Training for Our Old Lady Bodies, with Elizabeth Davies @thiswomanlifts.

In this episode, we sat down with Elizabeth Davies (This Woman Lifts) to explore strength training, ageing, body image, and what it really means for women to feel strong. Together we unpack the lifelong pressure women face to stay small, youthful, and aesthetically “acceptable.

The conversation covers everything from postpartum recovery and the fear of “getting bulky” to social media, midlife fitness culture, bone health, and raising the next generation of girls with a healthier relationship to movement. Warm, honest, and evidence-informed, this episode challenges diet culture narratives and reframes fitness around function, capability, and long-term wellbeing.

If you’ve ever struggled with the idea that exercise should make your body smaller, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways

- How a leaky bladder in an exercise class led Elizabeth to train as a PT and focus on functionality, mobility and strength rather than aesthetic goals

- How strength training can become a powerful act of reclaiming space, confidence and physical resilience.

- Why it's so important to encourage women of all ages to integrate progressive resistance training into their routine

- The key benefits of strength training beyond aesthetics.

- Reframing consistency and joyful movement (and what that could look like in YOUR busy life.)

Elizabeth has just published her first book called 'Training for your old lady body', which is a wonderful resource for anyone at any age who is interested in a way of training that moves beyond a 6-week-bikini-body-transformation, and invites us to "understand out bodies, make informed decisions and build a long-term, compassionate relationship with movement"

You can get in touch with Elizabeth via her website or socials (@thiswomanlifts)

We know you will love this conversation - we certainly did!

Transcript

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Christine Chessman: In today's episode, we have the wonderful Elizabeth Davies, aka At This Woman Lifts. Elizabeth is a fitness coach. I'm just gonna read her bio, which is lovely and short and wonderful. She's a fitness coach on a mission to help women of all ages and life stages

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Christine Chessman: train for their old ladybodies. That's what we're training for, isn't it, Ella? It really is. She's an advocate of training strength, muscle, power, dense bones.

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Christine Chessman: I say par. Power in English. Dense bones, aerobic capacity, balance mobility, and pelvic floor to support it all.

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Ela Law: Yes!

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Christine Chessman: She was fantastic, I really enjoyed that conversation, Nola.

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Ela Law: Oh, so did I, so did I. And if you were listening closely, none of what Elizabeth had in her bio was talking about aesthetics, and thinness.

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Ela Law: And I think that's… a big part of our conversation was about, sort of, disentangling aesthetic goals from the actual aim of, you know, staying functional… functioning and mobile and healthy and strong, into…

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Ela Law: your later years. I mean, we're way off that, Christine.

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Christine Chessman: But, of course. But also, kind of, not being scared of it, because there's an awful lot of, you know, lift really heavy rhetoric out there, and it's about, kind of, there is an access point for everybody, and you can find something that works for you, find a coach or a program that works for you where you're at right now. And generally, people are much stronger than they believe themselves to be, so you might be

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Christine Chessman: pleasantly surprised. But it is… we talked about, sort of, access points. What else did we talk about? Joyful movement, we talked about…

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Ela Law: consistency and what that could mean and could look like, role modeling and normalizing lifting heavy shit and resistance training. I mean, it's not normalized in particular for women, I would say. It's quite a normal thing for a young lad to go to the gym and lift some weights.

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Ela Law: But we want to normalize it for women of all ages as well. That's just a thing that we do.

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Christine Chessman: And, you know, please listen to the episode and let us know what you think. We really value your feedback.

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Ela Law: Yeah, please like and subscribe and share, that's our bread and butter, so we need you to do that too.

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Christine Chessman: Thank you!

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Ela Law: other people to listen.

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Christine Chessman: We appreciate you, and enjoy the episode!

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Ela Law: A very, very, very warm welcome to the lovely Elizabeth Davies, also known as This Woman Lift.

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Ela Law: a lot of you, about, I think I just checked, over 160,000 people follow you on Instagram, so they all know you as this woman lived. But it's so great that you spent some time to come on the podcast today, and we're very excited to talk to you about all things, you know, how we can train for our old lady bodies.

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Ela Law: I think most of our listeners are probably, for them, it's relevant. I think we don't have that many male listeners, so I think.

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Christine Chessman: Never know.

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Ela Law: You never know, but I think this will resonate with so many people, so thank you for coming on. We're going to talk a little bit about, you know, your story, as much as you're happy to share with us, but then also about your new book.

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Ela Law: Training for your lady body, and all of the research that you've done for it is amazing! I'm almost through, and I absolutely love it, and I recommend it to everybody. So yeah, it's fantastic.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It means a lot! Thank you so much. Honestly, it means a lot. You kind of spend so long working on something like that, and you're very much on your own, kind of chipping away at it. And then it goes out into the world, and you kind of think, gosh.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: like, what do people think? Is anybody reading it? Have they finished it? Did they like it? Did they hate it? So, I'm not lying when I say anytime I hear someone say that they enjoyed it, it really just makes me feel so happy, so thank you.

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Ela Law: No, it deserves the praise, because it is… what I really love about it is it's so accessibly written, so it's not for someone, who is, like, who… people who've never even thought about lifting weights, or training in a particular way, they can pick it up and it makes sense. And I love that you… you don't just say what you think, you actually research it, and you…

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Ela Law: back it up, and in a way that I can understand if I have no idea about the subject matter. So I really love that about it, so yeah, it's fantastic.

