EP 82: What It Actually Takes to Get Toned After 40 (It's Not What You Think)

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her Fitter Better and Stronger Over 40. I'm your host and coach Shauna. I am 47, a wife, a boy, mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach helping women over 40 become their best. If you're a woman over 40 showing up in the gym, you're working hard, and you're still not seeing that tone-defined body that you want, this is for you. Today, I'm going to explain you exactly how to train if your goal is to build a lean, sculpted physique after 40. By the end of this, you're going to understand the key principles that actually drive muscle growth, how to structure your workouts for better results, and what you should focus on if you finally want to see that definition you've been working so hard for.

0:35And here's something that I see happen over and over again with myself and with my clients. When women start applying the principles that I'm going to share with you today, they stop spinning their wheels. They start getting stronger. They start losing inches. Definitions start showing up in their arms, their shoulders, their waistline, their glutes, and their legs. Their clothes start to fit differently. their confidence grows. So let's start with the first thing that we need to clear up. What does being toned actually mean? Because if we're chasing the wrong goal, we're going to use the wrong strategy.

1:03The truth is muscles do not tone. I know that's probably not what you've heard, but muscles don't become toned. They don't become lean or long. They don't tighten. Muscles can do two things. They can grow or they can shrink. That's it. Physiologically, being toned means having enough muscle to create shape and then having a low enough body fat percentage to actually reveal that shape. That's what toned is. And that's where so many women find themselves frustrated because they spend years focusing on losing weight, trying to get smaller, trying to eat less, trying to burn more calories with their workouts, when the thing they're actually missing is muscle.

1:35I know this because I spent years doing exactly that. For years, I thought the answer was simply to work harder. I did classes, boot camps, P90X, Insanity, Circuit workouts, High Rep workouts, Superset, basically anything that promised to make me sweat and burn more calories. And maybe you can relate. You leave the gym exhausted. You're drenched in sweat. Your watch says you burn hundreds of calories. So you assume that means you're getting closer to the body that you want. But here's the problem. Most of those workouts are designed to burn calories, not to build muscle. They're great at making you sweaty and burning calories, but that's not necessarily going to create shape and definition.

2:11The body doesn't build muscle because you're sweaty and burned a ton of calories. It builds muscle because you give it a reason to adapt. And that's what brings us to our first principle that actually matters if your goal is to build a toned, sculpted physique. Mechanical tension. Simply explained, it's just the amount of force a muscle has to produce against resistance. In other words, challenging your muscle with enough weight or load that it has to work hard. When that happens, your body receives a signal that says we need to get stronger. And that's where muscle growth begins. Not from endless calorie burning, not from trying to leave every workout completely drenched in sweat, but from challenging your muscles with enough resistance so that they have a reason to adapt.

2:52This is why traditional compound lifts like Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts, leg press, rows, pulldowns, shoulder presses are so effective. They allow you to load your muscle properly, create significant mechanical tension, and progressively get stronger over time. This is also why combination exercises like a squat into a shoulder press or a lunge with a bicep curl are less effective if your goal is to build muscle. The limiting factor usually becomes the smaller muscle group, so your shoulders and your biceps are going to fatigue well before your legs have even been challenged. As a result, neither muscle group receives the optimal stimulus for growth.

3:26That's not to say those exercises are bad. They can be great for conditioning or to burn some calories, but if your goal is to build shape, definition, and a more sculpted physique, you will get better results by focusing and challenging one primary muscle group at a time, challenging it enough so that it has to adapt. And this was something that used to trip me up for years. I knew I needed to lift weights, but never really challenged my muscle enough, which brings us to principle number two, intensity. This was something I had to learn myself as well. For years, I thought I was training hard enough simply because I was showing up consistently, completing my workouts, burning a lot of calories.

3:59What I eventually came to realize was there's a difference between going through the motions with a workout and actually challenging your muscle. Sometimes we'll choose weights that feel comfortable, and that's completely normal, especially if we are just learning how to do an exercise or unsure how hard we should be pushing. But if you finish a set and feel like you could have easily done another five or more reps, that muscle has not received the right stimulus to grow. The muscle needs a reason to adapt, and this is where a concept called RIR can be really helpful. This just stands for reps in reserve, and it's a simple way of measuring how many reps you have left before you're actually reaching failure.

4:33For example, if you finish a set and feel like you could have done another five reps, that's five RIR. Or if you finish a set and feel like maybe you could have squeezed out maybe one or two more reps, that's one or two RIR. For most muscle building exercises, you want your working sets to be somewhere between zero to two RIR. In other words, maybe one to two reps left in the tank. Many of the muscle fibers responsible for growth are recruited when that muscle is pushed close to failure. One thing you should start asking yourself is how many reps you think you had left in your set. If the answer is five or more, it's probably time to increase the weight.

5:07If the answer is one to two, then you're likely right in the spot where you need to be to grow muscle. And you know that you're going to be close to failure because your rep speed will naturally decrease and all of a sudden the weight's going to feel two times heavier. That's when you know you're in the sweet spot. A good way to practice this is to go to true failure with a safe exercise, something like bicep curls. I want you to curl until your arm can physically not come back up so that you get the idea and the concept of what zero RIR looks and feels like. Then you can bring that with you into your workouts.

