SOMA Journal

Ideas, insights,
intelligence.

Long reads, science explainers, and field dispatches from the team building the future of female performance. No noise. No filler.

Training Science· Cycle Intelligence· Athlete Stories· Hormones & Performance· Technology· Research Dispatches· Field Notes· Training Science· Cycle Intelligence· Athlete Stories· Hormones & Performance· Technology· Research Dispatches· Field Notes·

Featured

Training ScienceJune 20268 min read

Why every fourth week felt like your body was working against you — and what the science says

She trained for 26 weeks for her marathon. Every fourth week, she fell apart. She called it a mental block. A failure of willpower. She almost quit. It was none of those things. Here is what was actually happening — and why every female endurance runner needs to know it.

Read the full piece

Hormones

May 2026 · 6 min read

What cortisol is actually doing to your training in the luteal phase

The luteal phase elevation in basal cortisol is one of the most misunderstood phenomena in female sport science. Here is a clear-eyed look at the mechanism — and what it means for your race schedule.

Training Science

May 2026 · 5 min read

Cycle-synced training: what the evidence actually supports (and what it does not)

The internet is full of cycle-synced workout protocols. We cut through the noise and look at what the peer-reviewed evidence actually says about training adaptation across the menstrual cycle.

Research

April 2026 · 7 min read

The Wei Gao paper that changed what we thought was possible with sweat biosensing

In 2023, a team at Caltech published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology that demonstrated continuous oestradiol detection from sweat in a wearable form factor. This is why it matters for SOMA.

Athlete Stories

April 2026 · 9 min read

She ran her first sub-3 marathon the week she stopped ignoring her cycle

A conversation with an elite club runner who spent three years fighting her biology before she started working with it. The performance shift was immediate. The science behind it is not complicated.

Hormones

March 2026 · 5 min read

RED-S: the condition affecting 64% of female endurance runners that most coaches cannot name

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport has a measurable biological signature that shows up weeks before clinical diagnosis. This is what it looks like — and why wearable detection changes everything.

Technology

March 2026 · 10 min read

Why aptamer-based biosensors are the key to unlocking continuous hormone monitoring

The science of sweat biosensing has advanced faster than most people realise. We explain the technology behind SOMA's approach — from molecular recognition to wearable patch design — in plain language.

"The data that could change how female athletes train has existed for decades. SOMA is building the device to deliver it."

Sharon-Victory Kanu — CEO & Founder, SOMA

Long Read

Field Dispatch — Sharon-Victory Kanu

What building SOMA has taught me about the gap between what we know and what we build

The science that explains why female athletes break down at predictable points in their cycle has existed since the 1980s. The evidence linking oestrogen to ACL laxity, cortisol to HRV suppression, and progesterone to thermoregulation has been published, replicated, and ignored for decades.

The question that drove me to start SOMA was simple: if we know all of this, why has nobody built a product that uses it? This is what I found when I started looking for the answer.

Read the full dispatch

Ideas, insights,intelligence.