#58: How Often to Change Your Weight Training Program
[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 + fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host, and I am a certified menopause fitness coach,
which means that I help women who are in perimenopause and beyond to get their fitness dialed in to really be in tune with their new bodies because menopause does quite a number on us.
And in today's episode, we are going to be talking about how often you need to be changing up your weight training program. And this is actually sparked because I'm in quite a few of these Facebook fitness groups. And in one of them, somebody asked the question, how often should I be swapping up my training?
And oh my God, you know, and the opinions are like from every week to You know, every six months or whatever. So there is such a wide [00:01:00] variety of opinions. So I wanted to express my opinion to you and also to explain why I feel the way I do about this subject.
All right. But before we dive into this, let me just say that my perspective here is that I am helping women who are in midlife and beyond to get their bodies back in shape. So get back into that toned physique that they're used to having before menopause happened. And also helping you to get your body strong so that it is functional.
So you can enjoy the rest of your life in it, right? We've only got this one vessel and we need to take good care of it. And what has become clearer and clearer to me as I've been coaching more and more women is that if we're not doing something, then our bodies really are getting significantly [00:02:00] weaker already in our forties.
And if we're Weak in our forties, then you can just imagine what we're going to be like in our fifties and sixties and eighties, and none of us wants to live a life of being dependent on other people for our day to day. So it is really critical that we take care of our bodies and start already now.
And at the same time, I think I am like a lot of you in that my life is crazy busy, right? I can fit in my training sessions, but it is because I am super organized and calendared in.
And at the same time, I really understand the struggles that. Many of you are facing as far as juggling, you know, work, family, your relationships, your teenagers, and trying to fit in time for yourself. [00:03:00] And, uh, and it just is such a puzzle. Prioritizing weight training is very important, but You know, even I am not somebody who wants to spend more time in the weight room than I have to.
So I am constantly keeping up with the research and latest information to really optimize my sessions so they can be as short as possible and still get bang for your buck. Right. Cause I do want a firm. toned, functional body to take me into the next decades. Anyway, , with that said, let's talk about when you need to be changing up your exercises.
Now let's remember the goal here. And that is to stimulate our muscles. So that they become stronger and even grow, right? Because [00:04:00] when they're stronger, you are more functional. And also when you're doing that stimulating you at the same time, strengthen your tendons and your ligaments and your joints and your bones, right?
So that's important. And at the same time, you are building muscle. And if you're after that kind of toned athletic look, what you need is muscles. And the way that you are going to get muscles for the tone, for the strength, for the longevity, for the health benefits is to be applying progressive overload. What that means is that as your body gets stronger, You are going to need to increase your stimulus because as you're stronger, that old stimulus is not going to be stimulating anymore.
It's going to be easy. Right. It's like as if you were learning, you [00:05:00] know, math, right? And you go to first grade and you learn how to do first grade math. Well, if you continue to just do first grade math, that's not stimulating. That's not stimulating your brain. You need to do a little bit harder math. And the same way that once your muscles reach a certain level of being strong, you need to give them something more to do.
And the progressive overload doesn't depend on like switching exercises. So that's one thing to keep in mind.
. So the first thing to understand is that when you first start weight training, which I know is The situation for a lot of the women listening to this podcast, or if you're thinking about starting weight training is that in the very beginning, your body is learning the exercises, like how to actually do the movements.
And the first weeks, two, three, could be even four weeks, [00:06:00] depending on the complexity of the exercise and how familiar it is. You know, those movement patterns are to you. It is basically like neurological learning. You are able to lift more weight just because you're able to do that movement a little bit better.
So you're not actually at a point where your muscles are significantly being challenged like that. Going up in weight is not so much about your muscles being challenged. It's more about your body, just getting it together and knowing how to do the thing. And that's actually the case, even if you've been training for a longer period of time, like, like for me, I've been doing this over two years now.
And when I come back to an exercise that I haven't done for a while, it takes me a moment to, Oh yeah. Okay. So this is how this exercise goes. And I start to. You know, I start with a reasonable weight. First of all, like I would always, when you go to a new exercise or you come back [00:07:00] to an exercise that you haven't done for a while, start with a reasonable weight.
