“Had to change something”: Meriame Terchoun is fitter because she monitors the cycle

In April 2019 it happened for the third time. Meriame Terchoun is left behind in the duel between FC Zurich and FC Basel. The cruciate ligament tore again. Like in 2016 and 2017. Terchoun decides to go back. “But it was clear to me that I had to change something. From that moment on I started to deal with my cycle,” says the 27-year-old. “I’ve felt healthy and fit ever since.”

The female menstrual cycle is one of the many reasons why female soccer players are eight times more likely than soccer players to suffer a torn cruciate ligament, according to accident insurance company Suva. In addition, there are nodding knees, less muscle mass or a different landing behavior. Around 25 national players will be absent from the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand due to a cruciate ligament rupture, including England’s Beth Mead, France’s Delphine Cascarino and Switzerland’s Iman Beney, Svenja Fölmli and Sally Julini.

The cycle of the players is checked

Meriame Terchoun fought back after tearing her third cruciate ligament and moved to Dijon in 2022 in the French professional league. Last Friday, she made her World Cup debut in the national team’s 2-0 win over the Philippines. However, the timing for this was not favorable at all, says Terchoun in Dunedin, New Zealand. “I got my period on game day of all days. I just thought, ‘Are you serious?'”

The winger speaks openly about it. She wants to break the taboo. The menstrual cycle affects the performance and injury susceptibility of top athletes, but this has only been discussed for a few years. Terchoun says that unlike some of her teammates, she does not use contraceptives. The symptoms can be more serious. “But since I started paying attention, my cycle is predictable almost to this day. We monitor everything closely, I pay attention to nutrition, sleep and recovery. »

The Swiss national team has been training cycling-oriented for three years. Athletics coach Mélanie Pauli has been one of the pioneers in this field since she joined Swiss football in autumn 2019 as responsible for athletics training and injury prevention for women. “I found that cruciate ligament tears may be related to the cycle,” says Pauli. After that, the national team began to consider the cycle.

Since then, data about the players has been collected in a tracking app, which can indicate their symptoms. Pauli can thus make trends about the individual player’s cycles and develop suitable strategies. The female cycle can be divided into four phases: the first begins with menstruation, the fourth shortly before.

“In each of these phases it is possible to achieve a top performance, but it is important to know which phase a player is in,” says Pauli. Cycling-oriented training does not mean team training, but everything around it. “It’s about activation, regeneration and nourishment.” At each stage, the body can get what it needs. In concrete terms, this can be seen in the national team, which – depending on the phase the players are in – drinks two different smoothies.

Much has improved for Meriame Terchoun through this work in the national team. “That helped me a lot. I feel fitter,” she says. In their club Dijon there is an exclusively male staff, the understanding is not as great as in the national team. She benefits from the association’s findings during the warm-up. “The first and fourth phase are about becoming more flexible. In the intermediate phases I mainly work on stability,” says Terchoun.

The greatest risk of injury is in the two middle phases. Exactly when the energy is greatest. Or as Terchoun describes it: “This is the coolest phase, then we are in a good mood and we can accelerate the most.” To prevent injuries, more vitamin C is needed in this phase. In the last phase, just before her period, Terchoun had a headache. But she got a tip from Pauli: “Mélanie told me to skip the coffee and drink water or tea instead. Things are much better now,” says Terchoun. But she still has days when she has no energy. “There are days when I would like to go to the weight room and go full throttle, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.”

‘Injuries will always be there’

Despite the cycling-oriented training, a Swiss national player, Iman Beney, tore her cruciate ligament while preparing for the World Cup. De Walliser, who celebrated her 17th birthday on Sunday, only played one international match, but has been on the program as a junior national player for a long time. “Of course we analyze the injury,” says Mélanie Pauli. “But Beney didn’t get her injury because she was in a certain phase. There are always a lot of parameters that come into play,” says Pauli. “Injuries will always be there.”

For Meriame Terchoun, the World Cup debut with a period was not too bad. “If you behaved well in the other phases and prepared well, the symptoms are less severe. And during the match I sometimes forget my period again.” (aargauerzeitung.ch)