#79 - Lifting Heavy: What it means to lift heavy & Why you need to do it

Are you intimidated by the idea of lifting heavy weights? Think you might get injured or that it's just not for you? In this episode of the podcast, we’re busting myths and breaking barriers about what lifting heavy really means for women in midlife.

In this episode, I discuss:

• What "lifting heavy" truly means for women in midlife
• The importance of lifting heavy for your unique strength level
• How to avoid the comparison game and focus on your own progress
• The surprising benefits of lifting heavy for everyday activities
• Real-life examples of progressing from light to heavy weights

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Episode 49: Why You Need to Lift Heavy – Quick Lesson in Muscle Biology
• Episode 57: Why Cardio with Weights is Not the Same as Strength Training

Enjoy the show!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Lifting Heavy
• 0:37 Understanding What Lifting Heavy Means
• 1:16 The Importance of Lifting Heavy for You
• 2:02 Avoiding the Comparison Game
• 2:44 The Role of Hormones/Genetics in Muscle Growth
• 4:40 Practical Benefits of Building Muscle
• 6:03 Personal Experiences and Examples
• 9:16 Encouragement in Lifting Heavy
• 14:09 Additional Resources and Programs
• 15:43 Conclusion

Transcript

#79 - Lifting Heavy

Welcome to 40+ fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And this time we are talking about Lifting heavy, you hear it all over the place you need to be lifting heavy in midlife and it looks and sounds scary.

For sure you're going to get hurt if you're lifting heavy, I'm not very strong so should I be lifting heavy? Shouldn't I be lifting light? So I wanted to discuss this topic of what lifting heavy is and what it looks like.

All right. So you see influencers online all the time and they're talking about lifting heavy and they might be, you know, hip thrusting a barbell, which has got many plates on it, more than what you weigh on both sides of the bar. And they're talking about, Hey you need to lift heavy and you're thinking to yourself, Oh my God if I tried to do that, like break myself for sure there's no way I can do that.

But the thing about lifting heavy that you need to understand is that what we're talking about, all of us who are trying to get a women in midlife to start weight training in an effective way to improve our strength, our health, our quality of life over the longterm is we want you to lift heavy for you.

So it's always lifting heavy for you and what your heavy is is different from what my heavy is and what your heavy is today is different from what it's going to be a month from now after you've been weight training or even a year from now after you've been weight training.

So don't let the fact that somebody else is lifting these huge amount of weights scare you into thinking that's what it means to be lifting heavy because that is not, I mean, that's heavy for them, and so the comparison game is really I think a problem when we're talking about lifting heavy, because you you really can't compare where you are to where somebody else is because of things like genetics.

 Some people are just stronger. Some people have genetics which allows their muscles to show better and they're further along their journey. There may also be some hormonal differences. I mean at this age, because estrogen is the one that is promoting and supporting muscle growth and maintenance in women, if you're at a point like post menopause where your estrogen levels are really down or flatlined really, then it is going to be harder to put on muscle than it would have for even for you, you know, 20 years ago.

So don't play the comparison game. Just get started with where you are today.

And the reason that you want to be lifting heavy for you is that, that is the only way that you're going to trigger your body to put on more lean muscle. Muscle is an expensive tissue. Your body is not just going to sit there and be like, Oh, you know, I think I'll just Add some muscle to Lynn's body today.

It's not going to do that. It's not going to be like, yeah, let's just slap this really expensive stuff on here for no good reason. No, it is not going to do that. Your body we are still in the bodies that Basically has not evolved since caveman time. So it is a body which tries to preserve and conserve energy.

So it's going to put on muscle only if you somehow indicate to it that you need more muscle. And because I mean, to be honest, in our everyday life, we don't need a whole lot of muscle. So. You're not triggering your body to put on more muscle. So we're kind of faking it by going into the weight room.

We're, we're like putting it into an artificial situation where we are loading it more so that you will build muscle. And okay, you might say, okay, well, if we don't need this in our everyday life, then why are we even doing this? But actually you do. The thing is that when you're just walking around every day you don't necessarily need the extra muscle, but then when you pick up your groceries you do. Or when you need to move your suitcase, or put something in the overhead compartment, or, you know, you're gardening and you're picking up a heavy bag of dirt.

I had a really interesting situation come up when I hurt my, well, I didn't hurt my knee, but when my knees started acting up this past winter, it's due to age wear and tear from age. And so like I was in a situation where I had to do one legged squats, basically to get on and off the toilet.

And I was thinking to myself that, wow, when you can only use one leg to lift yourself off and on, it is a little bit of a different ball game, right? And I was really glad that that one leg was pretty strong. And then of course I have pretty strong arms to help myself up and down. as well. So, I mean, there are reasons that we want to be carrying as much muscle as we can.

Plus, there are all the other reasons why muscle is beneficial. I won't go into them in this podcast. I've talked about them in other ones.

And I'll just give myself as an example that when I started lifting, I had been going to body pump classes and talked about this before and I was doing bicep curls with five kilos and that was as heavy as I could do. And when I started to consistently train and. Always, you know, as that five kilos, I could do it 10 times, then I moved up to doing six kilos.

And when I could do that 10 times, I moved up to doing seven kilos, you know, so I'm constantly choosing some weight that is heavy for me and as that heavy for me weight became okay to do, like, I won't say easy, it's not like lifting pencils or something, but when that weight started to not be hard and feel really heavy, then I would increase my weight and I was quite quickly able to increase my strength and start showing some arm muscles even post menopause when I was constantly challenging myself a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. 

