EP 60: Strength Training Over 40: How to Train, Recover, and Build a Body That Actually Changes

0:00Hello, and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I am 46, a wife, a boy, mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach helping women over 40 become their best. And today we're talking about how to train to truly transform over 40 because so many women reach their 40s and feel like the rules suddenly change. The workouts that used to work don't hit the same anymore. Fat loss feels harder. And even when you're being consistent, if that's you, I want you to hear this from the start is that you are not broken. Your metabolism isn't ruined. Your body just didn't fail you.

0:33What stopped working is the approach that you were taught because it wasn't designed for long-term success. So today we're going to discuss strength training over 40 and what actually needs to happen for your body to change. I'm going to break down how you should be training, how hard you should challenge your muscles, how you can progress over time, and how you can recover so your body can transform instead of staying stuck. This isn't a quick tips episode. It's a full breakdown so you can finally understand why your body hasn't changed yet and what needs to be different moving forward. So grab your coffee and let's dive right in.

1:04Let's first talk about why most women are lifting but not necessarily seeing the change that they want to in their body. A common thing that I see, especially with women who work out at home or with classes, is that they're using the same dumbbells week after week, the same ones for arm exercises and leg exercises, the same routine that they've been repeating for a very long time. It may be on the surface that looks like consistency, but consistency without progression leads to stagnation and feeling stuck. Your muscles are incredibly smart and adaptive. It's their job to adapt to stress so that the stress becomes easier for the next time.

1:40So if you keep using the same weights, your body adapts quickly, and once it adapts, it stops changing. This is especially important to understand when it comes to using the same dumbbells for arms and legs. The muscles in your lower body are much larger and stronger than those in your upper body. They carry your body weight around all day long. So if you're using the same 10-pound dumbbells for bicep curls and then for squats and lunges, your legs are barely being challenged at all. They're just going through the motions, which is great if you just want to exercise and move. But if your goal is to grow muscle, which it should be, then we're going to have to do something different.

2:18When a muscle isn't challenged, it doesn't grow. It doesn't reshape. It simply stays the same. And this is why so many women feel like I'm lifting, I'm training, but I just don't see the results. I don't look like I spend time in the gym. And that was me for years. And it's not because strength training doesn't work. It's because the stimulus isn't strong enough to force that adaptation. We were taught to believe that the more we sweat, the more we burned, the better our results would be. However, when it comes to growing muscle, which is the goal for better body composition and metabolism over 40, that strategy is flawed.

2:53Holding dumbbells while moving does not equal real strength training that's going to grow your muscle. Initially, if you are new to training, you will see some growth, but as your body adapts and gets stronger, you'll need structure and intention to continue to transform. Once you understand that and you realize that you need intensity to grow, the next question becomes, what does that look like? So let's break it all down and make it really simple to understand so you can take this with you into your gym workouts and start to change your body. First up, let's talk about what intensity actually means because I think it's misunderstood, especially for women.

3:28Intensity does not mean sweating more and it does not mean longer workouts and it definitely doesn't mean just leaving your workout completely exhausted. Intensity means choosing a weight that actually challenges the muscle you are working by the end of the set. This is where many women struggle because for years we were taught to chase the burn, the sweat, and the exhaustion. But those are not reliable indicators of effective strength training. Strength training is about mechanical tension. It's about asking the muscle to work hard enough so that it has to adapt. This is also why lighter weights can still work if you're training at home, but only if they're applied correctly.

4:01And that's where tempo and reps come in. When you slow down and control the weight, especially on the lowering or eccentric portion of the movement, you increase the amount of time that that muscle is under tension. You're not letting gravity do the work for you. You are staying connected to the muscle the entire time. Once the weight itself is challenging and you're controlling the movement, that's when strength training starts to feel very different. And that leads us into one of the most important concepts for results over 40, which is training close to failure. So let's dive into those two topics, which is training close to failure and tempo a little bit more so you can have a better understanding of it.

4:38Now, training close to failure is not about pushing until your form completely falls apart. Training close to failure simply means you are finishing your set when you only have about one or two good reps left in the tank with solid form. Not stopping when it starts to feel like there's a burn or starts to feel uncomfortable, but actually stopping when continuing is truly no longer possible. You'll know that you're close to failure when those last couple of reps feel very heavy and challenging, but you're still in control. And you couldn't do more than one to two additional reps without breaking your form.

5:10That's the point where your muscle gets the message that it needs to adapt. If you stop every set too early, your muscles never receive that signal. And without that signal, muscle doesn't grow and body composition doesn't change. Once you start training in this way, you're going to see and feel a dramatic difference. This is not about working harder and doing more. It's about working smarter and doing better. Now, another key concept that we want to embrace is something called progressive overload. Simply stated, this is just the act of progressing over time with your exercises, meaning you're adding weight, adding reps, slowing your tempo, improving your form, adding sets, etc.