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Christine Chessman: I think there's so much misinformation out there, in terms of certainly the demographic that I work with, in terms of strength training, and I just think we will get into all of that, but shall we start, Ella, with just… Elizabeth, can you tell us a bit about your story, and how you came

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Christine Chessman: to be a trainer, because I know it wasn't kind of a direct route in, and we'd love to.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I'm from the virus.

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Christine Chessman: Detailed as you want, be as detailed as you want.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah, it was far from a direct route in. I previously was a lawyer, and I had had two babies quite close together, sort of under two years between them.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And I was at a circuits class at my gym in London, and during this circuits class, I was about 18 months postpartum with baby number 2, I think. And there was a skipping rope station laid out, and I remember seeing this skipping rope and thinking, hmm, I haven't done that in a while.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And sure enough, when I tried to conquer this skipping rope during the 45-second work interval of whatever it was, I was so clumsy, uncoordinated, really struggling, and I wet myself in this circuits class.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And it was really mortifying, and I know now I'm sort of happy to go on podcasts and open my book talking about this incident. But back then, at the age of, what, 33, I think I was? I was confused, I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I had no idea what it meant, and I felt really alone with this issue. I didn't

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: know who to speak to about it. I didn't know, do you go to your GP and raise this? Do you just kind of

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Carry on and accept this is something that happens to you now as a mum of two.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And it was that, really, that kind of planted this seed of, if I'm feeling this alone and confused, navigating fitness as a woman in her 30s who's had two children and is now navigating some new challenges, maybe other women are also navigating their own challenges, and it tells me that maybe our fitness

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: industry, our fitness environments are not accessible inclusive enough if I'm struggling with this alone. And that's what planted the seed, really, to leave my decade-long law career and become a personal trainer, and here I am now.

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Ela Law: Wow. That is so cool. I mean, that's…

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Ela Law: I love that it's sort of based on a personal experience that you had that highlighted the need for someone who actually understands what's going on, and how did you get into this particular kind of arena, where it's more about longevity, it's about training for the future rather than for aesthetic goals? We're being bombarded with

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Ela Law: how we should look all the time. So, that must have been quite an interesting step for you to kind of say, no, actually, no, that's not what I'm interested in. I want to make sure that things function, that I'm mobile, that other women actually learn how to look after their bodies for the future, rather than for, you know, fitting into a dress of whatever size.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I think that was very much from my lived experience as a woman who grew up in the 80s, when we were really bombarded with a lot of, kind of, aesthetic-focused messaging. And really, fitness was synonymous with looking a particular way. It was, you know? I think the 90s, it was just the

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Accepted that if you're in the gym.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It's really to be changing how your body looks, or burning some calories to earn your next meal. That was kind of…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: the environment that I grew up in. And if I'm honest, I think I carried part of that through with me into my 20s and my 30s. So that incident in the gym where I leaked, I think one of the reasons I was so perplexed by it was because

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: despite having two babies, I had lost, and I'm putting this in speech marks for any of your listeners who are just doing the audio, the baby weight, you know?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I was back in my pre-pregnancy genes. All of these markers that I had understood that society had held out to me to say, these are the signs that you're on track, I ticked them off, you know? People would say, oh, you don't look like you've had two kids.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: So, for me to then experience this incontinence in a gym class, when, in my view, I was ticking all the boxes, was crushing.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And it… that was a key part of it, that I came to realize, actually, what we look on the outside doesn't give us an indication of how someone is feeling, or is performing on the inside. And I took that with me when I went into my new career as a personal trainer.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And I think I had probably been quite sheltered from…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: a lot of the sort of fitness industry messaging. When I became a personal trainer, I joined Instagram, as many people do, as a marketing tool to grow my business, and I remember just the messaging I was seeing, you know, particularly the summer body messaging every year.

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Ela Law: Bye!

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I was quite, kind of…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: shocked by it, and I think that's maybe where my legal background came in, because I just have this sort of inbuilt

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: tendency to scrutinize language, and to, like, question things. So this idea of a summer body was always really interesting to me.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And I guess the kind of message that I'm sharing now to the 160,000 followers or whatever, it's always been quite similar, it's just when I started, I didn't have an audience, and maybe…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: there wasn't so much of an audience for that message. You know, I remember calling out the idea of bum sculpting activewear years ago. Years ago, when I had a tiny account and it probably got, like, 15 likes.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And I remember thinking, gosh, maybe no one else is offended by this kind of messaging, maybe it's just me on a high horse about it. Now, you know, when I call that stuff out, it gets thousands of likes and so much engagement, partly a reflection, I think, of I've got more reach.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Partly, I think, because women, a lot of women, are reaching this point where we're saying, Actually, my…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: fed up of this. Just give us a break, cut us some slack. To go to the gym, we need to compress our tummies and sculpt our bums before we're even, you know, allowed…

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Christine Chessman: several.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: to grace the gym floor with our disgusting pig-like presence. I mean, it's just insidious and, like, persistent. It's… it's everywhere.

