EP 64: What You Need to Know About Weight Lifting Over 40

0:01Hello 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. If you're new here, welcome. And if it's not your first time, welcome back. I'm so happy that you're here. And if you are over 40 and your goal is to look and feel your best, make sure you follow so you get all of my content. That's what I help you do is to learn how to build your best body so you can have the best years ahead. And today's episode is an important topic because if you are a woman over 40 trying to look and feel your best, you have likely heard that you have to lift weights.

0:39But how you're lifting weights is going to dramatically impact the results that you are seeing from your efforts. So many times I come across women who are working out endlessly only to see the same body staring back at them month after month. So in today's episode, we are going to dive into all of the things you need to focus on so that your workouts are actually changing your body, adding more lean muscle tissue, helping you become a better fat burner, improving your metabolism, improving your insulin sensitivity, improving your longevity and your health, because that is the goal with muscle.

1:11And that's the power of muscle. But if we aren't strategic with our methods in the gym, we are going to be disappointed with our results. I have been there. I have done that. And I want to save you the grief. If this sounds like you, you are in the right spot. You're going to learn everything that you need to do to make sure that your workouts are effective, changing your body in the best of ways. So let's dive into five tips that you are going to take with you into your weightlifting sessions so that you can make the best of your workouts and actually see physical changes in your body. The first thing that you need to know is that just because you are holding dumbbells does not mean you are going to grow muscle.

1:48I think so many of us hear that we need to be lifting and so we find a class that includes dumbbells. We find YouTube videos that includes dumbbells. Oftentimes, these classes are more or less cardio with dumbbells, and that's not going to necessarily grow muscle. If you are brand new to training, you might see some muscle growth initially, but muscle doesn't happen by accident. It happens through intention, and it requires some specific things for that muscle to continue to grow. Things like structure, progression, and getting close to failure. So when I say structure, All that means is that you are following one program for a set amount of weeks and then striving to get better week after week.

2:28It sounds boring. It sounds like, how is this going to work? But that's the only way that you're going to actually know if you are progressing, know if you are working hard enough and actually seeing that progression over time. If you're constantly checking your workouts, you're never going to know if you are truly, in fact, getting stronger with one specific exercise. For example, if you are doing a shoulder press week one, you might only get eight repetitions with 15 pounds. But by week four, you're going to probably get somewhere between 10 to 12 repetitions with that same weight. That is progression.

3:01That's progressive overload. And that is what helps to stimulate muscle. Muscle doesn't need confusion. It needs structure. It needs progression. And it needs intensity. We talked about structure. Let's talk about intensity. because intensity does not mean that we are sweating more, that we are bringing our heart rate up. It looks very different. What I mean by intensity is that you are using a weight that's challenging enough for your muscle to reach close to failure with the reps given in that specific exercise. So let's say, again, going back to shoulders, let's say that your set requires that you lift eight to 10 repetitions.

3:36The weight that you choose should get you close to failure within eight to 10 reps. if rep eight looks the same as rep one and you are not reaching that intensity or getting close to failure you're not going to see the changes that you want to so you want to make sure that the intensity is there that you're choosing a weight that's challenging for your shoulders this is also why combination movements where you are squatting and then going into a shoulder press are not going to be effective when we're talking about muscle growth the muscles in your legs your your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes are much larger and are going to require a heavier load to stimulate muscle growth.

4:13So combination moves are not the go-to if your goal is to grow more muscle and that should be your goal if you want to look and feel your best over 40. We talked about structure, we talked about intensity, and now let's talk about progression because that's also important and it's key when we're talking about muscle growth. Progression simply means that you are improving over time, meaning you are adding reps, you are adding weight, you are improving your form. Sometimes you're adding sets or pauses. All of those are ways to progress in your training

4:42Shauna:so that you are continuing to provide that stimulus or that signal for the muscle to grow. When you're using weight that's close to that threshold where you are failing, that's sending the signal to your body that, hey, we need to get stronger. So your muscle fibers will break down while you're in that workout, then during rest and recovery and eating your protein, that's when your muscles are going to rebuild, get stronger. Next session, you go back and that's how you can test to see if the muscle is in fact stronger. And that's how you go along. Muscle building really does require structure, intensity, and progression.

5:16When you account for those three things, when you follow one program for a set amount of weeks, you use the right intensity, you apply the right

5:24Shauna:progression, you're going to see amazing results with your body. Structure makes sure that you are training the right muscles. Intensity makes sure that the muscle's actually working. And progression keeps that challenge increasing over time so that you continue to make progress. This is the difference between exercising and training. Exercising is just something that's going to get your heart rate up and burn some calories versus training, which is structured, it's intentional, and it's what's going to help you build muscle and change your body. Now, point number two is kind of following on the same lines as point number one, but that is that lifting is about building, not burning.