You're not going to be, you know, going all out hell bent for leather in your first training sessions. You want to, Give your body kind of a chance to adapt back into that exercise. And I think in perimenopause and menopause, this is particularly important because, you know, we're not 20 anymore. Our, our ligaments and our tendons, they're not necessarily so strong anymore.
So if we're doing, uh, an exercise that we haven't done in a while, Or, you know, new to weight training, then we need to let them also catch up, not just the muscles, but the tendons and the ligaments so that we don't start to get soreness in there
so this learning phase may take two, three, four weeks. Right. Till your body is really feeling comfortable with that movement and you're able to get to a weight where you're really [00:08:00] able to push yourself, you know, going close to failure or to failure, which I've talked about in previous episodes.
So if you think about, um, you know, when should you be switching your program, it's only after you've gone through this kind of learning phase and you've gotten to the phase where you're able to push your body, that you're actually able to start applying the progressive overload and pushing your muscles.
And that's when the development is happening, right? At that phase. In the beginning, when you're learning, a little bit will happen, but it's really once you get going.
So, I mean, I guess I could call this the learning part is kind of your ramping up on that particular exercise, and then you're able to actually effectively train it. So if your ramp up time takes you two, three, four weeks, and then you start effectively doing the exercise, then imagine if you're swapping exercises [00:09:00] after four weeks.
Like you've just barely gotten ramped up and you really haven't had any time to train that exercise and to get the benefits of that exercise and to, you know, use that exercise effectively. So if after a month you're like changing exercises, you're back to the ramp up phase on that muscle. And so when are you actually going to be working that muscle?
Right. So for that reason, I believe in having longer periods before you start swapping out exercises. In fact, for my beginner, uh, weight training students, I, you know, have 10 weeks of them doing the same thing because , it's. You know, you're learning this whole new language, this whole new sport of weight training.
And then, you know, you're doing this ramp up and the ramp up [00:10:00] does take longer in the beginning because you're just, I mean, you're figuring it out. And then you get to the point where, ah, okay, now I, now I kind of get this exercise and then you're able to start work in that exercise. And that's when it starts to be kind of.
fun because you see that your body is like doing something there and then you see the weights going up. So you see that you're getting stronger and, and, you know, so that's very rewarding. So even though it may sound like, Oh my God, doing the same thing for 10, 12 weeks, like, huh? It doesn't feel like that because you have this ramp up period.
And actually, technically you could continue to do those same exercises for significantly longer because as long as you are able to progress in that exercise, you are stimulating your muscles to grow. So as long as you can [00:11:00] increase your weights. Increase your reps or, or, you know, improve your form in some cases where you get really strict about like, I am not wiggling my body at all while I do these bicep curls.
So it's absolutely just my up biceps that are doing the work. So there are ways to progressively overload for a very long time. So this myth that you need to be swapping up your exercises frequently in order to actually work your muscles is just that it's a myth.
And the fact that you're not necessarily feeling sore after your workouts is absolutely no indication that you are not doing the right things. Now. . I would say if you're never, ever, ever sore, then you could look at, you know, whether your intensity is high enough when you're doing the exercises, but it's also [00:12:00] very individual.
The soreness thing, I very rarely get sore unless I've just switched exercises. And so that's my body's way of reacting to having a slightly different way of training that muscle. But my normal training sessions. When I'm, when I've been doing the exercises for a while, I mean, I push myself really, really hard and I feel my muscles are.
You know, they're, they're, they're exhausted after the session, they're cooked and, and yet I don't, you know, necessarily see much soreness, I would probably see much more soreness if I went jogging, you know, the next day, because I don't run that often, right? So it's, it's the, changes that cause the soreness, not necessarily that it's effective.
In fact, studies have shown that soreness is not really linked to effective, at least not muscle growth. It's more about [00:13:00] switching, you know, exercises.
So kind of to summarize that point, that if you're swapping out your exercise every month, You're spending a lot of time in that ramp up phase and not very much time in the building and execution phase. So that may honestly hinder your progress or the rate of your progress. So don't think that you need to be swapping up your exercises all the time.