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Christine Chessman: And it is this thing, what you were saying, it just resonates quite hard, isn't it? But it is that, you know, oh, you're supposed to look like you've never had children, and now at 50, I'm supposed to look like I'm not actually 50, and I don't have any wrinkles, or that I'm…

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Christine Chessman: you know, oh, I look good 450, or why are we trying to erase the fact that we've had kids? Or, you know, bodies change, and that is part of, oh, there's… oh, that gets me mad.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It's part of living, isn't it? It's part of living, but these are all beauty standards, and…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: beauty standards are forever shifting, and I feel like they just become more and more…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: unobtainable. So on Monday, I saw a news article about how, sculpted arms are the must-have accessory, or the must-have status symbol for 2026.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And just today, which is Wednesday, somebody sent me an article in a different newspaper. Both of these are big mainstream newspapers here in the UK, and this one said, forget power arms, taut abs are the must-have status symbol for women over 40.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And you're just thinking, like, it's…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: it's forever shifting, and we all know, actually, it's the arms and the abs. They want us to have the whole package, don't they? They want us to have this, you know, physique of a 20-year-old fitness model.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And it's everywhere. I don't know, because obviously I'm coming to this now in my 40s, but I feel almost like our generation are having a harder time of it, because I feel… I thought I'd be free from this by this age, do you know?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I thought this was something they were hitting us with in our 20s, but by the time we got to our 40s or 50s, like, we were just sort of free to go off and live our lives. But they seem to be extending it further and further, like, you must be 90 and also look really hot.

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Ela Law: It's ridiculous. But even calling it an accessory, I mean, how objectifying is that? It's absolutely disgusting.

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Christine Chessman: Interesting. But it's also…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It was accessory, I may have dropped it in, but it was a must-have status symbol, you know?

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Ela Law: Same thing. Again, it's an object, isn't it? We're not objects. Our bodies are not objects.

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Christine Chessman: It's not possible for the majority of people, too. That is not our natural… do you know what I mean? We have a set point, which we know from our intuitive eating training, but you have a set point, and everybody has a width, you know, within a range.

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Christine Chessman: That their body is fairly happy at. You know, I, for many years, tried to fit into two sizes below what I actually am comfortable at, and fought my way, fought with my body to get there, to get there, and I was not healthy at any stage. So it's not actually… we're not meant to all look the same. Even if it was possible, it's not…

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Christine Chessman: Do you.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Wait.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Agree, and the reality is, you can have strong, powerful arms, and they are not perhaps matching the magazine aesthetic of that toned arm, you know, where we're seeing

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: leanness and muscle, and actually, you know, those strong, powerful arms are worth pursuing, not because of how you're gonna look in a strappy top, but because it's going to make your life feel so much easier now and as you age. I used to have…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: such little upper body strength. I used to laugh about my lack of upper body strength in my 20s. I had extremely thin arms. The majority of my exercise was focused on my lower body, because I perceived that to be my problem area. Again, the speech marks there. So I would do all these classes, you know, legs, bums, and tums.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: trying, literally, to burn fat off my thighs and buttocks, which I thought was a thing back then, and I did nothing for my upper body. I used to laugh about it, I thought it was funny, and my arms were really, really, really thin. And I can tell you that introducing upper body training into my life in the form of

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Push-ups, and shoulder presses, and pull-ups, and rows, and all of these fantastic upper body exercises.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: has transformed my life, because in our lives, we need to push heavy doors, we need to carry heavy shopping, we need to press a bag overhead into the luggage compartment, we need to carry watering cans around the garden, we need to lift things into bins, we need to lug those bins down the driveway. Having upper body strength is so beneficial

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: But it's almost like they feel like we, as women, can't grasp that. They need to dress it up as, like, you've got to look this way. They can't just kind of sell the benefits to us. It's always got to be with the polish of…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Look how lovely it looks!

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: I did, I did a post, I think you're always evolving and learning, aren't we? But I did a post about, wits, and I said, you know, I used to tell my clients, don't worry about lifting weights, you won't get bulky.

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Christine Chessman: And that in itself was quite stigmatizing. And so, you know, now I say, I kind of ask the question, what is wrong with being

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Christine Chessman: bulky in inverted commas, because the actual definition is just taking up space. And I think this is… for me, it's key to what I've been scared of a lot of my life, is just taking up space in your body, and being… giving yourself permission

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Christine Chessman: You know, and I love… I'm… similarly, I love trailing upper body. It's my happy place, because it is almost countercultural. It is like, I love getting muscles in my upper body, and I have strong shoulders, and I.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I love it.

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Christine Chessman: It is my favourite thing. Ella will get you into it.

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Ela Law: I am, I am…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: You know, on that bulky piece, the other thing that I find really interesting, and I don't know if you've experienced in this… you've experienced this in your work, but if I think about me 10 years ago.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I would have perceived myself and how I look now as bulky. So when someone says to me I'm worried about getting bulky, I'm always really interested to hear them

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: tell me, well, what… what… is bulky to you? What does that look like?

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I think it is another sign of how so many of us are still stuck in this coveting thinness

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: and pursuing smallness at all costs. I remember when I went and did my personal training, qualification, several of the other women who were doing that qualification

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: were lifting. One of them was a bodybuilder, so she was actively pursuing to get as big a muscle as she could across her body.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And I remember looking at these women and thinking, oh my gosh, like, they are bulky. And feeling, and I'm being honest and candid here, I don't want to look like that, because it terrified me, the idea of losing my kind of very slim frame.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: What I can say, though, from my own experience, is as I started to train.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: my body did change, but so did my scope of capability, and I didn't fear the change in my body anymore, because what it was bringing with it was just so much more ease.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: in the way I could conduct my life, lift my children, lift their things, move around the home, engage in my life.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And so, I think it's something that maybe women fear, and they have this idea of what it looks like.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: But actually, as they start to experience how life feels as a slightly more robust, well-muscled individual, it's just actually so much nicer. That's all I can say from my lived experience.

