Start Strong: Movement & Muscle Building for Longevity PART ONE || Episode 24

In this episode of Menopause, Unscripted, we’re kicking off a new movement series with Beth Drayer—focused on how to get started with exercise and build muscle before you need it. From preventing injury to supporting long-term strength, metabolism, and overall wellness, this conversation breaks down why movement is one of the most powerful tools for aging well.

Beth shares realistic, approachable ways to begin incorporating strength training into your routine—no matter your starting point—and what to focus on to create sustainable, lasting results. This is your foundation episode, setting the stage for upcoming guided workouts designed to help you feel stronger, more capable, and more confident in your body.

If you’ve been unsure where to start, this is it.

Connect with Beth Drayer:
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BethDrayerMovement
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BethDrayer

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Menopause Unscripted is a women’s health podcast hosted by Dr. Heidi, the creator of Hey Dr. Heidi. Each episode delivers expert insights, real-life stories, and evidence-based information to help women navigate perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause with confidence.
This podcast covers topics such as menopause symptoms, hormone replacement therapy, pelvic health, sleep changes, intimacy and relationships, osteoporosis prevention, brain fog, mood shifts, and healthy aging. With a focus on science-backed advice and approachable conversation, Menopause Unscripted offers clarity, support, and practical tips for every stage of midlife.

Whether you are experiencing early menopause symptoms or seeking resources for post-menopausal health, Menopause Unscripted is your trusted source for reliable information and open conversation.

Want to be on the show?
Think you’d be a great guest or know someone with an important story to share? Email us at connect@heydrheidi.com.

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Produced By Stray Kat Studio & Katherine Donovan
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Thanks for joining me on Menopause Unscripted. Remember, the change is just another beginning. Welcome back to another week of Menopause Unscripted. I am Dr. Heidi Gastler and of course Doc is here. We are joined this week by my friend Beth Trayer, who is an athletic trainer that I work with locally often. I trust Bath with a lot of my older clientele and helping to keep them strong, healthy, and living their best lives, and they're having a better health span as we get older. Not just a better lifespan, but health span. So thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Super stoked. I'm so happy you're here. Could you tell us a little bit about your practice and who you like to work with? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Um mostly active aging right now, and it is definitely female dominant on that side, but um both sides. Um, but mostly people have pain working through that pain and then trying to get back to activity. Okay. So that's the main thing. Um I do also do some work with um I'm one of the medical providers for beach and USA volleyball. Cool. So I do get to travel with them a bit, which is fun. Um, but my main my main thing is active aging people.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

We need more of you. Yeah. Well, thank you. There's a lot of them. There's a lot of us. A lot of us. I'm now in that group. Same. Yeah. Like it's so weird being like, I'm in the active aging population. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I said it to somebody recently, like, I like that much better. I'm like, there, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Well, thankfully, we live in a community that has a lot of people who are really, really dedicated in having their resources, both monetarily and time-wise, dedicating that to active aging. Yeah. And I can only speak for myself, but that was part of what really attracted me to working in this community in the first place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So, what was your background? Like, how did you get into this?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

So I started as an athletic trainer basically as a student in college, um, and then started working Division I athletics right after that. So um worked in a couple different universities with various sports, everything from soccer to basketball, um, swimming, tennis, all that stuff. Um, and then moved around a little bit. Um, actually worked at children's hospital for a little bit, so that was actually um kind of cool because it's I learned so much about development of all of that as well, which is a huge part. Um and actually like how much we go back to the basics of like developmental stuff when you're trying to move people through some pain sometimes. Um, and then figured that my skills were transferable to like general population because there's nobody at the time really that's easily accessible that can do what I can do for that population. It's there's no athletic training room for active aging people, right? Right. So um, so I basically set that up. So um that's how I started getting into these people. But it's it's been so rewarding that you know, I'm sure you get it as well, right? Like when someone's like, You've changed my life, or like I always thought I was gonna have this pain, and you're there, like I can walk around the block now. It's just like the best feeling. So, you know, you're doing good when you can help people.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