5:38And again, you don't always have to go to true all-out failure, but getting one to two reps shy of failure is a good rule of thumb. This single concept alone will completely change how effective your workouts are. Now, once you're training with enough intensity, the next principle that we want to apply is progression or progressive overload. And that's where tracking comes in. For years, I just went to the gym, did whatever workout felt good that day. There was no plan. There was no structure. No way to know if I was in fact getting stronger. But muscle isn't built with random workouts. It's built through structure and progression.

6:09Your body adapts when you ask it to do more than it did the week before. If you're lifting the same weights that you did six months ago, your body has no reason to change. This is where progressive overload comes in. This simply means we are gradually asking more of your muscles over time. So maybe that means adding a little bit of weight. Maybe you perform one more rep. Maybe you improve your form. Maybe you control the movement better or have a slower tempo. Small improvements repeated consistently over time create major changes in your physique. And the easiest way to know whether you're progressing is to track your workouts.

6:40You can use a notebook. They have a few options on Amazon. You can use a free app. But use something because if you're not tracking, you're guessing. And if you're guessing, it's going to be very difficult to know whether you're actually progressing. and progression with strength is a great sign that you are in fact growing muscle. Now, another key principle with growing muscle over 40 is volume. And this was another thing that completely changed my results. You know, more is not always better, but for years I thought a great workout meant lots of exercises, four sets of everything, high reps, supersets, finishers, leaving the gym completely exhausted.

7:13Today, my workouts look very different. Most days I'm doing four to six exercises, two to three working sets. I'm focusing on execution, focusing on intensity focusing on progression research consistently shows that muscle growth can be achieved with moderate amounts of volume when effort is high and progression is present 10 to 20 quality working sets per muscle group per week is enough the goal isn't just to do more endlessly the goal is to do enough to stimulate growth and then allow yourself to recover from it which brings us to our next principle that so many of us overlook and that's recovery you don't build muscle while you're training you build it after training the workout is the stimulus and recovery is where adaptation occurs.

7:52That's why sleep matters. That's why stress management matters. And that's why rest days matters. The process is simple. Challenge the muscle, recover, adapt, repeat. So if you miss the recovery piece, you're missing half of the equation. Three to four proper strength training days are all you need to create real physical changes with your body composition. And on those other days, allow some time for recovery and repair. You don't have to stay inactive during your rest days. Definitely keep your body moving. You can walk. You can do some mobility work. You can do some light cardio exercise, but make sure it's complementary and helping you recover versus adding more stress load.

8:28One thing that's important to understand and to respect is that after 40, when our hormones start to change, we are more sensitive to stress load. Weight training is a stressor, but it's a good stressor. We just want to make sure that we're balancing our lifestyle to support recovery and not compound that stress. That's why walking and weight training are an elite combo for women over 40. It ticks all of the boxes when it comes to cardiovascular health, growing more muscle, getting lean. It's going to help you look better. It's going to help you feel better. And your body will thank you for it.

8:55Now, before we wrap up, I do want to briefly touch on nutrition because even the best training program cannot outwork a diet that isn't supporting your goals. You will not build muscle on fumes. yet so many of us hold onto that old idea of eating as little as possible, training fasted, and trying to stay in a calorie deficit year-round. And then we wonder why our body doesn't change. Muscle requires fuel. It requires energy. It requires protein. Protein provides those building blocks that your body uses to repair and build muscle tissue after training. A good rule of thumb is to try to get about one gram per pound of your goal body weight.

9:29But it's not just about protein. It's also about eating enough overall to support your performance, your recovery, and your muscle growth. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that the leanest, strongest version of me was not built by eating the least amount of food. It was actually built by fueling my body more, building more muscle, improving my performance, and strategically using fat loss phases when appropriate. I've seen the same thing happen with my clients as well. When they stop focusing on fat loss and start to focus on building muscle, tracking their workouts, progressing their lifts, and fueling properly, they start seeing changes they didn't think was possible.

10:01They're losing inches, their waist gets smaller, their shoulders become more defined. their glutes get stronger and lifted. Their clothes start to fit in the best of ways. And they see those changes because they're working smarter, not harder. This is what I teach, preach, and practice. At 47, I train three to four days a week, spend far less time in the gym than I used to. I eat more than I used to. And I have more muscle definition now than I did in my 20s because I'm finally focusing on the things that matter. So if you feel frustrated because you're spending so much time in the gym, but you still don't have that tone-defined look that you're after, here's what I want you to remember.

10:35Getting toned after 40 is not about doing more. It's not about sweating more. It's not about starving yourself. It's about building up your body and your metabolism. That means challenging your muscles with proper strength training, training with enough intensity, progressively getting stronger over time, recovering properly, and supporting your body with enough protein and nutrition. That's the exact formula that has transformed my physique, and it's exactly what I've seen transform the physiques of hundreds of women over 40. Women who stopped chasing calorie burns, started chasing strength. Women who stopped focusing on weight loss and started to focus on body composition.

11:08Women who didn't think that their body was capable of change anymore. But it is. It is for them and it is for you. Now you know those principles too. I hope you start implementing some of these tips. If you do, please let me know how it goes. And if you want a program implementing all the principles that we just talked about, check out all the details on my Strong Her Summer Challenge where you get a structured progressive workout program, built-in tracking, video demonstrations of each exercise, a supportive community with women over 40 all working towards the same goal, and so much more. Or if you need a more personalized approach and you want to work one-on-one with me, you can also find the link to apply for that in the description.

11:45Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I genuinely hope you found it helpful. If you did, please take a moment to rate or review the podcast. I'd be so appreciative. And if you have episode ideas, DM me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. And until next week, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode