#182: Q&A: Creatine, Rest Between Sets, Training Frequency, Machines vs. Free Weights

Here are some questions that hit my inbox all the time. Not big enough for their own episode, so I answered four in one go.

1. Do you actually need creatine, and if so, what kind?
2. Does resting between sets really matter?
3. Is twice a week honestly enough to see a change?
4. Machines, free weights, cables. Do they actually train you differently?

Do you have other questions you'd like answered? Send them to me - I'd love to hear from you. 

Enjoy the show!

Resources Mentioned: 

1. My protein episode 
2. My strength training programs

Transcript

#182: Q&A: Creatine, Rest Between Sets, Training Frequency, Machines vs. Free Weights

[00:00:00] Welcome to Menopause Strength Training Podcast. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. And today we're gonna do a Q&A session. We haven't done the, one of those in a while, and I feel like there are a lot of questions that I get over and over again that aren't quite enough to do a whole episode on, so I thought I would gather them in one episode.

[00:00:24] So today's questions are: Do I need creatine? And if so, what kind? Second, does resting between sets really matter? Is twice a week really enough? And what about machines versus free weights? Is there really a difference? So let's get into it

[00:00:48] supplement companies approach me every week to see if I will start promoting their supplements. And I have to say the reason that I have said no up until now is that I don't really think that there are many supplements out there that are particularly useful for women in midlife. I think protein, yes, is very useful, and I share about how to choose good proteins in my protein episode.

[00:01:17] And creatine is another one that I absolutely do believe in and I do use, but there's no point in me recommending a certain brand's creatine because the plain old creatine monohydrate is plenty for you. So personally, I go into the shop, I look for pure creatine monohydrate. I compare the prices of the di- various brands, and I choose the cheapest one.

[00:01:45] And that's what I recommend that you do as well But let's talk about what is creatine doing and why is it that it could be a useful supplement. So first of all, creatine's not gonna do a whole lot for you if you're not actually strength training with a proper program. But what it does is it helps your body to generate ATP, which is their energy, , unit faster.

[00:02:12] So when you are doing your sets or doing your workout, if it's a power workout or other kind of workout, it allows your body to regenerate ATP faster. And so in practice, what that means, and what they have shown in research, is that you are able to maybe do another few reps, one to three more reps, or be able to do that exercise a little bit longer.

[00:02:42] So if it is that you're doing a sprint interval or something like that, it might be that you're able to do a little bit longer sprint interval. So it's like you have more power, more oomph in your muscles. And of course, over time, that can be useful because you're able to do a little bit more reps, you're able to lift a little bit heavier, and that's more stimulatory for building muscle and strength.

[00:03:10] Okay? I'm not saying it is necessary for building muscle and strength. You can absolutely get strong and build muscle even without creatine, but it can give you that extra little boost, and it has been studied extensively, so I feel comfortable saying that it is safe to use. And for women in menopause, perimenopause in particular, there was, , a systematic review done, in 2026 and a meta-analysis, done in 2021, which looked at, in particular, post-menopausal women using creatine, five grams per day.

[00:03:56] And what they did find, that when that is combined with resistance training, there was a small but meaningful gain in lean mass and strength without any evidence of harm

[00:04:12] They saw that upper body strength in particular seemed to benefit from this, and that when the studies lasted 24 weeks or longer, that both upper body and lower body strength showed more improvement with the creatine than with the placebo. So it's not something that is going to, like, change you overnight.

[00:04:37] 24 weeks, is a long time, so that could be something that you add to your protein shake after your workouts, for example. That's what I do. I just toss in the five grams, 'cause it's a little bit bitter tasting, so just adding it to plain yogurt or something, you're maybe not gonna like the flavor so much.

[00:04:56] So I put it into my protein shake, which is chocolate flavor, so the chocolate flavoring really covers it up. Now, one thing you may notice, it... when you start taking the creatine, is it does cause you to retain a little bit more water. So that means your scale weight may go up a little bit, but that's water being retained within the muscle.