And in fact, I'll say that, um, for my clients and myself and my training, I don't swap out the entire program. When I do start swapping, I'll shift out some exercises and Well, I'll explain in the next section why, why you would want to shift or change exercises sometimes, but you know, I'll, I'll [00:14:00] do some of them because when, again, you're in that ramp up phase, it's a little bit slower, your training session, because you're a little Combobulated like, Oh, you've, you've gotten into this nice flow with what you're doing and then, uh, something new to learn again and, and all this.
So it is a little bit disruptive of your training, but at least we don't do like a complete disruption by. You know, keeping some of the exercises and only swapping out some of them.
Okay. So then that may raise the question of why should you ever change your exercises, right? Why couldn't you just like get a program and then do that for the next two or three or. 20 years and, and to some degree, like, yeah, you could maybe do that. I don't know if I would recommend that though. And, and maybe the, I have four reasons why you would actually maybe want to do some swapping out of exercises every now and again.
[00:15:00] Okay. The first. thing to realize is that when you write a program, when I write a program for a client or for myself, you know, you have a limited amount of time that the person can train. And also, you know, even if you had three hours to train, that's not very effective because you are going to get tired.
It's like you have a little bit of a clock that starts ticking the minute that you start your training session and the more sets you do, the more tired your body is, and the less effectively your body is able to recruit muscles in general, right? So I would say that kind of the maximum amount of time that.
You can really be, you know, cause I'm always thinking bang for buck, right? So I would not recommend having a training session. That's over an hour long of actual lifting, right? Your sets plus the rest periods in [00:16:00] between. Okay. You might do a little bit of warmup, you know, and cool down around that hour, but that's pretty much the maximum once you get going, right.
When you're really training effectively. And given that you want to do probably three sets of each exercise, minimum two, but you know, three would be good. Um, you actually are limited in how many exercises you can do in a session. Even if you're doing super setting, which is one of the ways of saving time, I'll put a link in the show notes of ways to save time in the weight room.
Cause I went over that in one, one, um, podcast. But even if you're using these time saving techniques, then probably seven exercises is really your max. And I noticed, uh, five to seven, it ranges somewhere in there. So if you think you've got a whole upper body that you need to train in five [00:17:00] exercises or a whole lower body in five to seven exercises, you can see that you're not going to be able to train each muscle in all the ways that you could train that muscle.
All right. And that gets a little bit into the nitty gritty. Um, Of weight training, but there are kind of different ways to stress your muscles having to do with what part of the muscle, like triceps, there are like three different, um, heads of the tricep. Three, try and depending on how you, which movement you choose to do, you emphasize one or the other or the third plus whether the muscle is getting more stimulus when it's in a lengthened state versus a shortened state.
So, I mean, these are details that you don't need to necessarily worry, worry about, but I'm just bringing them up because not every [00:18:00] exercise works the same. You know, if you have a glute exercise or a bicep exercise, they're not working those muscles in the exact same way. But if you've got upper body day and you have five to seven exercises that you can do, then you can't work, let's say your biceps in three different ways, because then what about your triceps?
What about your shoulders? What about your back? What about your chest, right? You've got to hit like the whole upper body. So in that sense, when you shift exercises when you switch the exercises over time, then you are giving your, your muscles a slightly different stimulus. So in that sense, it can be good.
, to be switching over time.
Okay. And the second thing is, Just to keep things more interesting, honestly, I just spent seven weeks, eight weeks doing only lower body [00:19:00] training, and I could only use machines because I had surgery. On my upper body and I wasn't allowed to use my upper body. So I had to choose lower body exercises that didn't involve my upper body.
So things like RDLs were out, right. Or, or hyperextensions out. And, Oh, I got so bored. I was like, Oh, just please let me switch. Some things. And as soon as I was able to, then I've already swapped out some of them. So yes, though, I don't think weight training should be thought of as entertainment. I mean, it is nice to have some exercises in your program that you really enjoy.