And for me, it's like the people getting back to the sports that they love or being able to continue doing the sports or recreational things they love who just wanna play. Yeah, and but even sometimes it's just keeping adults in their homes so that they aren't having to go to assisted livings or nursing homes. It could be as simple of a goal as keeping someone living in their home.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yeah, just being as independent as you can for as long as you can. Like that's my goal. Like that's Dang. You know, like I don't want to, I don't want to have somebody having that like help me do all like I've been I've been raised as a very independent person, and I want to keep that independence.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Stay stay that way as long as possible. As long as possible. Yeah. Well, like let's kind of talk about that. Like, you know, a couple of the main reasons why that fails, right? Is that people fall and get injured. Uh, incontinence is a big part of it. Yeah. And we know so much more now about, especially with female aging, and that's kind of what we're here to talk about today, is that the female aging population and how we can now help and we know more about prevention that starts even before we have hormonal changes, right? Yeah. So let's talk about like a few of those things that we know now that we need to be accomplishing and trying to get ahead of because we now have the information. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Um, well, bone loss, right? We know that like you basically at your 30s is when you're at the most bone dense. So trying to keep that maintained as long as possible. So being as active as you can, starting as early as you can, is really what's gonna get you ahead of the curve, right? Um but lifting, just putting weight on your body and making your body move is the biggest thing for that.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

And for that being said, I mean, there's so many people, and we hear this all over media right now, is that you have to lift heavy. Sure. But what about somebody who has not been an athlete? What could they be doing just to like start having resistance training on their body?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Like, and my my my big thing is just start moving, right? And then we'll get you there. But like because I have a lot of people that come in and just doing like a split squat, just you know, with kind of staggered feet dropping down one knee is super hard for them. So that's gonna be resistance training for them. That their body weight's the resistance, sure. And then as that gets easier, we can now start to add weight, add load to that, and just increase as we can go and just keep going because there's no reason to stop.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

And so bone density, right? Then we also get muscle wasting. Yep. And we know now that when our estrogen reduces as a woman, so it's starting to have that fluctuation during perimenopause, and then when we hit menopause and have that massive estrogen decline, we now know that that can lead to a lot of muscular reduction, sarcopenia. Yep, that's a big old medical term, right? It's like what's sarcopenia? Muscle loss. We have that, and that's something that again we can get ahead of. Yep, and something as simple as body weight resistance. Am I correct? Correct. Yeah, can help us to prevent loss. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Oh. Anytime you're using the muscles is better than not using the muscles.

unknown 6:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

That's what I always tell people. I'm like, something is always better than nothing. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

So if you've got someone who's always been couchbound, yep. You know, you know, uh, there was a long time ago, I can't remember where I saw it, but it was like five minutes a day adds up to, I can't remember what, can't do the math. But it was like at the end of the year, it was like a lot more than you would have like imagined just doing five minutes a day. So, like, if it's five minutes a day, it's five minutes a day, it's better than zero. So, and then those five minutes get way easier because people are like, I can't even do five minutes. I'm like, great, okay, let's just start and we'll keep going.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Do you find that your clients then as they start noticing that it's easier, that they kind of have more buy-in and motivation?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Oh, for sure. Because then, like, I have I have one woman that was like, just and she was getting 300 steps a day. Okay. I just need you to walk more. So she started walking up and down the driveway. She's like, I could barely go up and down the driveway. Now she goes like halfway around the block, and she's like, it's just so much easier. I can just keep going. I'm like, great, keep going.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

It's progress. It's progress.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Like, she's like, I want to make it around the block. I'm like, great, let's make it around the block. That's your goal for like the next month. Right. So it's it's it's fascinating. She's like, I don't know how I got to this point. She's like, I used to be able to do she's like, she used to say she was like the OJ uh commercial running through the airport. I don't think I've ever seen that. You don't ever see that? Like, there was like a long time ago, a long time ago. Okay. There was a commercial with like OJ Simpson like hurtling through like the airport, like going over chairs and stuff like that. Like, and she's like, that used to be me on like road trips, like I had to like run through the airport, and she's like, That's not me now. I'm like, but this is where we're at, so this is what we're gonna do. So just step by step, keep moving.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Meeting someone where the someone where they're at, right? Yeah, we were talking about that before. It's like you meet someone where they're at, not where they want to be.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Want to be to or where they were before because I know I'm guilty of this. I know I could have done this before, and it's not where I'm at right now. Super frustrating, but that's where I am, and I can't I can't force that because it doesn't feel good. So um, yeah, that's the important part.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

