Sports Science Dudes

Episode 97 - Alyssa Parten PhD - The Powerlifting PhD: From Competition Platform to Research Lab

• Jose Antonio PhD

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Alyssa Parten, PhD, CSCS, is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at The University of Alabama. Her research centers on resistance training and female physiology, with a focus on strategies to enhance female exercise performance and how resistance training may impact female long-term health. Dr. Alyssa Parten shares her expertise on female physiology and resistance training, challenging conventional wisdom about menstrual cycle-based training while advocating for personalized, auto-regulated approaches instead.

• Clinical assistant professor of kinesiology researching resistance training in female physiology
• Competitive powerlifter with a 292.5 lb squat, 187.5 lb bench press, and 375 lb deadlift at 138 lbs bodyweight
• Research found no significant metabolic differences between follicular and luteal phases
• Auto-regulation through RPE is more effective than strict cycle-based training programs
• Normal menstrual cycle length ranges from 24-39 days, with significant individual variation
• Traditional powerlifting and bodybuilding training are both effective for female physiology
• Leading FEMPOWER research team studying women-specific training adaptations
• Current projects examine post-activation performance enhancement protocols for women
• Future research will explore resistance training benefits during perimenopause and menopause


Dr Antonio:

Welcome to the Sports Science Dudes. I'm your host, dr Jose Antonio, and my special guest today is Dr Alyssa Parton. She got her PhD at the University of North Alabama. I'll let you guys guess what city that's in, because I did not know. She's a clinical assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Alabama. Her research centers on resistance training in female physiology centers on resistance training in female physiology, with a focus on strategies to enhance female exercise performance and how resistance training may impact female long-term health. She is currently leading projects examining the role of resistance training in supporting women through the menopause transition and in populations with metabolic dysfunction. Other ongoing projects include evaluating strength and conditioning strategies such as post-activation performance enhancement, pape or P-A-P-E effectiveness in females and the validity of estimated 1RM calculations in female populations. And then there's another long acronym you got here. Dr Parton leads the, and I'm going to say it's FEMPOWER.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, that's how we say it.

Dr Antonio:

It's F-E-M-P-W-R. I was like wow, six letters here. She leads the research team female exercise and metabolism for performance and women's health research, where she mentors undergrad students and applied in transitional translational research in female physiology. And you just got back from the NSCA conference. I did. How was that, by the way, I did not go.

Dr Parten:

It was a lot of fun. It was my first time going to a national NSCA conference but it was fun because you know, that's kind of more my scene. I've been in strength and conditioning for a long time and was a power lifter or I still am a power lifter, but a powerlifting coach for a number of years before I retired last year just to kind of focus on my academic profession and career trajectory, and so I know a lot of people that often go to NSCA or are involved in NSCA. So getting to meet people that I know more like online was a whole lot of fun. Getting to meet Antonella was a whole lot of fun. So yeah, we had a great time.

Dr Antonio:

A competitive power. So tell me your numbers for and what weight class are we talking?

Dr Parten:

I have competed because they've changed our weight classes a couple of times, but I compete in USAPL, so my first, like the original weight class, was like 63 kilos, and then it went up to 67 and a half and then back down to 65, I think. So just within that range I weigh in about 138 pounds.

Dr Parten:

So that's always what I'm at. So whatever the weight class is at the moment that I compete, that's about what I weigh my numbers before. So I have, I competed, and then I had my first born. Then I got back to competing and then had my second child and I haven't competed since she was born yet. So my pre-pregnancy with my second child's numbers was a 292 and a half squat and a that's pounds, not kilos. Yes, I speak in pounds.

Dr Antonio:

No, that's good, because I'm thinking most people will talk in kilos when they talk about I am absolutely terrible at kilos. Yeah, I was thinking wow, 292 kilos, wow, you're one of the strongest women ever. No, that wouldn't be amazing. So what was your bench? And dead.

Dr Parten:

My bench is my favorite. My bench press in competition, I will say in competition. I will say in competition, my bench press was 187.5. Since then, while I was pregnant with my second born, I hit 195. So we need to get back on the platform and see what's there.

