Things I Wish More Women Over 40 Knew About Exercise

This is what I wish more women over 40 knew about exercise and that it starts when women are teenagers. So, I’ll start there.

I’ve worked with women for 40 years in private sessions, partner sessions, group sessions, with both husbands and wives, and with 17-year-old volleyball players and 14-year-old golfers, with pregnant women, those who recently had breast implants and those who wanted to lose weight and were already a size two and those who needed to and were a size 20. I’ve done thousands of fitness tests and consultations and trained trainers and fitness instructors to do the same.

I have seen a big slice of what women, including fitness instructors and trainers, think about themselves, their bodies and exercise. I’ve seen exercise be a way to burn off cookies and earn dinner or not. I’ve seen exercise be addictive and despised.

What I wish more girls over 10 knew about exercise is that the women to aspire to be like were more like those represented at the Paris Olympics than the runways in New York. That fast and strong and fit and unapologetic about winning or wanting to is not something that stays with their younger years.

Things I Wish More Women Over 20 Knew About Exercise

• The confidence you want comes easier strong vs skinny.
• The window for most easily laying down bone density is still open: use it
• The secret to looking and feeling good and healthier babies someday is in the weight room.
• Get a smart scale and understand the value of knowing skeletal muscle, body fat percent together with weight.
• A 20-something woman who can do a pull up is more likely to be a 50-something woman who is aging like a badass.

Things I Wish More Women Over 30 Knew About Exercise

• Strength will help balance your hormones if you change your workouts with your monthly cycle
• Get a baseline bone density scan at least and a hormone level.
• Right now, you’re making your next 60 years better or worse
• Oh, and there is still time to get that pull up that your menopause self will thank you for.

Things I Wish More Women Over 40 Knew About Exercise

• There’s a chance of losing 27% of your muscle from early to late stages of perimenopause but isn’t inevitable if you’re resistance training and maintaining protein.
• Measure your success by your handgrip, your skeletal muscle mass, body composition and waist measurement, not simply by the scale.
• Walking and weight training together may be two of the most powerful components for supporting your hormone balance (and avoiding muscle loss, fat and specifically belly fat gains).

Things I Wish More Women Over 50 Knew About Exercise

• Strength and muscle losses can accelerate significantly during the menopause transition. That’s the last two years of perimenopause and first two post menopause. Prioritize strength training and recovery time and habits to help it.
• Bone density losses also accelerate from between 1-3% prior to 3-5 % during the 2-4 years that are the MT.

Things I Wish More Women Over 60 Knew About Exercise

• Aging causes an accelerated loss of muscle and strength at 60 and a slowing of metabolism, if you don’t offset it with strength training (and protein).
• You don’t need to reduce intensity; you need to increase it.
• You may need more recovery time (between exercises, between sets, between high intensity life and workouts, and between workouts.
• If you haven’t added power, agility, dynamic balance, mobility training regularly to an existing strength training program, now is the time to start.
• You lose fast twitch muscle twice as fast with age as you do slow. So only moving slow in exercise is actually accelerating aging and increasing risk for falls compared to using fast twitch regularly.
• Resistance training is indeed everything that resists gravity but using external loads that require few repetitions with heavier weights to reach or get close to muscular fatigue is still most tied to bone density, metabolism, and strength.
• Overdoing exercise frequency will cause couch compensation that causes you to lose a critically important “total energy expenditure.”
• Underdoing exercise frequency or intensity costs you the boost in strength and metabolism and potentially bone density and total energy expenditure that you want for body composition, and reduction of health risks.
• You’re not too old for bHRT if you want to consider it. (Click here to know more about bHRT)

Falls over 60 can be devastating. But most often they occur in women who don’t lift weights, don’t train power, agility/reaction skills. (50% of women over 60 who fall don’t walk again)

You will tolerate volume better than your perimenopause self. So adding another HIIT day or another set of resistance exercise could be very beneficial and you’ll tolerate it.

Things I wish more women over 70 knew about exercise

• It’s not just muscle and bone or balance and avoiding falls, you also help your brain fire better and improve sleep.
• Just because you “don’t need to lose weight” doesn’t mean you don’t need to exercise.
• Blood sugar levels, mood, memory, will also improve.
• Your ability to stay in your home and drive a car and remain as independent as you like are directly related to your muscle strength.

Things I wish more women over 80 knew about exercise

• There’s still time. The research has been clear for more than 40 years, that even 90-somethings beginning to strength train, gain strength and benefit.
• You can start now even if you’ve never done it before.
• Risk of injury is still greater in those who don’t strength train compared to those who do.
• If women over 40 knew about exercise what I do, they’d know that until very recently there has been very little research done featuring them as subjects. They’d know it’s not great skincare, or staying out of the sun, or great sleep is the secret to looking and feeling younger and carrying confidence into every decade.

Other Episodes You Might Like:

• What They Don’t Teach Women About Strength Training and should: https://www.flippingfifty.com/teach-women-about-strength-training/

21 Reasons Weight Training Should Be Mandatory Exercise After 50: https://www.flippingfifty.com/weight-training-should-be-mandatory/

20 Reasons Strength Training Should Be Mandatory for Everyone Over 29: https://www.flippingfifty.com/strength-training/

Resources:

• Stronger: https://www.flippingfifty.com/getstronger