And I find I find that in clinic really hard because so many people come in and they're trying to do things and they find that they aren't recovering the way they did before. And I was like, Well, I used to be able to do this. I'm like, Well, you are now 30 years older. My body is not gonna respond the way it did before.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, I'll have that conversation a lot too. Mostly with my dad. Like they're like, you're your body just heals slower as you get older, like just in general, right? Like, so you can't expect it to, you know, just go away right away. No.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Have I shared with you the account of a woman who does a whole project on her parents? No. Okay, I'm gonna link this in the show notes because people will like, this is so lovely. It's like really positive social media, but I'll share it with you too. Yeah, yeah. She literally takes her parents on as a project. Oh. And she starts them where they are. Nice. And the whole idea is to get them so that they're less of a false risk. Oh yeah. It's great. It's such a lovely account. I'll share it with you. Perfect. So then let's kind of talk about pain, right? So we know now, now we know that a loss of estrogen is and actually like an inflammatory process. Sure. So with women, since that's kind of our population we're talking about mostly today, uh when you have women who are going through perimenopause and menopause or beyond, do you find that that population of your your clients is experiencing more pains or is maybe regressed back to older injuries?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

It's uh more unexplained pains. Like, I don't know what I was doing. This showed up. I don't know why I'm starting to have this pain. And I'm gonna put myself in that group too. Like it's some things just sort of appear out of nowhere, and you're just like, and a lot of some of them are training, like athletes and doing things, and they're like, I've never had this type of thing before, and now all of a sudden this is starting. And it actually started a few years ago. Um, I had someone come in and they're like, Have you heard that like perimenopause can cause like joint pain and stuff like that? And that's when I sort of started really looking into all of it, right? And I was like, Nah, I haven't actually heard it. And then she came in, and then like not too long after another one came in, and I was like, Oh, there is something here. So uh we need to actually figure this out, and that's when I think that's probably when we started talking even more. Um, and just sort of, yeah, that's been a huge, a huge piece of why people are coming in to see me, and it can be really frustrating for them because it doesn't resolve the same as well when I hurt my arm playing softball in high school, it went away after, you know, it this this isn't the same type of injury, it it works differently than that. So trying to manage expectations and um how we uh focus and work through it is is different. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

And you know, aside from the inflammatory part, there's also the loss of collagen, right? And we're losing that elasticity and that rebound, recoil, and resiliency is lessened. Yeah. And so I know that that's part of what you're gonna take us through when we do our workout piece in a few minutes. So get ready to go today. We're doing a workout.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

So, what what am I missing? We've got we've talked about bone mineral density, muscle, elasticity, inflammation, cardiometabolic. Like metabolic stuff and cardiovascular. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Is that something you see a lot? Uh that it's not the main thing that I deal with, but I would say that there is a detraining for most of the people that do come in to see me. So getting that piece back is also harder. It's just smaller, smaller increments to start getting that back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah. So today we're gonna kind of tackle all of this from a training perspective. Yeah. Okay, so I want to link for everybody in a couple studies that we've been looking at and sharing. We have two really great studies. I'm sure there's more, but there's only two that I'm gonna share in the show notes about what's called the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. And I know that's a big long word, and we're not gonna go into all this science because it's a lot of a big read and a lot of big hard words. But everyone here in this podcast, I'm sure I'm really educated and probably really interested in reading this. So look at the show notes. You can read these for free and they're full length. Don't just read the abstract, please, okay? But read the whole thing. It's a really fascinating read to really understand the implications of this for yourselves and why you should care.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

I mean, the one article said it was like 57% of women was either in perimenopause or postmenopause showed muscle skeletal discomfort, pain, whatever. And I'm like, that's only the reported like how much goes unreported because the people who are just going to the orthopods because they have XYZ pain in whatever joint, like, that's not gonna be reported in any of this. So that number's potentially much higher than what they're reporting in their study. Um, so I think that's an important piece to kind of note. Also, like I I was recently talking to my mom about it, and actually, it was I was telling her about the the the podcast that you did to the the the game that you're like symptoms of symptoms of uh parimenopause. And you're like it's just perimenopause, and it was like everything, and you know, I was telling my mom about it, and she's like, oh, I guess I probably had more symptoms than I thought. It was like I think everybody does, right? Like it's just um I think we don't notice or don't take into consideration things that don't seem should be related, right? That are related. Like things that you wouldn't necessarily associate with what you would think would be a menopause or perimenopause symptom are actually associated with it. So I don't think people report all of the things that they're feeling in or associating it with that. So I think the numbers in that study are probably lower than what actually people feel.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