[00:05:19] It is not that you've gotten fatter and gained, subcutaneous fat or anything like that. It really is water. And that also means that if all of a sudden you stop taking creatine, like you forget to take it with you on your vacation or whatever, you may find that you're running to the bathroom a little bit more as your body gets rid of that extra water.

[00:05:40] So just something to keep in mind. And like said, it can be just the cheapest creatine monohydrate out there. I know there are all kinds of brands that are trying to put out fancy schmancy stuff. You don't need the fancy schmancy, just creatine monohydrate. Get of course, a reliable brand, but then choose some.

[00:06:03] I just choose it based on price once I trust the brand and the company that I'm buying it from. All right, I just get it at my grocery store, to be honest. Okay, so that was about creatine. Let me know what you have experienced with creatine. Have you given it a try? Have you noticed any kind of water gain?

[00:06:22] Have you noticed losing water if you stop taking it? Have you noticed any difference in your training? I would love to hear.

[00:06:29] Now, the second question is about does resting between sets really matter? And I think this is a very good question, and really speaks to how different strength training is versus the kind of exercise that most of us midlife women have been used to doing. We're used to having to work all the time.

[00:06:51] You don't take breaks. You're, like, going and going and going and going until the session's over, and then you're done. Where weight training is really, really different because you're doing your set, and then you're taking a break, and in fact, your break is probably more of the time that you're spending in the gym than the actual sets.

[00:07:12] And that may feel really like, "Is anything happening here?" But the thing is that, yes, and it is important that you take the breaks between sets, especially when you're trying to build muscle, so put more muscle tissue on your body, so hypertrophy. Then it is important to be taking those breaks between sets.

[00:07:35] Don't start doing any jumping jacks or burpees or whatever. Take a break. And what I generally recommend is for upper body exercises, one to two minutes of a break between sets. Or if you're doing lower body exercises, one to three minutes of a break. Now, there's some indicator that women don't take quite as long to recover between sets as men do, so it is gonna be somewhat individual.

[00:08:06] But start with that. I now do pretty standard two minutes for upper body, three minutes for lower body, but if I'm doing something that's really tough upper body, like for example pull-ups, I'll do a whole three-minute rest between sets. So I make sure that I can come to my next set, with full strength and power and energy, all that.

[00:08:30] Now, if you're doing supersets, so let's say you're working your biceps and your triceps and you do a set of bicep curls and then you do some tricep extensions, you could do those back to back without a recovery period and then take the two-minute break. Okay? And I would start with that recommendation of one to two or one to three minutes for upper and lower body.

[00:08:54] And then once you've been weightlifting for a little bit longer, like s- may- say a year, two years, start to play with that and see what it feels like. And for sure, if you have, like, sometimes there are exercises which really take it out of you, and if you're doing a fairly long set, like for example, if I was doing leg presses and my set was 15 reps, that is big muscle groups and a long set, so I may actually be out of breath, especially maybe if I am a little bit tired that day or I'm recovering from a cold or whatever, and if I feel still out of breath, I might actually wait more than three minutes before the next set.

[00:09:34] So, you can kind of, yeah, you get to know your body and how much recovery you need. But I would say at least a minute between sets.

[00:09:46] So the next question is about how often you actually need to train to see any results, and this is something that I've addressed in many of my past episodes, but here I wanna talk about it directly. Because what I see over and over again in various discussion groups on lifting weights is women who are switching over to weight training because they know that's important, and then all of a sudden they're lifting five days a week.

[00:10:13] Okay? They're going from zero to five days a week. And the danger with that is that your body is not gonna be able to keep up with that level of intensity. And I understand kind of the urge to g- to go whole hog, like you really wanna do it. "Yes, I'm gonna commit to this. I'm gonna do it, every day or five days a week."

[00:10:38] But twice a week really, really is enough. Twice a week per muscle group is plenty to stimulate muscle growth and increases in strength. And after now working with women, getting them started strength training for... This is now my fifth year. I really recommend staying at the two or three days a week in the beginning in particular, because you do want your body to kind of adjust to doing strength training.

[00:11:15] Your tendons and your ligaments are going to be slower at adapting to this new kind of stress on them than what your muscles are. And what very often happens is that your muscles get stronger, but your tendons, don't get strong as fast, so you start to have little niggles, like in your elbows and other tendons in your body.