And it's perfectly safe because it's not like I went in and the first day tried to do 10 kilos. No, I started at the weight that was heavy for me then, which was five kilos and as I got stronger I moved to six kilos, then to seven, then to eight, you see, so you're, you're constantly staying in a weight that is safe for you, one that you can handle with a little bit of effort, where it is a little bit hard for you, but not to the point where you're trying to all of a sudden do a 20 kilo weight when you've never picked up a weight before, and it is going to be different for every person. 

So my daughter for example, she weight trains but she doesn't actually specifically train her upper body very much.

Yeah. I have talked to her about that but in any case, she likes to focus on her glutes and her legs or lower body. And also she does some back because to counteract the fact that she's looking at her phone her whole life. But in any case, I was curious to see what is heavy for her. She's 18 years old like in her kind of prime.

So I went upstairs with this five pound weight and I handed it to her and I said, Hey you know here take this weight and do a bicep curl with it and how many do you think you could do? And she was like Oh, this is pretty heavy mom, I think I can do maybe six. So there you go, like for her the five kilo weight was heavy, for me it's light.

If she started training her biceps, she should start with a five kilo weight and if she's got the six reps today, then she'd do seven reps the next time and so on and so forth to trigger her arms to get stronger.

So what you don't want to be doing is to be feeling scared of weights and thinking that, Oh no, I am a middle aged woman I can only pick up a one pound weight or a two pound weight one of these teeny tiny pink dumbbells okay, maybe I shouldn't say it like that. Maybe, maybe you are at a point where that one pounds or that two pounds is Heavy for you.

And in some movements like let's say a lateral raise that may actually be the case. But if you've been carrying in groceries, like for yourself and your kids, like weeks worth of groceries or gallons of milk, I mean that's already over a pound in weight. then I question like really, and if you think about if you're a little bit younger, like in your thirties maybe you have a child that you still pick up. Or maybe if you're already a little bit older, maybe you have a grandchild that you pick up and that probably weighs more than a pound. So don't kind of underestimate yourself too much. I think we sometimes are a little bit too cautious about, Oh my God, I can't do that. And also this message comes from outside of us it's like Hey you're getting old you shouldn't be doing that.

But the thing is that if we don't do that, that's when we get old. We limit ourselves by allowing our strength and our muscle to disappear. Then all of a sudden we can't bring in our groceries ourselves. We can't feel comfortable traveling because we're like, Oh my God, what if there is no porter to carry my suitcase from the airport to the car, or, Oh my goodness, maybe I can't stay at that hotel because I can't get my luggage up the stairs, or I can't stay at an Airbnb that doesn't have an elevator.

Um, you really start to limit yourself. So let's, let's not limit ourselves, guys. Okay. Let's keep our bodies strong. Let's keep our bodies used to doing heavy things for us, a little bit challenging them and picking it up. I have to, you know, sorry, I have to tell it like one of the things I have a new, my new boyfriend.

We've been together since last December. And he's very much of a gentleman. So I'm 53 he's 61, and he lifts weight and he's been lifting weights for years and years. And he's very much of a gentleman. So for him, if we go to the grocery store together he wants to take the heaviest bags.

If we're changing my car tires, he wants to carry the car tires. And we Have literally had little arguments about this that I say to him, what the hell do you think I'm like trying to do here? Sorry, didn't mean to use bad language, but what the heck do you think I'm trying to do here? I am lifting weights and I love the feeling that I can carry the groceries from the car that I can lift my own car tires that I can carry the 20 , liter , containers of gas to the boat and these kinds of things.

Like I just, it feels good. I feel empowered, young. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, I hope this clarified the lifting heavy bit. So it really is not about that you need to go out there and suddenly be able to hip thrust 200 pounds just because some influencer is there and lifting that much and hip thrusting that much, that may be heavy for them.

They've probably been lifting for two, three years and really working on their hip thrust and really working on their glute muscles. So they're able to do that. And please don't look at the weights that I'm lifting and think that you need to be lifting that. I sometimes get people who ask like, how much are you, you know, shoulder pressing or how much are you curling or whatever, and I kind of like yes, I want to be inspirational and that yes, you can be my age and strong, but at the same time I don't want you to feel like you need to on day one, be lifting the kinds of weights that I'm lifting. 

You lift what is heavy for you and that may be a two pound weight, it may be a five pound weight, and then you just start to get stronger and stronger over time and lift more and more and you will feel hopefully as excited about that as I do and as so many of my clients do as they notice themselves getting stronger and just life getting easier.

Now, if you want to understand how this works from like a muscle point of view, I have an episode, episode number 49, which is an episode on why you need to lift heavy quick lesson and muscle biology. So check that one out. If you're interested in hearing a little bit more about how lifting heavy actually affects you on a like a muscle fiber point of view.

And then I also did an episode, episode number 57, which is about why the cardio with weights, which is what a lot of gyms offer, why the cardio with weights is not the same thing as strength training and why it's not going to give you the same results. So check that one out. If you are doing the cardio with weights and you're thinking, Hmm, what, what could I do better? Could weight training offer me more? So check that one out too.

And just a quick reminder that if you're not lifting yet, I have learned to lift programs. Self study and group programs that you can use to get you started. 

And if you are lifting already, my newest offering is a membership where I do the programming for you. And in all these cases, you can train two, three, or four days a week, because I really want to make this accessible for all women who want to get themselves stronger and maintain their bodies through midlife.

And with that, I'll leave you to the next week and wish you. Happy training!