Dr Antonio:

And then my deadlift was 375 pounds okay, well, this, this, actually it begs the question about, you know, women and men training for powerlifting. I mean, in a way, it's just like track, it's a simple sport and track, how fast can you run In powerlifting, how much can you lift? So with the advent of more research on, I guess, female physiology vis-a-vis, are there differences within the menstrual cycle? Pragmatically, does it matter, since I guess one, a lot of women are amenorrheic who compete in athletics.

Dr Parten:

So as far as prediction.

Dr Antonio:

What's that? Or on birth control Right, or on birth control so pragmatically, is it? Does it really matter? Because you still have to train. You still got to train the way you train for powerlifting, whether or not you're on birth control, whether or not you're amenorrheic, and the same applies to any sport. So sort of give me your thoughts on that sort of big picture, because there's a lot of research coming out on this and I would say most, most of the PhDs who are in this field and this is kind of trying to cull all this information they basically say it's nothing to worry about, and a lot of these are women who say there's nothing here, just train based on your goal. So what are your thoughts?

Dr Parten:

Yeah, I would have to agree with that. So where I come from is, you know, I have been around a whole lot of females in a strength sport, whether they are on birth control, amenorrheic or naturally menstruating. They do have more of this you know, kind of sports mindset where, regardless of how they feel they have to show up, and women are always going to show up. I will say, you know, going through the process of my dissertation, when we were comparing fat oxidation between menstrual cycle phases, they were following a very traditional like power lifting workout between those two phases and that was kind of on purpose. I wanted to see, like, what those differences were.

Dr Antonio:

I'm sorry to interrupt before you expound on that further. A lot of people don't power lift, so explain what a typical power workout might be on power lift.

Dr Parten:

So explain what a typical power lifting workout might be. Yeah, so power lifting is the sport of working up to a one rep max, typically in the back squat, the bench press and deadlift. So what I would mean by a traditional power lifting workout is when you are performing those lifts very similarly to how you would perform them in competition. So you typically would do the squat, then the bench, then the deadlift, and we worked at like higher repetition, not higher repetition, higher intensities, just kind of like a sub max intensity, because we were it wasn't with like solely power lifters I had to take into account that, while they were all well-trained, they might not be following this specific type of program. But, that being said, you know they were all doing five sets of three repetitions, between 80 to 85 percent of their one rep max in those lifts. And why? And we looked at it in the early follicular phase, when you're strongest, and in your mid luteal phase, when you're not as strong, or you should be doing yoga and endurance and we didn't find a metabolic difference. That's what we were specifically looking at, but from more of just like that pi's point of view. That's in there with all of these participants.

Dr Parten:

If I had and one of my regrets with that study is I should have taken a survey of just like subjective markers and like how they felt during those two sessions. We stratified what should I call it? We stratified them between those trials. So some of them did their first session in the early follicular phase, some of them did their first session in the mid luteal phase and regardless, it seemed that, like the majority of those participants did feel worse in their mid luteal phase.

Dr Parten:

They all kind of spoke to the effect that they were more tired, more fatigued, and I found that interesting because I have never been naturally menstruating, I've always been on birth control, so I don't really feel those naturally menstruating hormonal variation differences in performance. But regardless of how they felt, they were able to do the prescribed intensity, just about the same. So I didn't see any differences. We wouldn't have any participants that were failing or unable to maintain that volume load that was prescribed. So, speaking to the fact that, like, are there differences? Should we train based on menstrual cycle? I personally don't think so and I know there's a lot of nuance whenever it comes to this and some people do feel worse during that mid to late luteal phase. But my perspective is, if it's not one thing, it's another. Like you're going to have either that going on you might have higher stress or tests going on in the early follicular phase that are going to make you feel fatigued or tired or worse.

Dr Antonio:

Or had crappy sleep or something.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, yeah, there's always something that may affect it may not. So kind of my point of view is I'm a big advocate of auto-regulating. I love RPE for those higher intensity, maybe top sets of your lifts where you are working at like a difficulty. That's really kind of geared towards how you're approaching that day, whether you've slept well or slept awful, whether you have a lot of like lifestyle stress or not, whether it's menstrual cycle related or not, cause that could just that could be different throughout the entire menstrual cycle length. I don't think that it should fully be based and I don't think you should make any predetermined changes, especially like if don't just go into it thinking, well, I'm in my mid luteal phase, this session is going to suck. That's not necessarily true.

Dr Antonio:

Explain. When I took biology many years ago, they had the stereotypical menstrual cycle of 28 days and apparently it's never 28 days. So explain to the audience you know the different phases, how long they are stereotypically supposed to last, and yeah, and so explain that, because a lot of people are not really up to date in terms of you know how long each part of the cycle lasts.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, happy to. So typically we discuss two specific cycles. You have your follicular phase and your luteal phase, and they are separated by ovulation, and so what takes place within these specific phases, like the follicular phase, is when your menstrual cycle is starting. It's initiated by the menses or the females period, and so during that first component not really half, but first phase of the menstrual cycle, it starts with these specific sex hormones being really low. So estrogen and progesterone, they're really what kind of keeps this cycle going, and the effects of this cycle is like developing a follicle, that egg bursting and releasing an egg, et cetera, et cetera. So these hormones are what we really associate, these um physiological and psychological changes that might be occurring Estrogen and progesterone are low and before you get to ovulation, which is when that follicle ruptures and an egg comes out and, if it's fertilized, you create a baby in that luteal phase, but before that, estrogen climbs really high and that's what initiates ovulation.

Dr Parten:

After that, whenever ovulation occurs, you reach that luteal phase and that's when we see a climb in both estrogen and progesterone before it decreases, leading into the next menstrual cycle. The length of it, yes, they typically say on average is 28 days. However, that varies between females, even between like months in the same female, because this cycle can be changed based on things like stress and with that a lot of them may have a shorter than 28 length menstrual cycle or a longer than 28 length. They typically say a normal menstrual cycle length is between 24 to 39 days, so it can drastically depend.

Dr Antonio:

That's quite a range.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, a very large range, and so I think that's important, because a lot of them are like oh no, not like measuring height and it's like, well, he can be between five foot eight and six foot three.

Dr Parten:

So yeah, yeah, and I'll throw this out there. I just have a lot of things that have collected in my brain of the course of this dissertation, a lot of like norms that I'm like maybe this isn't all that normal, so, like the menstrual cycle link could be different. My participants average 30 to 31 day menstrual cycle links, but I had someone who was all the way down at the bottom at 24. Um, they also like if you look it up and look up like the perfect, like menstrual cycle, it'll typically say that your um full uh follicular phase is like 14 to 18 days and then your luteal phase is like typically 10 to 14 days, totally like, not the same. We had so much variance there as well. Um, your uh ovulatory phase, or like that ovulation, whenever that occurs, it's typically a 24 to 72, I think um length. That was way different between individuals, whether it would be like way earlier than the kits would indicate or way later. So there was a lot that was different.

Dr Parten:

Another one that I found and I think we're kind of starting to see more evidence of this, especially with new technology there's some things like urinary samples that usually are used for detecting ovulation for women who are trying to get pregnant. But now we're starting to use these same tools for tracking hormone levels between estrogen, progesterone luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone All of these things that are just associated with that menstrual cycle variance but using them every day to actually get a more true picture of what those hormonal fluctuations look like. And if you look up a menstrual cycle figure, it'll be like estrogen high, estrogen moderate estrogen, progesterone low, high. And that is absolutely not what we're seeing when we actually measure women on a day-to-day basis, and I think that that's what makes it so hard to figure out, really, like when these phases specifically occur, when ovulation specifically occurs, that kind of thing now with regards to your power lifting.

Dr Antonio:

um, this is sort of a sidebar question Do you do any aerobic training when you're getting ready for a meet?

Dr Parten:

I do, and I've always been an advocate for having my myself and my power lifters supplement their training with some form of aerobic exercise. I oftentimes will um put in like plyometric and like sprint training in my power lifters kind of more far in advance, but then I'll also have them do whatever type of endurance training they like. So if they like running, if they like um some other form of aerobic or cardiovascular exercise we employ. That about four weeks out is when I typically am like let's get highly specific. But up until that point then I try and keep them to keep it in as much as possible. Even when we do get specific I start to kind of amp up the accessory repetitions so that we can kind of maintain their fitness capacity the best that we can, leading into that meat, but yeah, big cardio starting at four weeks?