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Ela Law: But also, I would just sort of go to that aesthetic that people are worried about. We're probably thinking professional bodybuilders. We probably have that in mind when we're thinking about bulky. And that's not… I mean, if you just do normal strength training, even if you train regularly, 4 or 5 times a week, you…

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Ela Law: getting to that place is really difficult, as far as I understand, right? You're not gonna go, and you… do you know the people I mean, the bodybuilders that compete in their tiny little bikinis that are, like, mahogany brown? I feel that that's what people have in mind.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah, that is bodybuilding, and they are looking to build as much muscle as possible.

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Ela Law: That's not the…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: as possible. And that is hard. That part takes a lot of training and a very controlled approach, let's call it controlled. Some people might have another word for it.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: controlled approach to nutrition. I think, you know, the rates at which people will respond to resistance training are going to be different, and each individual's perception of what bulky means is going to be different.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I prefer to kind of steer clear of that, and really sort of focus on, if your life could feel better, and your risk of all-cause mortality could, i.e. death from any cause, could be lower by developing some muscle on your body.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Why is that so frightening to you? Because I think if a lot of people sit with that and really probe, why is that so frightening to me?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: it will be because of messages you've absorbed across your lifetime, that bigger equals bad equals failure equals unfeminine equals undesirable, whatever adjectives you come up with. So I always really enjoy that part of coaching and just having a conversation, asking the questions.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And letting people really sit with that and think about it. You know, I just don't want that on my body. And that's okay, but I encourage you to think about why don't you want that on your body?

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Christine Chessman: And it's, it's, you know, I think it's also exposure, isn't it, a little bit, from the images that we've been exposed to growing up, and for decades. It's raining really heavily here. It's like hailstones in Brighton.

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Christine Chessman: Just in case you hear it in the background, so I… now, I actually… what I find attractive in a woman, let's say, is different now, I find muscle really appealing.

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Christine Chessman: So, because my feed is purely non-diet fitness professionals who do not train for aesthetics, but train for strength, and being, as your lovely t-shirt says, strong as buck. That is… that is kind of.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: keys to me now, because it's… they did a study, about, sort of, kids, what, what was it, the color of hair, that if they just saw images with one color of hair, they thought that was… they would like that color of hair rather than their own color of hair.

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Christine Chessman: But if they were projected lots and lots of images of their own color of hair, they would want that. And it is about that…

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Christine Chessman: Creating a fee.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: old tribal thing, isn't it? We want to fit in with the tribe, so if you're

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: content of very, very thin, emaciated bodies, you're going to feel like, I need that in order to be accepted by the tribe.

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Ela Law: That's it, we normalize that, don't we?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: more diversity, as well as being affirming that there is diversity in bodies, and that's completely normal and to be celebrated, it just makes you feel a little bit more comfortable in fitting in, I guess?

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Ela Law: Yeah, definitely.

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Christine Chessman: Absolutely, definitely. But I do agree with you, if…

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Christine Chessman: So I don't… if somebody comes to me and they say they want to lose weight, or they want to look a certain way, they want to be toned, which is what I hear an awful lot in inverted commas, I kind of say, you know, that's… I don't train for aesthetics.

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Christine Chessman: But let's just start building strength and see how you feel. Because, as you say, the way you feel changes when you start lifting weights, as you know, Ella. You start feeling just stronger in your body, and I feel more confident in my body since I started

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Christine Chessman: lifting weights than previously, and as you see yourself differently, because… indifferent.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I think it's also, you know, it's… for me, it has definitely nurtured a sense of appreciation for my body, and a sense of respect for it, and…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: a need to be caring towards my body, because if I want to see my deadlift load increasing, I know that I need to look after myself, I know that I need to recover, I know that I need to fuel, I know that I need to go into the gym on training day.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: having looked after myself. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to do in the gym what I really want to be able to do in the gym. So for me, it feels almost like the opposite of a vicious cycle, a virtuous cycle, where you're kind of…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: being more caring towards yourself, and I think that is really, really powerful.

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Ela Law: Absolutely. I've got a question that's actually… I think it's two questions in one. I'm trying to make this make sense. So, Christine and I were talking about access points for different age groups and for different populations.

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Ela Law: And we are both of the same age, and for us, this is actually

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Ela Law: it's quite near that we will be older, and that our bodies will, unless we do something about it, will start to decline. For someone who's in their early 20s, that doesn't seem to be… that's so far away, that's abstract.

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Ela Law: And their access point might be slightly different to ours, where we are… we feel the urgency, we need to do something now, because we spend, as you said earlier, our youth just bumming about, trying to be as thin as possible, and, you know, just…

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Ela Law: looking after the aesthetic side of things. Would you say that is still an access point? And then, as Christine said.

