Here is the issue:  During the menopause transition, women lose bone and muscle, while gaining fat at a higher rate. Then, once we are post-menopausal, that accelerated rate of bone and muscle loss continues for years.

What this means: Our health takes a hit during this natural phase in life.  We are left with an increased risk of heart disease, and our bones and muscles are set up for osteoporosis and frailty, which decreases quality of life as we age.

Why does this happen?  Our hormones are fluctuating in a way that not only accelerates these changes, but also mess with how we feel, making it tough to dial in the self-care we know we need.

What can we do about it?  Exercise tops the list of things under our control to stop and reverse these changes.  

What’s the catch?  We need to be laser focused on maximizing our sweat-time to get the best results possible.  Light workouts like walking, pickle ball, dance classes, and zone 2 training are great for ensuring regular movement, which is vital for heart health and enjoying life, but to get the muscles and bones to step up to the challenge, they need a little extra push.  

The muscles of our lower back can predict our overall health.  The stronger the muscles of your lower back, the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis, see the study here

Did you just get worried?  Back problems due to sedentary lifestyles, tight hamstrings, weak abdominals, and weak or imbalanced gluteal muscles are very common amongst women over 40.  

What is the good news?  Regular resistance training can stop and reverse age related breakdown of bone and muscles, see study here where subjects participated in resistance training 3x weekly for 3-4 months and were able to make significant changes.  Essentially, if we aren’t using it, we are losing it.  

READY?  Here’s how!

Pick efficient, multi-joint exercises.  By choosing 4-7 exercises that use many muscles at a time, your workouts can hit everything in a quick and efficient session.  This allows muscles to become good at working together while sparing your joints.  Some exercises are better than others, study here .

Exercise All-Stars

1. Plank

The goal old “elbows and toes.”  This exercise engages every muscle in the body from head to toe.  

Tips on nailing form:

• Keep shoulders drawn back and down to avoid holding from the neck
• Tuck you tailbone as you draw abdominals in as if you want your bellybutton to go toward your spine
• Engage your front thighs, as if you want to bring your kneecaps toward you hips

To work up:

• Start with elbows under shoulders and legs at hip width
• Lift your hips to shoulder height, keeping knees on the floor.  
• Follow all of the tips on nailing form to hold from the abdominals and stay out of the neck.
• In time, curl one toe under and bring one leg to straight for a count of ten. Switch legs.

Extra Credit:

• Take your plank to the next level by bringing your feet closer to one another and then lifting one foot off of the ground to hold your plank on three points of contact rather than four.  This will require balance and a deeper contraction in the core.  Only add this once you can lift the leg without losing form. 
• Once you are a super planker, try a pushup.  Keep all of your plank form and add that chest work too!

2. Back Extension

This is a perfect movement to pair with a plank.  Lying on your front and lifting your body away from the floor like a baby in tummy time engages all of the muscles in your back body.  

Tips on nailing form:

• Lift your chest up and forward, pulling your shoulder blades toward your back pockets, as if you are the prow of a ship to keep work out of your neck and on the erector muscles and lats along the length of your spine.
• Put mental energy into lifting your lower half by strongly contracting your gluteals to lift your thighs off of the floor and keep the work out of your lower back.
• Keep legs straight at the knee, lifting the legs as one long piece using the gluteals.

To work up:

• Start by lifting only your upper half while your legs stay down, and then only your legs, while your upper body stays at rest.  This will require the gluteals to be the anchor each time. 
• In time you can bring the arms to shoulder level and even extend them forward like diving into a pool to increase the difficulty of this movement.

Extra Credit:

• At the bottom of your back extension, try to fully turn off every muscle in your body.  This allows you to practice releasing held tension in your back.  This mental connection is important to practice as we often hold tension in the muscles of our upper back and need to learn how to turn them off. 

** superset a minute of planking and a minute of back extensions for 3-5 sets for an excellent equipment-free, full-core workout that really helps nail all vital posture muscles.

3. Deadlift

There are many ways to deadlift.  My favorite is the Romanian Deadlift.  This is really a “hip hinge”. 