Dr Antonio:

you are they doing steady state aerobic exercise like go out for a run?

Dr Parten:

Um, again, it kind of depends on the person and what their preferences are. I'm not going to like make them do some sort of aerobic exercise that they're not going to adhere to or enjoy in some capacity. Even if it's just a really long walk, we'll employ something like that. So it really depends on the lifter and what like what their preferences are there. It really depends on the lifter and what like what their preferences are there. So, further out, the more that we use, the more closer we get to competition, we start to kind of be strategic about what they're using now, what's the um leading up to uh competition?

Dr Antonio:

I know, for instance, any weight class sport, particularly the fight sports. There's quite a drop in weight. I mean for them to make weight. It's brutal, is that something?

Dr Parten:

similar in powerlifting. We try not to uh what would be the lower weight class for you. If, what would be the lower one for me specifically, there was a 60 kilo weight class um before they. Whenever it changed from 63 it went to 60 and 67.5. I did the 60 for one competition and it was literally miserable. So I was like I don't even, but you made weight. But you made weight right I did and I performed horrible.

Dr Antonio:

Okay, from the time you made weight until you compete, is there a day or the same day?

Dr Parten:

Not in USAPL, there's two hours.

Dr Antonio:

Oh, okay. With a lot of fight sports you get to fight the next day, so they gain like 20 pounds.

Dr Parten:

Okay, yeah, so there are federations that do it the day before, typically the night before, so that's probably not as bad. Mine was awful and, um, I will never forget that meat because we I kind of dieted for a while. Then we had to. I was working with a nutrition coach that was like, okay, let's just like do keto for a couple weeks, kill me. Now. That was terrible. I don't do well with that. Then I still wasn't dropping. I'm a kind of a tall person. I'm a tall power lifter. Like I'm not a tall person but like for power lifting I'm tall and, um, already kind of relatively lean. So just dropping literally anything below about 135, 136 is truly impossible for me without killing myself with keto. And then, uh, like the last few days, we dropped my sodium practically to zero for me to be able to weigh in and I just I could not get. I was so shaky I couldn't get enough nutrients in me after that to really really kind of offset.

Dr Antonio:

How'd you do relative to the other lifters?

Dr Parten:

Oh I, this is kind of funny. I am not tooting my own horn here, I'm just saying we need more power lifters in Alabama and probably the panhandle. This was a meet in Pensacola, florida, and yeah, I still won, because I. So you were miserable, but you went Small meets I'm impressive, big meets I don't not even looked at.

Dr Antonio:

Hey, I always tell people you don't choose who you compete against, you just show up and you compete right. Exactly so you felt miserable. How about this? Feel miserable, win or feel great and get second. Which would you take?

Dr Parten:

I would feel I'd rather, because for me, like because I'm not the most competitive power lifter and I recognize that it's always about me beating my previous best. And so in that meet that I did poorly in, I either matched and this was my first meet after my first born, so I was happy to match my lifts and I wasn't leaving that place without matching my lifts but um, so was able to match my deadlift like a small two and a half kilo PR on my squat. And then bench was another story. Those people claim that my butt left the bench, but it definitely didn't. I have video footage, yeah.

Dr Antonio:

I mean, if it's video you'd see, you'd see it, Right, I mean.

Dr Parten:

I know I had a video that my dad later sent me and I was like I knew it didn't leave the bench and so anyway, that me I did not, did not match or PR my bench press on that meet, that's crazy.

Dr Antonio:

Let's talk a little bit about bodybuilding type training, hypertrophy training versus I mean strength or power type training. Now, if you look at some of the older, some of the older data, going back to like 1970, 1980s, where I think it was Duncan McDougall he looked at muscle fiber size in powerlifters and bodybuilders and in general powerlifters they have hypertrophy or type two fibers, bodybuilders sort of hypertrophy and all the fiber types. But my thing with bodybuilders is that I always tell them well, powerlifters get hypertrophy too. So even powerlifting in a sense is bodybuilding. It's just your. Your goal is not really to look pretty, your goal is to lift maximal weight. So is there really a difference physiologically and this is related to, you know, post-exercise lipid oxidation between doing something like eight to 12 reps versus, you know, doing triples to six reps? I mean, is there a difference? And if there is, does it? Does it matter?