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Ela Law: people will then start to feel how it feels to be stronger, would that be a good access point? Or would you… and I feel…

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Ela Law: I feel there needs to be two messages, but I'd like to hear your view on it. I feel like young people today need to know what we didn't know when we were growing up, because I think we've got a lot more research now, about the benefits of, resistance training, and what it can do, and sort of, as you put in your book, building up that strong bone structure and the muscles, so that we start with a really full

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Ela Law: Bucket of it, and…

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Ela Law: if we decline a little bit, it's not as bad then. But I never, ever, ever heard that when I was growing up. That was not even a thing.

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Ela Law: So, yeah, what's your take on that? The access points and also the…

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Ela Law: You know, how can we make it something that is also important, other than the aesthetics, for younger people?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I didn't hear that either.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And so now, I have a 13-year-old daughter, and I feel quite fiercely that part of my role as her mother is for her to see me strength training, to see me lifting weights, and for me to mirror that this isn't about trying to shrink myself, this is about me trying to build a strong, resilient

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: capable body that will serve me well into old age. So, you know, I went and wrote a book, so that's quite a good way of drilling home that story.

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Ela Law: That's one way of doing it.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: quite extreme, quite extreme lengths to try and give my daughter a different experience than the one I had. But no, seriously, I…

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Ela Law: you, child!

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Seriously, though, I think this is exactly the time that we need to get the message into girls when they are young women, you know, when they are…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: on the cusp of entering adulthood, and I feel that for a few reasons. There's the kind of, as you said, this idea of building your pot so that you've then got plenty. We know that

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Puberty is a really key time for bone building, so that's when we really want our children to be active, to be loading their bones, because we reach peak bone mass.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: At around the age of 30, and then as we get older, we can start to come into our overdraft, where we are using more bone than we're making. And particularly around menopause, we see more rapid bone loss.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: So we want to bag as many of those kind of adaptations

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: as early as possible. I think there's also the behaviour piece. If this is seen as something normal, like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, looking on your body, then the sooner you start practicing those behaviors.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: the…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: more settled they become, you know, and that is going to serve you better across your lifespan. If you're then going to go through challenges, as we all do, you know, if you've got that steady foundation, and this is just something that you do, it's much easier to keep that going in some shape or form when the challenges hit, or to come back to it, you know, because it is so…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: well established.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I also… I also think… In terms of… strength training.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: You know, a lot of strength training, it's about…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: mastering skills, essentially. I don't think we talk about it in those terms enough, probably because we're so hung up on this idea of toning and sculpting. But if you think about, kind of, the… any of the key movements in strength training, whether that's a squat.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: or a deadlift, or a bench press, or some form of row, or a pull-up. These are skills.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And the more practice we can accumulate.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: the better at them we become. If I think about me when I was first starting out, you know, this stuff was all new to me. They were new movements, therefore my movement quality was a little bit shakier, a little bit wobblier, a little bit more variable from one set to the next, or one rep to the next.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And that's okay, because I was a beginner, but I was coming to it as a beginner in my 30s. If you come to this as a beginner earlier in life.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And you have all that practice.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I suspect that then makes it a lot easier for you when you are coming back after getting thrown off. So, for example, having a baby is a key one, where you will most probably have to have at least a period where you're not regularly getting in the gym and training.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: But because it's so well practiced, when you do come back to it.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: you're not reinventing the wheel, I think.

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Christine Chessman: weekly.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Where I'm seeing a challenge at the moment is a lot of women spend their 20s and 30s exclusively doing cardio.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Then…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: menopause symptoms hit, and everybody's saying, you need to lift weights, you need to lift weights, you need to lift weights. Trying to learn strength movements when you're sleep-deprived, existing in brain fog, and feeling immense rage, maybe having lack of energy.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It's gonna be much harder.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: What if we learned all of that much earlier in our lives, you know? It would just be…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: a lot easier, I think.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: okay, I know I need to do my strength training, and I know how to auto-regulate to adjust my strength training session, as in, I need to make it a bit easier today, because I've been doing this for decades at this point.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: You know? I think there are so many reasons why getting girls to embrace it sooner

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: is important. Unfortunately, when I was growing up, sports lessons were very much team sports, and if you weren't one of the, kind of, gifted kids at something like netball or hockey.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: certainly what I took away from this is physical activity is not for me. I know at my daughter's school, they do do the team sports, but in PE, they have also shown them circuits classes on YouTube.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: They have encouraged other ways of moving your body, and that, for me, is really refreshing. I don't know if that's reflected across the country, but my daughter will quite often take herself into my gym, and she'll do a circuits class, and she's very, you know, flaky when I ask her to tell me, oh, what did you do? Because she doesn't like… she doesn't like to tell me things. Of course not.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: You know, from what… from the impression I get, she is doing, body weight resistance training movements.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah, I'm…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It's fantastic!

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Ela Law: It's great.

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Christine Chessman: And our… the options that were offered at our school were women's rugby, and cricket, and all kinds of things, which…

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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Christine Chessman: you know, compared to what, when I was at school, we had hockey, that was it. Hockey or hockey, and sometimes netball, and that was it.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: I have a number of people… I do a boot camp, which I call No Burpee Boot Camp, twice a week, and it's… everybody is… there's so many people that are traumatized by their PE experience.

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Christine Chessman: And I remember bringing a ball to one session, and a few people had to sit out, because they said, I'm sorry, it just brings back…

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Christine Chessman: These memories from being at school where they were ridiculed or told they weren't good at sports, or they didn't have the… you know, there's so many reasons that women are put off sports at a young age, or put off physical activity.

