#169: Can You Build Muscle After Menopause?

Can you actually build muscle after menopause? Or have you missed your window?

This is one of the most common questions I get. And I think it comes from a myth a lot of women still believe: that strength training is for younger people, and maybe even dangerous once you're in midlife. After helping hundreds of women get started lifting, this is a myth I really want to talk about.

In this episode I get into what the research really says about muscle and menopause, why so many women are doing the work and still seeing nothing change, and what your body actually needs from you now that it's not 20 anymore.

If you've been wondering whether it's too late for you, listen to this one.

Enjoy the show!

Resources Mentioned:

Learn to Lift 

Strength Training Membership 

Transcript

#168: Can You Build Muscle After Menopause?

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And I'm coming to you today on a rainy Friday here. Spring is here, and I have to tell you guys, because you may have noticed from my Instagram messaging, I've been a little quiet lately, and it's because I've had a little bit of a life change going on here.

My strength training honey and I have called it quits, 

So dating in midlife is super different from what it was like back when you were thinking about who's gonna be the father of my children or who am I gonna build the white picket fence house with? Because now it's really about, like, what you want and what they, they want, you know, as a couple and how you can fit two lives together.

Plus, it comes with so much baggage. [00:01:00] Your baggage, their baggage, and I think it's been a really amazing journey of a self-exploration, actually, to date, to notice how you react to certain things, how they react to certain things, trying to figure it all out. You learn so much about yourself, what you want, what you don't want.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not always easy. I've spent plenty of hours walking around the woods near my house, just that's how I kind of decompress and process, like, dating stuff, and yeah, it can be hard. And, uh, so I am single again. Definitely not back into dating yet. I need to take a moment to enjoy being alone, having time to do some stuff around the house that I haven't had time to do, spend more [00:02:00] time with my girlfriends, and maybe even make some new friends.

So yeah, it's gonna be a different kind of summer. Not as much boating, I don't think. That's the one thing that we had very much in common with my ex was we loved to boat, and I don't have my own boat. He does. So that's gonna be off the agenda this summer unless I make some new friends who boat. So let's see.

But anyway, that was my quick update, so if you, uh, follow me on Insta and you realize that, yeah, she hasn't mentioned her boyfriend in a while, that's why. Anyway, so let's get into the show 

 Today I wanna talk about the idea that women cannot build muscle after menopause, that somehow our physiology changes so much that it's just not gonna happen. I wanna talk about what the research actually shows and what you need to do in order to build muscle after menopause.

Now, I see it [00:03:00] all the time, and I think that this is where this comes from. It's that women are doing the things, they're picking up the weights, they're doing some weight training programs, but they are not following the science. They come into the weight room, they don't have a program. They aren't tracking. They're not working out intensely enough. They're chatting with their friends in between. They're doing burpees. And if that sounds like you, then you need to listen to this episode to find out what you need to do in order to actually get results from the time you're spending

 This year, so in 2026, a systematic review looked at 126 studies involving over 4,000 women, most of them post-menopausal, and what they found was that the strength and muscle gains were [00:04:00] virtually identical between the women who had gone through menopause and those who hadn't. So what that means for us is that the biology is there, okay? Our bodies can do it 

 and here's the other thing that showed up clearly in the research, that your metabolism doesn't have to tank with menopause, that women with more muscle had higher resting metabolic rates, burned more fat, and had more metabolic flexibility after meals, not related to hormone levels, not related to age, but related to muscle. So muscle is the variable that keeps showing up, and it's not a coincidence

Now, are things completely identical post-menopause as earlier in your life? I would say no, so our bodies aren't 20 anymore, and [00:05:00] I've noticed the difference for sure. I'm 55 and started training again when I was 50, and my customers, hundreds of women who are in my programs, have said the same thing. There is a difference, and where I would say that the differences lie are in things like your ability to recover. Maybe you need more days off between training sessions before you can go again. Also, as you go through menopause and estrogen walks out the door, your tendons and your ligaments start to get weaker, and so if you start strength training again post-menopausally or in perimenopause, then it may be that your tendons and ligaments need a little bit more time to get strong again. They are going to get strong slower than your muscles do. So there is some nuance to this, but my point is that you can build muscle, but you need to be [00:06:00] taking into account your body a little bit differently than you would have when you were 20 as far as recovery and how quickly you progress, how aggressively you get started with your strength training

And this brings up the myth that stops a lot of people from getting into the weight room. They think that strength training is somehow dangerous or not appropriate for women in midlife and beyond, and nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I would say that strength training is one of the most, like, user-friendly things to get started on because you can totally tailor your workouts to you, You choose the weight that works for you. You take breaks between sets as your body needs. You take recovery days as suits you. You train two or [00:07:00] three or four days a week, depending on what works for you. That offers you so much more ability to shape your workouts to be exactly right for you than going to some group fitness class where the instructor's in the front, and you follow them, and it's much harder to then adapt it to what you can do.