Dr Parten:

You know, I think uh, I don't know that evidence as well as you probably do but coming from a history of both bodybuilding and powerlifting and also being amongst that, probably like 20, early 2010s or whatever, when power building was a big thing and you kind of combined power lifting and bodybuilding, I think that you can achieve similar physique goals with either.

Dr Parten:

Or I think what it really comes down to and what we've really seen with hypertrophy training is like working to fatigue, and so I often just kind of teach my students that, like, if your goal is to get stronger in these lifts, do them first and do them heavy and then, with your accessory lifts, like you, you do them to fatigue and you do them to just like some sort of level of difficulty. However, you're kind of kind of look at that whether it's like you've got two reps left in the tank rpe8, whatever the case may be, you don't have to work to failure necessarily, but I've always looked at it in the sense of more real world application. Nobody is going to go in the gym and do like one to three sets of just failure, of like a couple of exercises which you actually you have to do. Actually, you know what?

Dr Antonio:

it's funny there are people who do that.

Dr Parten:

And I'm sure you know if that works for you, if that's what you enjoy, at least you're lifting. Most of us are going to get really, really bored with that really, really fast. But my thing is, you know, if we're doing like a lower body lift, then we're going to do you know we're going to hit, we're going to achieve or induce hypertrophy because we're using those muscles multiple times under resistance, like so I don't know. I think that you can absolutely have the physique with powerlifting and with that being more of your focus, because most of the time powerlifters are doing in some essence, like bodybuilding training, like we're doing other accessory exercises that bodybuilders would use for, probably repetition, similar. So I've never like. I mean, like I said, I come from a history of both bodybuilding and powerlifting and my even though powerlifting became ever since, like about 2016, my focus, my body's continued to change and morph along with that increased intensity and, you know, volume over time.

Dr Antonio:

So are there any bodybuilding exercises? That would be a complete waste of time for a power lifter.

Dr Parten:

Um, I don't think so I think it's so independent on the person and like what they need to improve, what things like might not feel good, like, if they have some shoulder issues, probably don't care to use flies for them, but I enjoy flies, so you know, I think it's more specific to the person than in general. Give me an example it's like a more traditional bodybuilding exercise.

Dr Antonio:

How about preacher curls?

Dr Parten:

I love preacher curls. I mean a lot. How does that help? How does it help?

Dr Parten:

powerlifting yeah because I mean. A lot of the times I feel like powerlifters may get into um a habit of neglecting certain muscle groups as opposed to bodybuilders, and so having more of those isolation type exercises may be good in certain phases. Whenever it comes to little things like that, as a coach I'm always more, you know I think a lot of things can get you to the same result, at least for the, for the power lifter again, and so I oftentimes am like what kind of bicep curls do you enjoy? Oh, I like preacher curl.

Dr Antonio:

Okay, I don't care, even if you don't win the meet, at least you would have pretty biceps, so so that's always a good thing hey tell the audience a little bit about this. Uh, fem power, or female exercise and metabolism for performance and women's health research. I I will say this I'm sorry for whatever people who came up with the acronym, because you should limit it to three to four letters, that's you.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, I was like yo chat gbt. I want to have a cool name for my research team. This is what we research. Give me some ideas oh my god. Well, it's a lot of letters um yeah, everybody's like you should just like drop it down to femme and I'm like but I like the power part because we oftentimes use the power lifts in it, so it's like we're just gonna do femme power power.

Dr Antonio:

Well, the power part's cool.

Dr Parten:

I I mean performance, women's and it also is kind of like M power, but with the F on the front to indicate female M might be a better one.

Dr Antonio:

M power, yeah, when you think about it what are the acronyms that are memorable? They're all short IRS. You know, nba, nfl.

Dr Parten:

ISSN.

Dr Antonio:

NSCA. I'm just giving you a hard time. Tell us about this research team you're leading and the goal and current projects you might be working on and future projects.