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Christine Chessman: And it is, I think, exactly as you're saying, if we can change the message as early as possible, that can definitely be good, can't it?

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Ela Law: Yeah, and also, I'm just thinking along those lines, is that you see a lot of, and this is very stereotyping, but you see a lot of young lads in gyms lifting weights. I very rarely see young girls, teenage girls, doing the same. In my gym, it's a little bit, I mean, the sort of mid-20s.

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Ela Law: or they look like they're that sort of age. There's more of that now, which is great, but I feel like that gives people who don't like those team sports, who feel PE is traumatizing them, who don't want to play netball, or hockey, or lacrosse, or whatever,

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Ela Law: Lifting weights and strength training might be something that actually gets them into movement, because it is just so different, and it's empowering, and it's…

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Ela Law: You know, it's making them strong, metaphorically as well as physically, so I'm wondering whether that is something that's a completely different access point for them to actually get into movement full stop.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah, I think it's very valuable. Actually, my daughter, she…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: She said something to me several months ago, like, Mummy, push-ups are so hard, how do you do a push-up? And of course, I wanted to show her, well, this is how we can make it easier, and this… she was not interested in having a drawn-out conversation with me, nor was she interested in me doing a personal training session with her. One day, she'll kick herself that she had this resource growing up, and she didn't use it, but let's let her discover that in her own time.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Anyway, I said to her, you know, it's a skill, and your body is trying to figure out what it needs to do and get stronger, so all you need to keep doing is being consistent with it, finding a way that you can do it, practice, practice, practice. Anyway, she didn't say anything further about it, and then she came through to the house from the gym, the gym is in the garage.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And said to me, Mummy, I can do push-ups now.

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Ela Law: Oh, wow.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I just thought, this is incredible, because I think experiencing that ability of your body to adapt is magic, you know?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: because it teaches you that with repetition, with persistence, with consistency, you can expand. You know, that is something that when I first experienced it in my 30s.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: had so many carryovers to other areas of my life. I'm so happy that she experienced that at the age of 13. Just because you can't do it now, doesn't mean you're never going to be able to do it.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: to feel your body progress and adapt is just magic.

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Christine Chessman: Can I, can I touch on that point of, agree with everything you said there, Elizabeth, but consistency is a problematic word for me.

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Christine Chessman: I have ADHD, I'm not sure if you noticed.

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Christine Chessman: Bing! So, and I sort of struggled to be consistent at the best of times. Now, I'm fairly… I move a lot because it regulates me. It's very regulating for my crazy brain that just pops everywhere.

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Christine Chessman: But for my clients, I work with a number of neurodiverse, clients.

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Christine Chessman: And also for the… and also people in midlife, who have got, perhaps, aging parents, teenage kids, really going through really difficult times, who are simply not able to be consistent. And I did… I heard, you interviewed on another podcast, was it with… I'm not sure… what was it? Motherkind, yes.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Oh, yeah, yeah.

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Christine Chessman: We were talking about exactly this, and I just loved what you said, because it's exactly what I would say to clients, that you've got to meet yourself where you're at.

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Christine Chessman: If once a week is all that you can do at the minute, that is really valuable, and it is about that bank account, and, you know, and, you know, I have clients that come to me once a week for a small group kettlebell session. That's it. They don't do any other strength training, and I've seen the progress.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: That's lovely!

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Christine Chessman: Seen the progress, wink on wink.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: supports it. Research supports it. I find it, you know, at once perplexing and also depressing, that I genuinely get messages from people saying, if I can only do it once a week, is it worth it? This is a no-brainer.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: one time a week is better than zero times a week. Of course it is better, and we know that you can absolutely build muscle and strength with once a week training. You absolutely can. So I really do… when I say consistency, I think a lot of people…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: kind of assimilate consistency with perfection, and they're envisioning consistency is every day for 45 minutes, and never missing a session. That's not how I regard consistency. For me, consistency is recognizing you're going to get thrown off, and you come back when you can. Part of that is you need to keep your plan realistic.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I think when a lot of people decide, okay, I want to do this.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Because they are coming to this at a time when they're inspired and motivated.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: as humans do, they tend to overreach. Yeah. So they're like, yeah, I'm gonna do 5 times a week. And maybe they manage that for the first week, maybe they manage that for the second week, maybe even the third week. By week four, they get chucked a curveball, their kid is sick, they're sick, work is busier, they're just not feeling it, and so they don't manage it. And then they say, well, I've blown it now.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Oh, you haven't blown it now. What you need to do is say, was 5 times a week realistic? I want people to set a plan that they feel confident they could stick to, even in a hard week. And I want them to score it out of 10. And if they are not at least 8 out of 10 confident that they could

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Stick to the plan they have set.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: then we shrink that plan. If they're saying, I'm going to walk for an hour every day, and I say, how confident are you that you can do that? 3 out of 10? Okay, how can we bring that up?

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Christine Chessman: You know…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Now get to the point, okay, I feel 8 out of 10 confident that I can walk for 15 minutes after lunch 3 times a week. Great! We start there, because then you've got some wriggle room, you've got some flexibility, but it is nice to feel like you're winning. It is never nice to feel like you have failed at your plan. So shrink the change, baby steps, and remember.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: consistency… Involves getting thrown off.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: published.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: It's never… if you're committing to do this for the rest of your life.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Then, there are gonna be weeks or months that look different, because life.