5:59And this is a hard concept to accept and to apply because

6:04Shauna:the workouts that we were taught in the 90s, in the 2000s, were all about burning as many calories as possible, getting our heart rates up. You did not feel like you had a good workout unless you were pummeled into the ground, crawling out of the gym. That's when you felt like, okay, I did a good workout. Strength training looks and feels very different. We are not trying to get our heart rates up. We are not paying attention to how many calories we are burning. We are trying to build muscle. We are trying to connect with the muscle that we're working in that exercise, use intensity, bring it close to failure, and then rest in between sets so that we can repeat and perform at our best for the next set.

6:43Shauna:That is what muscle-centric training looks like. It looks very different. It feels very different than those high intensity workouts that we are so used to, but they're going to yield much better results when we're talking about improving your body composition, adding more muscle to your frame, adding more strength to your ligaments and your joints and improving all of these metabolic and health factors for the years ahead. So it's critical that we understand how to execute these workouts so we get all the benefits, the aesthetic and the health ones. Your workouts while you're strength training are not going to look the same as those old P90X workouts or those bootcamp classes that you might take.

7:19Shauna:Those burning type workouts are meant to burn a ton of calories, get you really sweaty. They're great if you just want to stay active. Strength training, however, is intentional and it's slower. It includes rest between your sets so the muscle can recover and then perform its best for the next set. That's how you create meaningful tension on the muscle that's actually going to change the shape of your body. And this might take some getting used to because an effective strength training workout is going to look and feel different than if you were to do those high calorie intense training sessions.

7:47Shauna:But again, we're not here to burn. We are here to build. And when we build, we are going to have better metabolisms. We are going to be more insulin sensitive. We are going to protect our cognitive health, our metabolic health. There are so many benefits to having more muscle. So that is the focus in the gym, not burning, but building and building requires structure. It requires that you exert effort. You are working hard, but in a different way. You are focusing on just the muscles that are in those exercises, using the right weight so that they are challenging for you, getting close to failure, resting between sets so that you can perform your next set at your best, and then striving to improve week after week.

8:26Shauna:It sounds boring, it sounds basic, but that is what produces exciting changes. Now on to our third point, which is more is not always more, especially over 40. And going back to that 90s mentality of working out and dieting, more meant better, right? When we restricted calories more, we saw the scale go down more. When we added more cardio, we saw our pant size go down. So we equated more as being better, but more is not better, especially over 40. And it wasn't good then. We just had hormones in play that were protecting us. But now as our hormones are shifting, we are more sensitive to cortisol.

9:02Shauna:We are more sensitive to stress load. And strength training itself is a stress load. So we want to make sure that we are balancing that with recovery. So you don't need five to six days in the gym. Three to four days of intentional strength training is all you need. And then you want those other days of rest and recovery so that the muscles can rebuild and come back stronger. Like we said, in your strength training sessions, you are asking your muscles to push to their limit. They are tearing down, those fibers are breaking, and then they need that time to recover and rebuild in between so that you are actually growing that muscle and able to progress that next workout.

9:38Shauna:Without doing that, you are going to stunt yourself with growth. You're not going to see the results that you want to. So more is not more over 40. Get in the workout, get intentional with your strength training, lift to failure, follow progression, and then allow rest and recovery. And on those rest days, you don't have to be inactive. You can definitely include activity to help your recovery, but we want to make sure it's not adding to our stress load. So like I said, strength training is a stressor. It's a good stressor, but it's one that we have to prioritize. So the other activity that we pair along with it has to be complimentary and has to help us recover.

10:14Shauna:Things like walking or hiking, you know, you can even do an incline walk. Those are great ways to help your recovery and stay active at the same time. Remember that progress is not going to come from doing more. It's going to come from doing better and better means optimal recovery. Now on to point number four, which is nutrition has to match the goal. Protein is going to be key here. If our goal is to preserve and or build lean muscle tissue, our body needs those amino acids to rebuild those muscles. We're breaking them down in the gym and then we're allowing recovery and giving our bodies protein so that they can rebuild and repair that muscle.

10:49Shauna:No protein, no repair, no rebuild, no progress. The other thing that's important is calorie intake. So depending on your goals, you need enough calories to perform your best. If your goal is fat loss, you need a calorie deficit, but you also want to make sure that you are prioritizing protein and strength training so that your body takes the energy that it needs in that deficit from fat and not from lean muscle. That is really critical. When you're losing lean muscle in a deficit, that's only going to set you up for a slower metabolism and a slower metabolism. like more or less that skinny fat look.