No, I definitely don't disagree. And this is why I think it's so important that so many people as medical providers or like allied medical professionals have the knowledge to then identify this, but also that the general populace has the knowledge to start to have informed conversations with their medical providers, their fitness providers, yeah, everybody, so that we all know how to recognize these things and then be able to help women age better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

So it's the plan.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yeah, that's why we're all here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

So we're gonna start with a general warm-up, and this is where I start pretty much every workout that I do, and I think everybody should do. Um, we don't uh pay attention to our neck, and that's pretty much what holds our head up, and where our body goes is determined by where our head goes. So this is super important. So I like to start in cobra, so um, whatever's comfortable, hands down, hands on their side, whatever is comfortable for you for this, but forearms down, pretty much shoulder width apart. Um, and then you're going to bring your eyes down towards your chest, which brings your head towards your chest, uh, chin the chest, and then you're gonna look your eyes up, chin the ceiling, and we're gonna do that. I don't like numbers. Okay, I like uh what feels good, but generally we'll say somewhere between five and ten times. And I train to work through full range of motion. Yep. And you don't need to force it, but you do want to get as much range of motion as you can. So if you can only go to neutral in this position, go to neutral and just try to get a little bit more each time. Let's go. So we're gonna go up and down, then we're gonna go side to side. So eyes go to the right, and I'm gonna try to see at least my back, my left heel when I go right. Okay. Same thing. I'm gonna go eyes to the left, head goes to the left. I want to be able to see my heel out the corner of my eye. I actually like doing diagonals as well, so I'll bring my chin to my right shoulder and look behind me, and then I'll look up and to the left and back down. Think about using like your nose as like a pencil and drawing a straight line, going diagonally, and then we're gonna go the opposite way. So chin the left shoulder and then up and over to the right. And it's interesting the things that I feel when I do this, and how different it feels side to side sometimes, and how similar it feels side to side sometimes. Next, we are gonna do some rocking. So you're gonna go hands and knees. I actually like to go uh wide, pretty wide, so I go further than mat width, so I'll I'll change positions here, and then I'll start coming side to side. So think about like left butt cheek to left heel, right butt cheek to right heel. Really trying to open up the groin, the hips, get some rotation going in through there. Um, also coming forward on your wrists. This one you're not doing today. No, not participating on this one, um, but really trying to get some range of motion. I have a lot of people who don't like doing lots of things on all fours because they don't like having the pressure on their hands, and we don't do a lot of closed chain hand exercises, shoulder exercises where your hand is on the floor, and and so doing push-ups and things like that tend to be really bother people. So, really trying to get some pressure on the wrists and the hands has really helped a lot of people um increase the ability to do a lot of exercises. So uh really like the rocking for that as well. So, really trying to get over up on that wrist has been helpful. No, it's nice, it's a very full body. Yes. Uh, and almost everybody I do this with, they're like, oh, this feels so good. I'm like, why didn't I do it before? They're like, this is so easy. Why did I think about it? Um next, we're gonna stand up. All right. Hold on. Wait. So this is just gonna be a really gentle movement, but all I want you to do is you're just gonna rotate side to side and just let your arm swing. This is sort of like do you remember back in like PE class when elementary school we did things like this and we're like, why are we doing this? Now I know why. It feels good and it just loosens up the body. But you're just gonna be nice and controlled, let your arms swing back and forth, really try to get your body to rotate as much as you can and be relaxed.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