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Christine Chessman: Whitening.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: all sorts of complications and challenges. You know, it can tip into, then you're sort of… actually, the challenges have died down, and now you're just digging your heels in. Well then, you need to give yourself a little nudge, and remember why it is that you're doing this, and just…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Set your plan, okay, tomorrow, after breakfast, I'm gonna do 10 minutes. Once you're back in it, it feels so less overwhelming, but when you're kind of standing, you know, I kind of imagine, you know, in a film, it's kind of someone's on one side of the cliff, and they've got to do a massive leap over to the other side, and it feels like there's this huge void. It feels so big and scary, but if you just

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: start, you're like, oh, what was I worried about? It was fine, and you might even find you're looking forward to the next session.

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Christine Chessman: And this is… we talk about this a lot, Ella. We talk about joyful movement, and it is something which I have an up-and-down relationship with, because I am the joyful movement coordinator for my good friend, Dr. Jan Huber, who's a menopause nutritionist, but I… and I say this to her, I don't really believe in joyful movement.

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Christine Chessman: I think that maybe…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: pussy. Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: I'm like, there's things that I love, you know, snatching a kettlebell and doing, but to do that, I need to take care of my joints, and I need to sort of… it's, you know, do the things that you enjoy, 100%, but to do those things, you kind of got to do that base…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: through the groundwork.

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Christine Chessman: It's funny.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Joyful movement. I definitely get it, and I think as an antidote to what we saw in the 90s, which was hours on a StairMaster because you feel like you don't deserve to eat unless you've burnt 600 calories. Yeah, joyful movement is a beautiful antidote, but we don't have, you know, joyful dental care. We just kind of accept that

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah, a lot of good.

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Ela Law: to the dentist.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Like, like, you don't need to baby us.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: we accept that there are certain things we have to do. I also think where joyful movement can maybe lose some people… Listen, I really love strength training. My business is called This Woman Lifts. I love it.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Do I love every rep and every set? Do I skip into the gym every time? Like, I'm gonna go and train after I finish with you. It's a bleak, rainy, supposedly spring day. I probably would much rather, like, just sit and doom scroll for a while. I'm not feeling joyful about it, but I see it as a valuable thing to do for myself.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Today, it was my plan to do it. I didn't get to it earlier in the day, I've got a window before school pickup, and I'm gonna go and do it. Am I joyful? No. Will I feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment when it's done?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Absolutely, I will.

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Ela Law: Definitely. And also, I think you can see the joyful movement, as in, you are, working towards the joy of being able to do things

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Ela Law: I'm not talking about the exercise itself, but the joy of being able to go on a long hike, walking up the stairs without getting a puff, throwing your child in the air, and you know, whatever, whatever you want to do, that's where the joy can come in as well, right?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Not just when you're…

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Ela Law: moving.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yes, that's a beautiful way of looking at it, yeah.

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Ela Law: Yeah, yeah. Elizabeth, I've got a question about the…

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Ela Law: the benefits. So, in your book, you touch on lots of different, aspects, muscle, bone, heart health, all of those things. Can you talk a little bit about the research you've done on that, and, and how strength training can benefit all those different areas?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Yeah, so…

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Ela Law: They're basically reading the whole book to us.

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Christine Chessman: And…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: In a whole book, yeah. So we know that we lose muscle mass with age unless we're proactive in

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: in resisting that, yeah? So, unless we're doing something to mitigate it, that is the process we will see with aging. Same with bone.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And we know that we lose strength.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Quicker, at a quicker rate than we lose muscle.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And we know that we lose power at a quicker rate than we lose strength, okay? Power is how quickly we can exert force. Force is our ability… strength is our ability to exert force against an external resistance. So when you push a door open.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: That's strength. You're exerting force against that door.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: If you do that really fast, that's power. It's how quickly you can exert your strength.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: So, yeah, I guess…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: The picture, then, is pretty gloomy, isn't it? If you are thinking, right, from kind of my 30s, I am losing, losing, losing, losing, losing. And I think there's probably…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: an area where we're not really noticing the impact of that. We can kind of get away with it, and then…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: if we're not proactive, I think it becomes more and more apparent. You know, if you think about older relatives you might know, and that sort of struggle to get out of a chair.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: you know, this is loss of muscle, this is loss of strength, this is loss of power, and if they've not been proactive, there's going to be some loss of bone going on there, but that's the thing about bone, you don't see it, you don't know it's happening until there's a fracture.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: what strength training does, or really resistance training? So, resistance training, we just train our muscles against some kind of resistance.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: So we practice, we practice using those muscles, you know. The idea of resistance training, I guess it's not very natural, is it, going into a gym and lifting weights, or using your body weight, but…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Undoubtedly, it's a really smart, neat, convenient, evidence-based way to ensure that you are moving your body through the main movement patterns, so squat pattern, hinge pattern, push patterns, and pull patterns, and that you are targeting all the main muscle groups.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: it's a really convenient way of doing that, and that's why I'm an advocate for it, because you can…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: go into the gym, and you can do a round of squats that's training that squat pattern, and it's training that kind of knee flexion. You can do a round of a hip-dominant exercise, even for a bigger than something like a glute bridge that is just practicing that movement that otherwise you're not getting in day-to-day life.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And you can train a push movement, whether that's pushing up, like with a shoulder press, or pushing horizontally, like a push-up. And you can train a pull, you know, we really don't get much of that in modern life.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: movement, a lot of activities are quite push-dominant. So, you know, that's where strength training is really good, because with a piece of kit like a suspension trainer or some weights, you can do that rowing movement that is going to really help to keep your upper back nice and strong. We want to do this.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: from a mobility perspective, because it gives our body some of what it's not already getting in day-to-day life, which has become very sedentary, very forward-rounded. That's kind of how life has come for many of us, so it gives us a little bit of…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: you know, mobility outside of that. It's gonna help us to maintain or build muscle, which I think is a key objective for any woman, you know, building or maintaining, at very least, the muscle you have.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: is key. It's gonna help us to build or maintain strength, and it's gonna help us to build or maintain bone. So…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: you know, it's… some people will say, oh, but it just… it's so boring. Yeah, brushing your teeth is boring, making your bed is boring, sorting out pairs of socks from the laundry is boring. We do boring stuff because boring stuff is necessary. Do not underestimate the buzz that comes