5:47It doesn't always have to mean adding heavier weights. It can also look like adding more reps. If you were doing eight reps last week and you do 10 reps this week, that's progressive overload. It could also mean slowing down your tempo. If you are lowering the weights at a two second tempo last week and this week you did a three second tempo, that's also progressive overload. It could also mean improving your form. You know, that's something that you can progress with always, that you can always improve your form. So that's something you can always continue to work on. Or adding pauses at the hardest part of the rep.

6:20So if you are going into a squat, adding a pause at the bottom of the squat is a way to add progression. But focusing on progressive overload is how we continue to challenge our muscle. If nothing changes week after week, your body stays the same. And this is why so many women over 40 feel like they're stuck. Instead of improving the quality of their workouts, they add more. They add more days, more volume, more stress. Or it might change up their workouts weekly thinking that they need to confuse muscles. But muscles do not need confusion. they need challenge. This is why we need to follow the same program for a set amount of time, do the same exercises, track our sets, and strive to improve week after week.

6:59And on the topic of doing more, we also have to become aware that more can actually hold us back too. The workout will break down the muscle and the rest and recovery is how you're going to help repair and grow it. For most women over 40, three to four days of intentional strength training is more than enough. Sometimes it's actually ideal. When training is done well, your body needs those rest days so that it can grow, adapt, and recover, which brings us to the most overlooked part of transformation over 40, which is recovery. Now, something that I want you to know is that recovery is a requirement, not a reward.

7:34You do not build muscle in the gym. You build muscle when your body has time to fuel and rest and recover from your workouts. This is where so many women get stuck. They train hard, but they never allow recovery. So take rest days. Get proper sleep. Sleep is a non-negotiable. It directly impacts hormones, hunger, cortisol, insulin sensitivity, recovery, and body composition. If sleep is inconsistent, progress will be inconsistent. So make sure you're striving to get 7 to 9 hours. Go to bed on time. Take magnesium glycinate to help calm your mind and your body. Have a cool, dark room. but really make sleep a priority because it's such an underrated health and fat loss.

8:16Now on your rest days, one of my favorite things to help recovery is walking. It's one of the most powerful tools that we have. It supports circulation, fat loss, and stress management without adding more strain to your system, which is really important at this age. We are just a little bit more sensitive to overall stress. So being in the gym, strength training is something we have to prioritize. However, that is a stressor on the body, so we don't want to compound that with stressful activity outside the gym. Walking is an amazing way to help your recovery, support your goals, and keep your body in a good place with stress.

8:50Now, the other thing that's going to support your recovery is what you're eating, your food, your fuel. It matters more than most women realize. You cannot undereat, especially protein, and expect that your body will build muscle, regulate hormones, and recover like it should. Enough calories and enough protein are required for tissue repair and metabolic health. Now, there are times that you can be in a deficit, but those times should be temporary and you should still be prioritizing lifting and protein. I have a full podcast episode on the phases of nutrition and how to execute them. It's episode number six, so definitely listen to that for a full breakdown.

9:26But please know that you have to be willing to embrace eating at maintenance for a set amount of time if you truly want to change your body composition, improve your metabolism, and make fat loss easier and more sustainable. Now, lastly, one of the things that you can also do to support your recovery is to take creatine. It's one of the most researched supplements available, and it's been shown to support strength, muscle retention, recovery, and even cognitive health in women as we age. I take five grams daily, and I use Recharge from Legion, and I love it because it's micronized, it's all natural, it mixes very easily, it digests very easily, and I definitely notice a difference in my performance and my recovery when I use it.

10:05I'll leave a link in the show notes for my favorite, but dial in those other recovery habits as well because those are going to matter as much or more than taking creatine. Well, I hope this episode brought you some clarity about how you should be training to truly transform your body over 40. If you take one thing away from today's episode, please let it be this, is that your body doesn't need more, it needs better. It needs a plan that's focused on muscle, not just burning calories. It needs intention. So if you're using the same weights week after week, your body is probably adapted. And if you're never training close to failure, your body has no reason to change.

10:42And if you're not recovering well, even the best training plan is not going to work for you the way you want it to. You're not too old. It's not too late. You just need a strategy that aligns with building a better metabolism and a better body composition. And I promise when you put this plan into action, you are going to look and feel better than you ever have. I am living proof as well as the hundreds of women that I'm helping inside of my one-on-one and my membership. But I truly hope this episode was helpful. I hope you had some tips that you can bring with you into your journey and workouts.

11:14And if it was helpful, if you enjoyed your time, please take a moment to rate or review. I would be so appreciative and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you have topic ideas, I would love to hear from you. You can comment if you're on YouTube or send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. And if you are ready for support with your own transformation, please check the show notes for information on my membership or my one-on-one coaching. I would love to help you on your journey. But thank you so much for being here. And until next week, keep getting stronger.