#155: Fitness Beliefs Keeping Women Over 40 Stuck

If you’re working out but feeling softer and looking less toned than you used to, this might be why.

In this episode, I unpack five widely held fitness beliefs that are keeping midlife women stuck. These are beliefs most women over 40 still live by. And it’s not your fault. It’s what the fitness industry has taught us. Up until a few years ago, I believed them too.

The problem is this: When you believe these things,

You choose workouts you think are effective but that don’t actually build strength and muscle.

You judge progress by the wrong signals.

You quit the right methods too early.

As a result, you slowly get weaker and lose muscle even though you’re working out.

If your body isn’t responding the way it used to, this episode will connect some dots.

Enjoy the show.

Transcript

#155: Fitness Beliefs Keeping Women Over 40 Stuck

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, and I have helped hundreds of women to start strength training. And today I wanna talk to you about some of the biggest myths that women believe they need to be doing in order to build muscle and strength. But actually, you don't need these things. At all. And the reason why these are so important to understand is that if you believe these myths, then you may be doing a workout that is really effective and not realize it. And conversely, you may be doing a crap workout, which isn't gonna move the needle at all, but because of these myths you think they're effective, so let's get into it.

The first thing is feeling the burn. You know that amazing feeling when you are holding your [00:01:00] arms out for a long time, or holding a position for a long time doing lots of reps with low weights and oh my. God, the muscle's burning and you're thinking to yourself, Ooh, that is my muscle breaking down so it can build back up stronger. No, that's not what's going on there. It is metabolites happening, which is making your muscle burn, but it has nothing to do with building muscle. And in fact, the mechanism for building muscle is not breaking it down so you can build it back stronger. We used to believe that. Now we know that is not how it works. So that feeling of the burn. You may love it. You may have taught yourself to love it. You don't need it if you want to build muscle or strength.

 Another thing that I hear all the time is that women don't wanna get started because they [00:02:00] think they need to go so often. They need to become gym rats. They need to be doing it five days a week. And if I only have a little bit of time, it's not gonna make a difference. So why do it anyway?

And that could not be further from the truth. Even if you can only lift twice a week for a half an hour, that is going to make a difference for you. And the reason is that if you are not lifting, then you are continuing to get weaker over time, but if you do lift, then you are going to stop that decline and even get it to start back up that hill again. So you're gonna preserve your muscle and strength and even build new muscle and strength. But the caveat here is. You need to be doing the strength training properly so especially if you're only spending two days a week for a half an hour, [00:03:00] you need to have the right combination of exercises. So you are actually hitting all your major muscle groups and you need to be training with progressive overload so you're sure to keep challenging your body to change.

The next one is. You may believe that you need to be switching up your exercises frequently in order to build muscle and strength, because if you keep doing the same exercises over and over again, your muscles are just gonna get used to them, and then they're not gonna develop anymore. And this is not true either. Yes. If you do the same exercises with the same weights, week after week, month after month, year after year, you are going to be pedaling in place. You're gonna stay at a certain level. Of strength. All right, so the trick is to use those same exercises, but to keep [00:04:00] challenging your muscles, to keep applying progressive overload.

And in fact, if you're swapping out your exercises to often, you're not allowing yourself the opportunity to progress those exercises, so I really recommend that you keep the same program and keep repeating it, applying progressive overload for at least 8-10 weeks. It can even be longer.

And related to that one is the idea that, oh my God, I'm so sore from yesterday's workout. It must have been effective. Well, sorry to tell you that soreness and effectiveness as far as building muscle and strength are not reliably linked. Soreness comes from doing an exercise the first time or going back to something that you haven't done in a while, so it's more of a [00:05:00] newness type of thing. And the soreness will go away fairly quickly as you repeat that same exercise. I'm reminded of a client of mine who started with body weight split squats, and after her first training session, she was so sore, she said it was r really pretty painful to be moving at all after that first session. And then after that soreness went away and she did her second session, she didn't get sore really at all anymore. And now that she's been doing it for a few weeks and been able to increase her weights, she does feel like she's done something. You know, her muscles feel like they have been activated, they have done something, but it's nothing like that initial soreness that you get when you do something new. So stop chasing, sore [00:06:00] and do repeat the same exercises, but just be sure that you're progressing them as you get stronger, and that's how you are going to build strength and muscle.

And then you may have heard that you really need to be lifting heavy three sets of three reps, two or three times a week. And yes, lifting heavy like this will promote strength and muscle gains, but it is not the only way to do that. And in fact, it is not what I would recommend for beginners. Beginners should be starting with longer sets and heavy for them weights. In other words, weights that challenge you where you are at. For you, that's gonna mean something different than it does for your friend or that influencer online. You can build muscle in all [00:07:00] kinds of rep ranges, all the way from three reps up to about 30 reps. The trick is that you have to get close to muscular failure. In other words, you need to really challenge your muscles in your sets, and I'll tell you the truth is that when you are training in longer rep ranges, it gets pretty boring because the SETS take a long time to do and you just get kind of tired of doing it before your muscles actually get tired. So if you are just starting out, I recommend an 8-12 rep. Rep range. I think that's a very nice intermediate rep range where you're not lifting so heavy that your form is really gonna be a struggle, and the sets are short enough that you're gonna be able to reach close to failure before you get super bored.

This reminds me of a story of a woman in my gym who had [00:08:00] gone to this new upper body class that my gym was offering, and I had been looking at that class. And wondering, wow, have they actually finally been able to do strength training in a class format? Well, as the woman described it I realized that, Hmm.

So what she said was that, oh my God, the class is so good. My favorite exercise is doing these things where you hold your arm out to the side and you do these little arm circles forward. And then you do the arm circles backwards. And then she went on to explain that these are so hard that I can only use one kilo weights. In other words, the smallest weights that they have and they burn so much and they make me so sore, and they are so effective. If you really think about it, [00:09:00] if you're picking up a one kilo weight, in other words, a two pound weight, and you think that that is going to make you stronger than you are today. Please weigh some of the normal things around your house that you pick up. Your purse, your grocery bag, your child. Your dog, okay? When you move a piece of furniture, and I guarantee you it's gonna be more than that. And if you wanna get stronger than you are today, then you need to be challenging your muscles to lift something that's close to their limits.

 Hope this was helpful to you. Have a wonderful week and happy training