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: From noticing that you're getting better at something, or noticing that an activity of day-to-day life suddenly feels easier. I get so many messages from my clients saying things like, I was in the garden at the weekend.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And at the 20th

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: 25kg bags of compost are so easy to move around this year. Yes, because we want to build these strong, capable bodies to then support us outside the gym. It just so happens that using free weights, machines, resistance bands, your body weight with these resistance training moves is a really convenient way to train for all of that.

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Ela Law: Yeah, 100%.

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Christine Chessman: I, I love that, and we're gonna have to wrap up, Ella, because we're so rubbish at wrapping up.

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Ela Law: Oh.

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Christine Chessman: One thing I would say is that clients generally, when they come to me, are a lot stronger than they realize, and it would be, like, even little things like farmer's carries, where you're just carrying maybe a kettlebell in each arm. Initially, they'll be like, oh, I couldn't lift a 4. Oh, no. And I'm like, what about your shopping? Do you carry your shopping home? And do you… and then they realize, oh, I actually… I am quite strong. So it's always

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Christine Chessman: really interesting.

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Christine Chessman: It's a bit of a fear, and it's a bit of something to just get round in the first few sessions, if you're kind of… if you can work with a trainer. It's kind of realizing what you're comfortable with, what your starting point is, and…

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Christine Chessman: It's, you know, it's… it's just, yeah.

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Ela Law: I wonder whether women sort of stereotypically underestimate how much they can carry, and men overestimate, because that's how the narrative goes with boys and girls, isn't it? You're… you're weak, and…

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Ela Law: tiny, and you're a strong boy. I mean, that's the narrative that is being used, so I wonder whether there is… I'd like to do a study on that, actually.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I think that would be an excellent study. Yeah, and that's why, you know, I think that's why this kind of progressive resistance training, where you stick with the same exercises, and then over time, you just add a little bit more challenge. For the people who are feeling apprehensive, you know, you can say to them, well, last week, you managed that weight for 15 reps, and you told me, actually.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: felt we could have done more. So rather than adding more reps, why don't we do.

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Christine Chessman: Sass.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: up to the next dumbbell, and just see how it feels. And if you say it doesn't feel good, it feels too hard, that's absolutely fine, but it's almost like, you know, just little by little by little by little, we are building them up, building their strength, but building their confidence, building their self-efficacy.

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Christine Chessman: Yes, and it is… it is those little times… honestly, and I have a client set of now had for about 8 weeks, and I said to them, do you remember the weight you were terrified of in week 1, that you're now just lifting with ease? And it is… it makes you feel good. I mean, honestly, they really are feeling quite proud of themselves, and they leave, like… and there's something to be said for that, so we're just trying to sell strength training to you all.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: But we all…

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: You know what? When you look at all the shit that people are trying to sell to women… True.

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Ela Law: It'd be worse, right?

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: health.

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Christine Chessman: So, Elizabeth, if I wanted to work with you, where would I find out more about working with you, and…

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Christine Chessman: Yes.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: find out more on my website, www.thiswomanlifts.com. I have online programs for beginners through to more experienced lifters, and of course my book, Training for Your Old Lady Body, is available now from all retailers.

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Christine Chessman: Nice, Ella! Nice.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: I was gonna say all mine read by alone?

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Ela Law: Elizabeth.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Oh, you did? It was so nice that you came to my event.

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Ela Law: Brilliant! It was so good, and I'm very pleased that there were so many people there. It was, yeah.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: Really good, wasn't it?

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Ela Law: Really good.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And, I've had some lovely messages from some of the participants at that thing, saying that they've, you know, in their own way, they've started doing a little bit more. And that's it. You know, you don't have to completely overhaul your life. Just one little thing that you can add in that you feel 8 out of 10 confident that you can do with whatever pattern of consistency you're saying you want to go for.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: And it's amazing how one little change can lead to one more little change, and before you know it, you have implemented a lot of really positive behaviors into your life.

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Ela Law: Mmm.

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Christine Chessman: Absolutely love it, and we will put everything in the show notes, and Elizabeth, it has been a joy. Thank you so much for taking the time today to come and chat.

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Elizabeth @thiswomanlifts: for having me, I loved it!

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Ela Law: Good! Glad to have you.

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Christine Chessman: Thank you. And we'll be back next week! Bye!