I give this one all the time, and I do this all the time. Like it feels amazing, it just feels good, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah. Um, so that's you just get some get some movement going, loosen things up. So this is gonna be bouncing. Um, if you need something to help you balance, no problem. You can use a wall, you can use a chair, whatever you have, countertop, whatever you need. But I just want you to gently bounce. And you're gonna be on the balls of your feet, and I want you to be rhythmic. I don't want you to slam your feet into the floor. Your heels shouldn't touch. You wanna try to stay on your toes or on the balls of your feet as much as possible, and you're just gonna be rhythmic. Again, try to be nice and loose. You can even let your shoulders jiggle a little bit and just try to get some movement. This helps on so many levels, helps with lymphatic movement, it helps just get circulation going and just get your heart rate up a little bit. Um, it's one of my favorite things to do. So, we're gonna start pretty. Basic here, and we're just gonna do some marching in place. So I just want to get your knee up as high as you can, and literally, I just want it to go as high as you can. Ideally, you get your knee the same height as your hip, but right now, if you can only go here, that's great. We're just gonna get our knees up, and we're just gonna do this for like this. I'm gonna time. You're gonna set a timer, you're gonna do a minute. And if a minute's too hard, you're gonna do 30 seconds. We're just gonna find a place for you to start and just start moving. What this is gonna eventually move to is being able to walk holding weight. Because there's a lot of balance, there's a lot of think about carrying your groceries. We wanna be able to do that for as long as we can. So if you have gallons of milk or something, you're gonna carry those. And if you don't have a lot of space at home, you're just gonna march holding those weights. So that's where we're gonna start. Just march in place. Uh so now we're gonna do a side plank. Um, I like doing side planks on the hand. I know it's harder for some people, um, but scaling it on the hand, I think, is better. You get a lot more information to your shoulder, which is a lot of information to your brain, which um I like. So um hand placement is gonna be, hand is gonna be directly underneath your shoulder. Um I am not as particular where your fingers point. Some people are more comfortable pointing towards the wall, some might be more comfortable pointing uh away from them like that. Um right now I'm not too picky, I just want you to do a plank. So, uh, and we're gonna do the first one modified. So you're gonna keep one knee down and you're gonna keep put the other foot straight out. So you should be in a nice straight line, and if you really want to make things fun, you can bring that top arm up because then you get some um nice back work as well. So you're just going to hold this position, try to be in a nice straight line. Again, we're gonna do this by breaths. Let's do nice three breaths holding this here from the forearm though. Uh you're gonna put your uh forearm down, palm up, palm to the side, I don't really care. Elbow's gonna be right underneath your shoulder. Again, you're gonna kind of have your knee kind of in line with that shoulder, and then you're gonna bring that other foot straight out. So you're gonna be in a nice uh position here. Hold that again. You can bring that other arm up to get some um nice uh scap work as well, but a lot of stabilizing going on on the right side, and then just some strength work and added uh resistance with the left arm up in the air.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Aside from the back, where else should someone expect to feel muscle contraction with these side planks? Core? Core. What about that? All core.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

What about the bottom hip? Bottom hip particularly, um, a lot of people will tend to like sink. So you want to keep that hip up. So, um, and I think it's easier to see that when you're up in an in a full plank where you're here. Full plank would be this. So this would be the next progression. What you don't want is saggy, you want a nice straight line. Again, you can bring that up. If you really want to get spicy, you can bring that top leg up, not for long.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I think for people starting at this beginning, they just thought you were absolutely insane. We're like, I'm sorry, how but no, we want to keep that bottom hip lifted too. It definitely is easier to see with the full side plank, but the modified, we're still thinking this way. Keep the keep that hip up, yep. Great. So what does this do for me in particular?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