All right? So don't be afraid to pick up those weights, even if you are 60, 70, 80, in your 90s. It is not a problem. You just need to ease into it, right? And pay attention to how your body's going. And if you have arthritis or different issues in your body, then work around them. Choose exercises that you can do, and work with a physical therapist if you have limitations, okay? 'Cause they can tell you what exercises you should do, what exercises you shouldn't do, because it's not always the case that you should just, you know, not work [00:08:00] something just because it happens to be sore or difficult. But that's where you really should be evaluated directly by a physical therapist. And for sure, I do that myself. My arthritic knee, I had an orthopedic surgeon look at it before I started lifting heavy. My hip, I've had a physical therapist look at it. So These are resources that are there for you to use so you can continue in your lifting journey safely. Just like any other thing. You wouldn't take up tennis if you had some kind of injury in your upper body without checking that, okay, is tennis gonna exacerbate it, or is it okay? Right? Same idea

the American College of Sports Medicine just recently updated their view on strength training and their recommendations for it, and one thing that they really emphasized, and it's something that I've been talking about for so long, is that it doesn't need to be complicated. You don't need to have fancy [00:09:00] periodization schemes. You don't need deload weeks you don't need special splits what you do need is you need consistency, you need to be progressing over time, and you need to be challenging your body

And this is what I've been talking about since day one, because my simple programs have helped so many women to get strength training into their lives and to get stronger and to feel better in their bodies. So even two or three days a week of strength training is plenty, and two 30-minute sessions even can be enough.

But you need to be doing it the right way, right? You need to make sure that you are actually challenging your body, because if your body doesn't get challenged, it's not getting stimulated, and it is not going to change. 

But it's good to be aware that the [00:10:00] less you train, so the fewer times a week and the fewer minutes in your training sessions, the better your programming kinda needs to be. Because you want to hit all of your muscle groups twice a week. So if you're only training twice a week, then you've gotta hit every single one of your muscle groups in each of your sessions. And if you don't want those to be ungodly long, then you need to have intelligent programming there

It's like packing for the weekend and all you have is a carry-on bag. You need to be so strategic about what you choose to put in there because you have limited space, okay? Same thing with your program. You can't just kinda do a little bit of this and a little bit of that because all of a sudden you've got only pants in that bag and no underwear or shampoo , okay? So keep in mind that you need an efficient, effective, [00:11:00] well-designed program in order to get results.

So since everybody likes a list, I'm gonna list the things you need to be sure that you're doing in order to have some results from your strength training and actually build muscle after menopause. So the first that I just talked about is that you need a good program. That is going to be super important, not just that you go in and you spend a half an hour doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. No, there needs to be a strategic plan. Otherwise, you're not going to make any progress. So that is going to be number one. 

The second thing is you need to be challenging yourself so that you progress over time, and that's where things like tracking what you're doing, repeating the same exercises week after week for at least 8-10 weeks, and applying progressive overload are going to matter

And the third thing is recovery. Okay? You [00:12:00] want to stimulate the muscle growth in your sessions, but the magic actually happens afterwards. That's when the muscle growth actually starts to happen in your body. So you need to give your body enough time to recover. It doesn't really make sense to go and stimulate it a little bit more when it's already stimulated. So that's why you wanna have at least a day of recovery in between, otherwise it's sort of a waste to go back in

And then the fourth thing is you need to remember to fuel your muscle growth. So that means that you're eating enough protein and eating enough food overall. Now, of course, there may be many of you who are on a diet, and so obviously you're going to be eating less than what your body needs. And for you, I say absolutely do the strength training because that's gonna be the signal to your body to hold onto the muscle. And for you, it's even more important that you're actually [00:13:00] stimulating your muscles and challenging your body. Otherwise, you're not giving your body the signal that, "Hey, I need to hold onto the muscle, so take the deficit out of my fat stores." So for you, it is even more important to be strength training properly, like real progressive strength training

All right, so if you're ready to get started strength training, I absolutely have the programs for you. You can train at home or at the gym two, three, or four days a week, and I recommend you start with two or three days a week, something that you actually can sustain long-term. That's gonna be way more important. Strength training is not about overloading and doing more, more, more, more, more. Twice a week consistently, and in 10 weeks, you will feel like a different person. 

And if you've already been strength training but you haven't noticed any results, it may be that you're missing one of the very [00:14:00] key factors that is going to get you the results, like the tracking, like the progressive overload, like pushing your body hard enough to actually stimulate muscle growth, and that's what I teach inside of Learn to Lift.

And I am there with you, right? It is a program, yes. It is a standardized program for you, but I'm there with you in the app, so you can chat with me, ask me your questions, send me your form videos, because I want to help you to be successful, to be stronger, and to thrive in midlife and beyond, 'cause we're not done yet

 And if you're already strength training and you want great programming, support from me through the app, the same way as in Learn to Lift, then join my membership. My membership's built in a very different way from other people's memberships in that it is a [00:15:00] progressive program each block is built on the one before. And everybody starts at block one and moves to block two, three, four, five, six,

My at-home program is dumbbells only, and at the gym has the equipment for any standard gym, and you always have the possibility to swap out alternate exercises in case a certain one doesn't work for you or your gym doesn't have particular equipment.

If you have any questions about the membership, about Learn to Lift, then reach out to me. I'm happy to answer them. And, uh, yeah, and the link is in the show notes too. And with that, I wish you a wonderful week ahead, and happy training