And, and so the variety and switching back to some that you enjoy, or, or sometimes having some that you really love, you know, it does, It does increase how fun it is to go there and train. So that is something to take [00:20:00] into account. Anyway, we are human.
So the third reason you might want to be swapping exercises is because you might have some muscles that are developing more than you would want, or developing less than you would want, because all of us are individual and our different muscles may develop at different rates. Right. For me, my arm muscles are really ones that do not want to start popping out.
And somebody else might, you know, be able to bicep curl a lot less than I do and end up with nice looking muscles. It also has to do with, you know, how your muscle anatomy is, how long the muscle belly is and all this. But in any case, suffice to say that. You may have certain areas that you want to emphasize or de emphasize another one that with women, um, you know, especially at this age.
as [00:21:00] Gen Xers, you know, we've been raised with the much leaner kind of body type ideal. Also, We're not necessarily interested in having huge quads, whereas younger women are really into having really big quads and a really big booty. So if you were noticing that your quads are starting to grow, then we might shift you away from exercises that are.
You know, stimulating the quads more and move to exercises that are stimulating the glutes more or the hamstrings more.
Okay. And the fourth reason would be that you may have hit a plateau. All right. And I talked earlier about how you could, you know, essentially do the same exercises for a long time, as long as you are progressively overloading. So you're able to increase reps, increase weights, or improve your form, but actually you may [00:22:00] hit a plateau in some exercises and you're like, okay, no matter what I do, I'm not able to go up to the next weight or get one more rep going.
And so in that case, it may be advantageous to shift exercises or to do some other kind of shift. It may be the exercise. So let's say your biceps, you're doing normal standing bicep curls, and then you notice that, okay, now not moving anywhere. I'm stuck at this weight. I can't get another rep. What am I going to do?
And then you switch to doing a little bit different kind of bicep curl, which stimulates your biceps a little bit different way, and then you're able to start, you know, progressively overloading again. Okay.
So to summarize the reasons why you might want to be changing up your exercises every now and again are you get to challenge your muscles in slightly different ways.
To keep things interesting because after all we're human and sometimes we get bored [00:23:00] and we have exercises that we like more than others.
To emphasize certain muscles that might be lagging or to kind of cool it on training certain muscles that we don't want to have grow any more than what they've already grown.
And finally, maybe you've hit a plateau and no matter how hard you try, you just can't increase your reps or increase the weight. And these are all good reasons to do some switching up in your program.
Now in practice, how I do it is that when I start a new client out, uh, we'll have them doing the same exercises for 10 to 12 weeks. and then start swapping out some of the exercises. And that's actually the same thing that I do for myself is I keep a lot of the same exercises. I'll switch out some of [00:24:00] them.
Okay. So I hope that helped explain, you know, how often to swap up your exercises and clearly this kind of online, you know, with dumbbells where you're swapping it up every day. is not going to allow you to apply the progressive overload and get the full benefits out of doing your work with weights. So that's why I really recommend the weight training.
, and actually I've been offering these learn to lift courses online where you can get started on your own. And now we're getting to the point where people have been doing this long enough that I'm trying to figure out like, okay, so how do I help them next?
And I, um, Thinking about what kind of membership I could create so that people can continue to train and I can continue to give them programs and evolve them slowly [00:25:00] forward using exactly these principles that I discussed today. So that you get to learn different exercises because then you get to slowly but surely find your own favorites that you like, and also To train your muscles in slightly different ways and, and one that I actually didn't mention, which is not so much about switching the exercise, but about, uh, doing unilateral versus bilateral work.
So sometimes working both sides at the same time, and sometimes working each side independently. And it's important to every now and again, be working the sides independently because otherwise you may end up with. imbalances where one arm or one leg ends up stronger than the other because you are cheating and it's something that you, you really, you can't help it no matter how hard you try.
[00:26:00] Like If one side is stronger than the other, or if you've had an old injury or whatever, then you do kind of start to cheat. And over time it can become kind of a big cheat. So it's good to do the unilateral work every now and again. Anyway, so that was today's episode and I hope you enjoyed the show. And I will talk to you again next week.
In the meantime, happy training.