[00:11:41] And I'm doing a whole episode on that and what to do about it, so keep your eyes open for that. Subscribe to make sure that you don't miss it. But so absolutely twice a week is a beautiful, beautiful place to start, and if you wanna do shorter workouts but do them more often, for example, you could do that as well, where you do like a lower body session twice a week and upper body sessions twice a week, and then they would just be like a 30-minute session,

[00:12:12] so if you wanted to spend two hours strength training, you could split it over four days. There are so many ways of actually splitting your training over the course of a week, so if you join my program, for example, then please just reach out to me through the chat and tell me what kind of time you have in your life, and then we can talk about what kind of a split would make the most sense for you All right?

[00:12:40] But don't think that you have to become a gym rat or be doing it every day in order to get results. Twice a week of hitting each of your muscle groups is golden

[00:12:51] And the last thing that a lot of women wonder about is, when you go into the weight room, should you be working with the machines or the free weights or the cables, and is there really a difference? And my answer is yeah, there is a difference, and all of them are great, So you can do variants of the same exercise generally in all three of those formats. So for example, bicep curls. You could do bicep curls with dumbbells, right? Where you've got the dumbbells in your hand and you're curling. You could do bicep curls with a cable where you could put a rope or a bar attached to the cable and do bicep curls like that. Or you can get onto a machine that is specifically made for bicep curls Now, the difference between those three is how they are challenging your biceps.

[00:13:52] Where the bicep curl is the hardest, where, the point is where you stick, where you kind of are, struggling to get past it and then it gets easier again, that will change depending on how the resistance is applied to your bicep.

[00:14:11] So in normal bicep curls, for example, it is going to be almost no resistance at the very bottom, but then when your elbows are at about 90 degrees, you're gonna have the most amount of resistance, and then again, when you're up at the top, it's gonna be less resistance. if you use a machine then the resistance profile may be very different.

[00:14:33] So instead of when your arms are straight, you're getting, less resistance, that might be the place where it's hardest to move the weight. So those are the kinds of things that change, depending on the exercise you're doing, the equipment that you're using, you could do dumbbells in two different ways and change the resistance profile also.

[00:14:58] And that's one of the reasons why, I rotate how you do your bicep curls and your tricep extensions and shoulder presses and, other exercises to change the resistance profile and then also swapping exercises and doing different exercises also changes, what muscle fibers in that muscle are getting challenged more.

[00:15:21] But you can absolutely work with just one of them as well. So my at-home program is dumbbells only, and that offers variety, but using dumbbells only. And some people have bought dumbbells, and then they have cable, machines at home.

[00:15:39] That's great. Offers even a little bit more variety. And then of course, if you have a gym, then the machines offer even more variety. So they're all good, and it is not like, you're not really strength training if you're not using free weights. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

[00:15:57] All three of them are gonna be very effective And actually, one other thing that I'll point out with the different types of equipment, and especially with the machines, is that the machines offer you a level of stability when you're doing the exercise that you don't really get with free weights, which means that your body can fully focus on just the muscles that it's trying to work.

[00:16:22] You don't have to worry about your balance. You don't have to worry so much about keeping your body in the right position because the machine puts you in the right position, right? so that is another advantage of the machines. 

[00:16:32] So there, there's a lot of nuance, but the long and the short of it is machines, dumbbells, cables, all are excellent ways of building muscle and strength as long as you're following a progressive program and you have a good program And you may find that you like one variant of an exercise more than another, and that's fine too.

[00:16:53] And it's great to get a chance to try them all out, and you find what your favorites are. And also, if some equipment is busy on a particular day, that you can swap out and use another. So there are all kinds of reasons why you wanna learn to do multiple variants of the exercises.

[00:17:13] Okay, so that was the four questions I love doing these so if you have a question that you would like answered, then please let me know in the show notes. If you're listening to this on audio, probably in the show notes there's a link where you can send me a message. If you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and put your question in the comments. And with that, I leave you till next week and wish you happy training.