11:25Shauna:I have been there. I have done that. I've watched the scale go down only to feel softer at the end. This is why we want to prioritize protein. And we also want to make sure that we are not living in a calorie deficit. Calorie deficit serves one purpose, and that is to lose body fat. But your body will perform and be optimized to grow muscle when you're in maintenance. So it's important that you do spend time in maintenance. Use calorie deficits as a tool to lose body fat, but then always go back to maintenance. If this whole idea of phasing your nutrition to achieve your goals is new to you, I have two episodes that I've recorded, episode six and episode seven, that go through the nutrition phases for body composition changes and how to reverse diet.

12:12Shauna:I will leave those in the show notes so that you can go back to those and listen to them because it's important to have a concept of what all of this is. But being in maintenance is magical. Think of calories as energy, right? They are truly what fuels your body. And if you listen to my last episode, we talked about thinking like an athlete and not a dieter. We want to optimize our performance in the gym. We're not there to burn. We're there to build. So we want strength. We want energy. We want to perform our best. And enough calories and enough protein is what's going to help us do that. So we want to make sure we are spending time having enough food.

12:50Shauna:When you're in maintenance, you are going to help your hormonal health. You're going to help your metabolic health. You're going to sleep better. You're going to move better. Your strength is going to be better. And oftentimes, that is when your best body is built, is when you are in maintenance phases. That is when everything is optimized to grow muscle. So that is an important part of your journey. Fat loss is a temporary phase that serves one purpose, but then go into maintenance so that you have enough calories. and proteins to support growing more muscle, which is the key to changing your body over 40.

13:23And now on to our fifth and final point of this episode, and that is that muscle growth and changing your body composition requires time. It's going to take longer than you want to, but it's going to be worth it.

13:34Shauna:Going back to the idea of those fad methods that maybe created quick changes on the scale, the ones that we drop calories quite a bit, we cut out food groups, So we were in the gym for hours at a time. Maybe they created some quick scale changes, but that was likely water loss and muscle loss. That is why once those programs ended, the weight came right back. And now it's even harder to get off because you've lost muscle tissue. I think so many women find themselves stuck at this stage because we have been following this poor fitness advice for decades. We were taught to just diet and diet harder when it didn't work.

14:11Shauna:We never really were taught to fuel our bodies, to change our body composition, to help our metabolism so that they thrived and didn't crash. We have spent years on yo-yo dieting, years just doing workouts that were burning calories, but never really building up our bodies. When you build up your muscle tissue, when you build up your metabolism, your body composition, you get a vessel that's working for you and not against you. That is the difference. There is a huge difference. When you have a situation where you have spent years yo-yo dieting and focused on just burning calories with your workouts, it's likely that that led to muscle loss.

14:49Shauna:Now you compound that with age-related muscle loss, and we have metabolisms that are slow, that are sluggish, and that are not responsive when we want them to be. When we want to lose fat, it feels like an uphill battle. This is why it's so important to have strategy, have structure that's going to build up your metabolism instead of break it down. So the things that we did in our 20s are not going to work for us in our 40s. They only worked then because we had the hormones to support. If we had taken this approach in our 20s, we probably would be in a much better position now in our 40s. But it's never, ever, ever too late.

15:23Shauna:And that's what this channel is for. It's so that you can understand how to work with your body instead of against it, how to build up your metabolism so that you can see fat loss and have it stick around for good so that you never need another diet. You never need another program. All of the habits that I teach and that I talk about are things that you can build into a lifestyle so that your results are forever. I know it's tempting to chase those quick wins, but trust the process. Understand that true change with your body composition will require some investment of time and patience, but it's going to be well worth it.

15:59Shauna:And that sums up today's episode. But I hope this gives you a better idea of what you should be focusing on when you are going into the gym. Remember, the gym is to build, not to burn. So we want to make sure we have structure, we have intensity, we have progression, we're giving ourselves enough protein and calories, and we're giving ourselves enough time and patience to see the beautiful changes that we want in our bodies. Trust me, it's possible. I'm living proof and I'm helping hundreds of women inside my one-on-one coaching and my membership. If that is something that you need, if you are a woman struggling on her fitness journey over 40 and you need help, please check the show notes because you can always find ways to work with me there.

16:37But thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I truly hope you found it helpful.

16:42Shauna:If you did, I'd be so thankful if you left a rating or a review. It really does mean the world to me and it helps the show grow and find more women like you who need help too. And if you have show ideas, make sure you comment. I would love to hear, or you can DM me on Instagram. But until next week, keep getting stronger, and I will see you in the next episode.