This is another full body kind of exercise because you have the back, you have the shoulder working a lot to stabilize, then you get full core because, like you said, you want to get that hip working, keep your stable, nice straight line. Um, so there's glutes, there are hips, it's abs, it's it's full back. Kickstand, good morning. Uh, once again, one foot's gonna be in front of the other, you're gonna push your butt back and you're gonna hold that. So this one you're gonna hold for quite a bit longer. We're gonna go for like five to ten breaths. You really want to start feeling that glute working. Um if you have a friend, you can have them take a band and pull your knee and have that as part of it. We can go over that later. Um, but you're just gonna stay in this position. I don't want you leaning down, you need to keep that nice strong position in the glute, and then you're gonna come back up. So these are gonna be longer reps. This is gonna take a little bit more time, but you're gonna feel a lot of work in that glute. So we're gonna talk about a hinge right now. Um, I have a PVC pipe. If you have a broom, that works. Swiffer. Yeah, all of those work. But what I want you to do is I want you to put the stick, basically the back of your head, in between your shoulder blades and right at your butt crack. And I'm gonna do this first with my feet parallel to each other. And a hinge just means that my butt's gonna come back, my knees stay over my feet, and all this stays connected to the bar. So it's one movement. You don't see that happening, you don't see the bar popping off my back or me hunching over, all of it stays in one plane. So that's all connected. So what we're gonna do, same thing, we're now actually gonna stagger that. So you can see when I come forward, all that stays connected. I'll show you again from here. All that stays connected. So I'm just bringing one foot back again, that keeps me balanced. Most of my weight is on my front leg. I'm gonna push my butt backwards, my knee stays over my foot, and I come back up. So I'm really using right now, my right side glute is getting weighted, and I'm gonna use that to come back up. So the next thing we're gonna do is an incline push-up. You can do it on a wall, you can do it on the bench, you can do it on a chair, you can do it on a table, countertop, whatever you want. Um, just not on the floor. Um, and a push-up is gonna be an athletic position. So it's not elbows out to the side. It's think about like a chest pass in basketball. It's here to here. This is the motion because nothing athletic we do is out here, right? So we w this is this movement. So you want to try to keep your hands closer together. So I'm gonna come here, my hands are gonna be underneath my shoulders, and if this is all you can do, that's great. But we're gonna hold this as like a plank, okay, and isometric. Again, hold that for a breath if that's easy, two breaths. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna come all the way down, and you're gonna hold that position for a breath, and then you're gonna come back up. If that's too hard, I'd have you do it, go to the kitchen counter, you could do it against the wall. The other thing I would have you do, if you can come here and hold that, but you can't push up, which is fine, drop to your knees, and you're just gonna come back up. Because you gain a lot of strength just doing that eccentric part and the eccentric hold. So you're just gonna come down, hold that here, breath. Come down.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

So lowering phase, and then use the legs to help come back or however you need to come back up. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Okay, but as you do this, you build the strength to actually push yourself back up. Okay. So um, I actually really like this. Is also called a negative great way to build strength. So, first movement is gonna be a split squat. Um, and I like doing uh single-sided things, one, because it works on individual sides and we tend to have imbalances, two, it exposes those imbalances and it doesn't let you cheat. So uh we're gonna do a split squat, and what these are gonna be isometrics. So, what we're gonna do is you're gonna get into as wide a stance as you can get. If you're close, it actually makes it harder. So we really kind of want to be pretty wide.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

And then what about like side to side? Like, are your feet narrow right now? Are they like hip distance?

SPEAKER_01 31:06

They are probably about a foot width apart, like my foot's width apart. Got it. Um, you don't want to be straight back behind each other, but you also don't want to be super wide. Um you want to probably about shoulder width apart, really. Um and what you're gonna do is you're gonna drop your back knee straight down towards the floor. I don't want you to touch the floor. You're gonna hold that as long as you can. That looks remarkably hard. Depends on where you are. How long are you gonna stay there? I'm gonna hold that honestly as long as I can. Okay, and I can still get up. So if you can't get up, you held it too long. Okay. Okay. So if you're just beginning and you're just coming off the couch and having been all that active, you're gonna hold try to hold it for a breath. Okay, come back up. Okay. One breath is easy, hold it for two. Okay. Um, I tend to stop counting because people hold their breath. Yeah. So I have people breathe through your exercises. Um, so I I I do most things by breath. So we're gonna come down, hold that for one breath. A nice breath, and then come back up.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

I knew I loved you. I do the same thing with people.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

No one breathes. No one breathes. Or they rush. Or they rush. And if you tell somebody to do it for 10 seconds, it's the fastest 10 seconds they've ever counted in our life. So um, we're gonna try to make it as accessible as we can. Now that was all the way down. Okay. If you can't get all the way down, no problem. We're just gonna come down about halfway, and you're gonna hold that there. Same thing. Big breath and come back up. And I want you when you come back up, think about pushing through that front foot heel and not trying to push off the back. Okay. So you're gonna come down, we're holding, you're gonna push through the front leg to get you back up.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

The front legs really are working leg.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Correct. Okay. Even though it might feel like the back one's shaking, particularly when you're holding it, it's the front one that's doing the work when you're coming back up for sure. Got it. Um so you can kind of play with all of those different, we're just holding it, so you can do as many or as few as you want in different positions from all those different levels. Okay, kind of scale it. Yeah. Um, and even if you want to do this as a you can do it as like a full range, but you're gonna like start pretty high up, hold that as a breath, drop down, hold that as a breath, drop down, hold that as a breath, keep going down, and then come back up. So this is just gonna be like a general movement. So um you're I like using a target usually, um especially if you can't get all the way down to the floor, having something to aim for is super helpful. So um again, you're gonna have one foot in front of the block, the other foot behind it, um, and you want that knee to come down to touch it. So you want that kind of straight underneath your hip. Um, and again, what you're gonna do, you're gonna drop that back knee straight down, touch the block, push through that front foot, come back up. Um, and this you can do more for reps. Um again, we've now scaled up, so doing a set of 10 to 12 to 15 should be easier to do. Where would I start with waiting? I want six good reps without your form failing. And that's the other thing is that when you feel your form is failing, like you can't do anything, that's a hard stop because that's when we get hurt. There's no need to push through bad reps, that's when we get hurt. Um, so I want a minimum of six good reps before you add weight.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Before you add weight. Would you just show us with a set of weights and what it would look like when you're weighing it, just for somebody who maybe is completely new to them? And if you didn't have, don't have these at home, like what do you recommend people use at home?

SPEAKER_01 35:39

For starters, any kind of weight is usually a can of soup, because those are a pound each. Sure. Um, and then you can kind of scale from there because now you know what a pound feels like. You can go to like a gallon of milk or a gallon of water. I don't know how many people drink milk anymore. Right. Um that's about like eight pounds, yeah. Uh between five and eight, I think. Okay. Somewhere around there. So you can start kind of finding things around the house. If you only have one thing, great. Hold it. Sure, hold it in front of you. Hold it in front of you. It doesn't need to you don't need to have it at your sides. It just changes your balance a little bit. But um I'm more concerned that you're adding the weight, not how much of the weight at first. Adding some load. Adding load. Okay. So would you show us, please? Sure. So these are some kettlebells. I like kettlebells for everything I do. Um, but they're easy to hold on to. So um, so again, you can hold them at your side, and again, you're gonna get in that same position. One foot in front of the block, one behind, you're gonna come down, touch, push up. If you want, you can change it up. You can do it, hold it at your shoulders. Same thing. Come down, come up. If you really want to make it spicy, you can go overhead. That is spicy. Again, but again, if you don't have two things, if you have something that's slightly heavier, you can hold it here and just keep it nice and close to you. If you want to make it harder, hold it further away from you.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Let's talk about this little workout that we just went through. And please tell me who this would be the most appropriate for.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

This is like just starting out. Okay. We are we haven't really done much before. This is also um for people who are highly symptomatic as well, because um, like we talked about, um, the muscoskeletal syndrome of menopause and perimenopause, a lot of people do have a lot of joint pain, a lot of muscle pain, so they can't do a lot of the activities that they're used to doing. So being able to do isometrics and like small movement workouts are much better for them. Um, also, people who've lost some collagen and some elasticity and things like that, starting to build that back up so we can move into um more dynamic type workouts, but we need to start, we need to start at the basics. You can't just jump in and go straight in, you end up tearing things, and we don't want that.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

No, injury prevention.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Yeah, we're here to yeah, prevent you from injuries, not increase them.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

And when do you tell people about starting something? Like, what are your recommendations? Would you say like something's better than nothing? Kind of where do you start with people in terms of like a rep scheme? Yeah, like how often, those types of things.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

So for this, I'd probably say every other day to start, just to give yourself some recovery time in between because recovery is a huge part as well. Um, sleep also being part of recovery, which we haven't talked about, but we all know is very important. That's a whole another day. But um making sure you get some recovery in, and um there may be a little bit of soreness, especially since you haven't used some of these muscles before, that's totally normal, but we just don't want pain. So um going in, I think every other day is pretty reasonable, and as that feels good, you can add in another day here and there and do you know, try to build up the four to five days a week. And then once that's easy, then you can move move on.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