Dr Parten:

Yeah, oh my gosh. It's so funny because, like you know, I just finished my PhD back in March, but I've been at Alabama since the fall of 2023. I came on board at Alabama before I finished my PhD, so I was like ABD and so I did my dissertation there, and now that I've graduated, and so I did my dissertation there, and now that I've graduated, we'll just continue to work at UA. And so, as you mentioned earlier, like it really kind of comes down to, I'm interested in strategies that are often used in strength and conditioning settings, but how do they apply to females? The one that you mentioned, post-activation potentiation enhancement and I do just say PAPE. I don't know if that's how you technically refer to it, but I say PAPE.

Dr Parten:

This is whenever you combine a heavy resistance training exercise, like the squat, and after the fact you do some sort of power or explosive exercise, whether it is a jump, variation or sprinting. If you're doing the squat first, because it has to mimic that conditioning movement first, and so we've used this in strength and conditioning for a long time. But the real like question is how much recovery time do you need between that heavy exercise and the power or explosive movement before you actually express greater power, and that's really the whole purpose of it. So we've looked at and we've we're continuing to look at PAPE in females to figure out a couple of different questions. One, how much recovery time is required for females, because that might differ from males, because we do tend to have a greater composition of type one fibers that are have a greater volume, capacity and fatigue threshold, so they might not take as long for females to recover before they express that power, and if you take too much recovery you might just be just back to baseline levels. So we're looking at that.

Dr Parten:

But also if there's a difference between recreationally active females and athletically trained females. There was some evidence to suggest that, like strength levels may impact how much recovery time you need, and so that's where I was kind of coming from with the recreationally trained versus athletically trained, and so we've looked at that. We looked at accommodating resistance. That was my first PhD study and so I was a big fan of accommodating resistance because I came from a history of conjugate powerlifting, so like, do you know Louie Simmons and all that fun.

Dr Antonio:

Yes.

Dr Parten:

So I was a big conjugate powerlifter and I was interested to kind of replicate Dr Matthew Ray his research on accommodating resistance, but in females, to see if there were any advantages to it.

Dr Parten:

And there might be a small advantage, but I think we need to look at it in more trained individuals, trained females, versus like more recreationally trained, I guess you could say.

Dr Parten:

So we did a little bit of that and then really like where my more I guess clinical side, where we look at resistance training and strength training on metabolic, cardiometabolic responses in females, is, I really want to see how what we're doing now, how strength training in this like nice little premenopausal phase of our life cycle, is going to impact females in the long term phase of our life cycle is going to impact females in the long term.

Dr Parten:

And so that's where my dissertation really came in and why we looked at fat oxidation post-resistance training. It was really kind of to open the door of if it improves fat oxidation post-exercise for however long in well-trained pre-menopausal women. Does that beg the question of if it's going to be an effective strategy for perimenopausal women and postmenopausal women or females with PCOS, things of that nature? So we do have that's where, now that I've finished my PhD where I'm taking it next, and so I have one of like a part, like a kind of a side team of our Fem Power team, who's focusing now on putting together a survey for perimenopausal women to kind of see if there's any symptom differences between those who are well-trained and what type of training they're doing and those who are well-trained and what type of training they're doing and those who are not training. And then from there we'll kind of probably take it more this route to actually measure metabolic responses from resistance training.

Dr Antonio:

Are you going to look at any use of dietary supplements in this population?

Dr Parten:

I would love to. I would need to bring Antonella or you on, because that's not so much my area of expertise. So having someone else kind of come on board to give an idea of why or what might actually impact them in the long run and, yeah, look at it further It'd be a lot of fun. I think that there's a lot to tap into within this population. Fun.

Dr Antonio:

I think that there's a lot to tap into within this population. Oh yeah, there's a. I mean there are umpteen studies you could do uh in that population.

Dr Parten:

So yeah, it's sort of like how much time do you have during the day and that, really, how many dog students do you have that need a dissertation study?

Dr Antonio:

No, you're going to have to get a bunch of undergrads to help you get a whole team.

Dr Parten:

No, for real. Yeah, one of the funny things about my dissertation is like it it was extremely long hours and very, very early mornings, like oftentimes I had to be up at like two 30 in the morning for these trials. It was ridiculous. And so whenever you're in your defense and they're like so where do you want to take this next? And I'm like, I have ideas, but I'm not doing it without a team, like students who are going to do it, cause I'm never waking up that early again, if I can help it.