Tips on Nailing Form:

• Feet are hip width, knees mostly straight but not locked, shoulders back and down, lifting the chest into the best possible posture.  Maintain all of this while hinging at the hip.
• Avoid rounding shoulders as you hinge forward or bending knees into a squat. 
• Imagine holding the muscles in your core as if you are holding a plank.   

To work up:

• How far forward you hinge will depend on the flexibility of your hamstrings.  Do not get extra range by rounding the spine forward.  
• Start with light weights and add from there. 

Extra Credit:

• Adding weight to this exercise will keep it tough.  Ensure that you work up slowly and never pull from the lower back.

4. Lunges

A lunge works every muscle of the lower body – quads, hamstrings, and gluteals – and even incorporates balance into the equation.  There are so many ways to lunge: Front alternating lunges, walking lunges, reverse lunges, split squats, Bulgarian split squats….etc.

Tips on nailing form:

• Look maintain a 90 degree angle on the front and back knee as you lower into the lunge.  Avoid moving the front knee forward over the front foot.

To work up:

• Start with body weight only to establish form and balance.  Feel free to hold onto a wall or countertop as your muscles build strength and become more coordinated.

5. Squats

This powerful move also hits all muscles in the lower body – quads, hamstrings, and gluteals.  It is a functional movement; we all need to get our bodies up and down!

Tips on nailing form:

• Keep weight in the heels and reach back through the tailbone as hips lower down into the squat.  Avoid allowing the knees to push forward over the toes.  
• The wide squat is a great alternative to get the benefits of a squat despite knee issues. 

To work up:

• Use a chair to sit down and stand up repeatedly.  As it becomes easier, just touch the seat lightly without sitting before standing up. 
• Start with body weight only to establish form and balance.  Feel free to hold on to a wall or countertop as your muscles build strength and become more coordinated.

Resistance training musts:

1. Progressive overload. Make sure you are working hard enough to overload the muscle.  The only way the body will become stronger, is if you push yourself so that the bones and muscles pay attention and decide to get stronger for next time.  Start with body weight exercises to nail form, slow them down to make them harder using time under tension, then grab some weights.
2. Rest.  Alternating hard workouts with days of rest or easy, fun workouts will allow time for muscles and bones to get stronger.  Going hard every day leads will result in weaker workouts overall and little progress. 
3. Fuel your workout.  Be sure to come into the workout with some energy on board.   Especially for women in perimenopause, this will help decrease already-high levels of cortisol and allow fat to be used for fuel during the workout.  Once your sweat session is over, eat a dose of protein to flip the metabolic switch to rest and repair.  Trust that this will make you stronger and starving your workouts will result in weakness, injury and hormone dis-regulation.

Do everything in your power to maintain and build muscle.  Having muscle tissue and all of the work that goes into making it via exercise and nutrition, will have the biggest influence over how you age.  Get after it!

If you are over being frustrated by your body, are tired of being tired, and feel like everything you do makes things worse rather than better, it is time to learn how to take care of your body NOW!

Let me help. 

If you are deep in the Perimenopause transition, you need to REWRITE YOUR SELF-CARE MANUAL with How to Powerup Peri/menopause: the Complete Guide 

Or 

If you are Perimenopausal or menopausal and feel like you are constantly struggling with inflammation, bloating, exhaustion, constipation, and sudden weight gain.  It is likely you suspect it is due to what you are eating, but don’t know what or how to change.  You need the Powerup and Reset Program.

In perimenopause and menopause our hormones are totally different, so our approach needs to be different too.

Best news is, the approach we need does NOT include:

• Punishing amounts of exercise
• Starvation
• Unrealistic goals that take you way out of your comfort zone.
• Fasting
• Keto

It DOES include:

• Feeding ourselves the BEST foods on a regular basis to assure out body it is fed and cared for.
• Editing our exercise to make it efficient and effective so we don’t waste time spinning our wheels.
• Learning to apply easy and strategic self-care to help our hormones settle down.