We can move on to our next dynamic workout.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

So if you don't know, Bath is gonna come back and we're gonna make this into a series. So we're gonna have a few different, you know, different ones of these different podcasts over the next year where we're gonna take this and we're gonna progress it for you. So keep a lookout for that because we're gonna do this as a progressive series. So if you felt like this is below where you're starting, don't worry, we're gonna come back to it. We gotcha. Doc is showing you how to stretch. He really needs to be involved right now. So, you know, just forgive him. Little snooter. Right. Can you hop down so we can chat? Thank you. Um, but also like just know that like you can start anywhere at any time, and I think it's important that to know and kind of circle back to what we talked about before is that starting earlier in your life before you have these hormonal fluctuations helps, sure. But then, right? But where you're at is where you're at, so let's go. Yeah, any age, right? Any age. So you are being a menace right now. Can you just sit and lay down for a minute? Because we just need to finish this out. When you are starting a program like this, how often would you tell people to do it? How many reps? Like, what is your what's your general recommendation?

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah, so for something like this, particularly if you've just you're just starting out, um, I would say every other day, and let's do like three days a week starting, um, just to kind of get the feel for it. And then you'll also you might have some muscle soreness, which is totally normal for not using muscles that you haven't used before, but we just don't want pain. So if there's anything sharp when you go to the next one, that's a problem. So um knowing the difference between soreness and like sharp shooting pains is important. Um, and then once three feels pretty good, and you want to add an extra day in, great. Let's try to go five days a week, awesome. And then as far as rep schemes, again, um I like for pure strength, and when they're talking about like heavy things, between six and eight reps is a pretty good rep scheme. Um, if that's easy, then we can start adding weight when when when eight is easy. Um, for some of this, I'd probably say actually we're gonna work between the eight and ten rep scheme to start building that base.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Um, and then once we get to more dynamic things, we'll probably drop the rep scheme down a little bit. Make it a little harder, make it a little harder. Okay, yeah. But again, form is the most important thing. So if your form's starting to break down, then you stop.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Perfect, perfectly said. So I do want to announce here that this is we know this is a really kind of basic for those are basic positions and basically kind of coming out of being in a sedentary state. So Beth is gonna be coming back, and we're gonna be making this into a little podcast series. So if you do this and it feels really easy, just keep a lookout. So we're gonna do a couple more building blocks over the course of the next year. And if you've been doing this, you're like, oh, this feels like me, this is where I am. Just realize we're gonna advance you over the next year. So keep a lookout. Now, I'd like to circle back really quick to when in life. We talked briefly about how starting earlier is key. Sure. But what if you are already in the point where you have osteopenia, osteoporosis, if you're postmenopausal? Is there any time that you can't start?

SPEAKER_01 43:11

No, I think there's always a time to start. Um, there's been studies that shown increase of bone mass, increase of muscle mass when you know in elderly and people with all those issues. So um it's been shown that we can make improvements, and if there's ways to make improvements, there's always a reason to start. Perfect. I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Well, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. I've been really enjoyed. This is so much fun working with you. And I didn't really get to work out, but you know, that's okay. I'll next time, next time, next time we will have a third camera person. It's always a one woman show. And so thank you again for being here for another week of menopause on scripted. And please like, follow, subscribe to all of our platforms. If you've been listening to this podcast, Podcast, just realize you can actually watch the exercises on YouTube, so it's a great place to watch the whole thing. Share with your friends, share with your loved ones, and just realize that there's always a starting point. So thank you again for being here. Absolutely. Thanks. Can I ask you just one final thing? Do you have just a final going out thought for our audience that you'd like them to hear?

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Yeah, I think I think kind of like what I said, like if if there's a way to get worse, there's a way to get better. So there's it's kind of a choice.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

There's always hope.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Always hope.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

And yeah, it's a choice. It's a choice. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. And thank you guys for being here for another week. Now I have to end with the boring stuff. While I am a doctor, I am not your doctor. This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. If something in today's episode resonated with you, please bring this to your own healthcare team and self advocate. You always are promoting that. I cannot wait for you to join me on next week's episode of Menopause Unscripted for another hot topic.