapping to the Jennis Fitness program.
The Fitness page provides options to choose your workout by time or workout type. You can also adapt your fitness to your mood in the #HowJennisFeels section. Collections include:
Stress Relief Energetic Fatigue Highly Irritable Anxious Painful
Little time? Choose from the No Time No Worry section for some quick blast workouts. There are many 5-minute and 9-minute mini HIITs and some rep challenges designed to work different muscle groups, and many require no equipment at all. If you’ve had an injury or are new to exercise, the Back to Fitness or Stretch and Recovery sections are perfect.
As you’d expect from an Olympic champion, there’s even a Run Faster toolkit to help you improve your skills or develop better techniques to avoid injury. Try tempo runs, steady-state runs, or interval sessions. You can also learn post-run yoga, strength, and stretching techniques. Brilliantly, these tutorials are led by Jessica herself.
New activities are introduced each week, conveniently located in a carousel at the top of the Fitness page. One of the best features of all exercises is that they are accompanied by expert explanations of why you might be feeling this way and how each movement can help you. It’s great to get a scientific reason why you might have brain fog or fatigue. And it’s even better to find some practical solutions.
Get insights into your hormonal health with Jennis
Jennis’ Insights section provides more practical advice and guidance based on your daily hormone profile. A team of medical experts share tips on eating, resting and breathing to boost your positivity and maximize your health.
There’s an activity tracker built in, but you can also integrate Jennis with a range of apps and fitness wearables via Terra, or connect directly to Apple Health via the iOS app.
Optimize your training according to your hormonal health
As women become more aware of how their health and well-being is related to their menstrual cycle, hopefully there will be many more products like Jennis to help them get the most out of their workouts. Until then, people like Jessica are paving the way for women who want to stay fit, healthy and active.
