#92: The Roadmap to Lifting Heavy in Menopause

Heavy lifting with shorter sets is recommended for women in perimenopause and menopause, but jumping straight into that type of training can be risky. 

In this episode, I’m sharing the roadmap to safely build up to lifting heavy - so you can get stronger while avoiding injury.

I’ll walk you through:

• How heavy lifting with shorter sets is recommended in midlife
• The importance of mastering technique before increasing weight
• The role of intensity and “working to failure” in building muscle
• Practical tips on adjusting your rep ranges and weights as your body adapts

If you’re ready to start lifting heavier but want to do it safely and sustainably, this episode offers a step-by-step guide to help you progress with confidence. 

Tune in to learn how to set yourself up for strength, resilience, and long-term success!

🎧 Listen now and begin your journey to lifting heavy the right way.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to 40+ Fitness for Women
• 0:17 The Importance of Lifting Heavy
• 0:48 Current Events and Their Impact
• 2:33 Expert Recommendations on Lifting Heavy
• 3:03 Understanding Rep Ranges and Intensity
• 8:46 Practical Tips for Safe Weight Training
• 12:38 The Journey to Lifting Heavy
• 17:31 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

#92: The Roadmap to Lifting Heavy in Menopause

Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. Helping women in midlife to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are going to be talking about what it is to be lifting heavy. Because this has been a topic that has been super much discussed on social media.
And I noticed there are a ton of questions around it. How do you lift heavy? What is heavy? All these kinds of things. So I wanted to talk about that today to kind of clarify this issue for you. But before that, I have to say, I am recording this on the day after the election. And even though I'm living here in Finland, which is part of the EU, the European Union, we care what happens in the U. S. elections. In fact, we were all pretty much glued to our TV screens to find out the results. And, uh, Having grown up in the U. S., I guess I can understand how that might surprise a lot of Americans that Europe might, is interested in the elections in the U. S., but the fact of the matter is that the, that America, that the United States is a powerful force in the world and of course affects our lives.
And right now, particularly with the war in Ukraine and the need, really. For Ukraine to come out on top there, because the option of having Putin and Russia start to, uh, yeah, let's say spread and attack another country, win the war in Ukraine would not be a good one. We live right next door to Russia here in Finland.
Anyway, so. Um, we are all wondering what the heck is going to happen now. And I guess the next few months we will begin to understand that. So a little bit of a different kind of week here in Europe, anyhow, onto our topic.
 Lifting heavy versus lifting less heavy. All right. So the menopause fitness experts. The ones who are doing the research, the bone doctors, the physiologists, they very, very much recommend lifting heavy. And what they mean by that is actually lifting weights that feel very heavy for you and working in low rep ranges. So let me take a little bit of a step back and explain how this works, because if you've never really thought about this, you may not kind of understand how this goes.
So actually to build muscle, and that's what we want to. Do, because we want to have more muscle mass on our bodies for all the health benefits. It's actually been studied that you can work in a variety of rep ranges. You can build muscle working six reps.
So the number of repetitions of the exercise you do in a particular set. Or you can do up to 30 reps. So the rep range is not so important or not so critical, for building muscle. Used to be believed that if you did very few reps, you would be building strength more. And if you did a lot of reps, you wouldn't be able to build muscle and that there was like this happy medium in between, but actually it's a wide rep range that you can experience hypertrophy. In other words, building of muscle, 
but You need to have a second thing other than having six or five to 30 reps in order to actually build muscle. And that is the second factor, which is intensity. So you need to be lifting in a way that. Your last reps or your last rep is getting very close to failure or going all the way to failure.
And now, a reminder of what is failure, that means that you don't have another good form rep in you anymore. Now it depends on what exercise you're doing, whether it makes sense to actually test what it's like to go all the way to failure or not. So for example, if you're doing bicep curls, there is no danger in you actually reaching failure.
And what that would look like is you do your bicep curls, you'll slow down as you're getting close to failure, your pace will slow down. And then you won't actually be able to get your arm all the way up. And I will link in the show notes, a couple of reels where I actually have videos of me working close to failure or to failure.
So you can kind of see what that looks like. But in any case, so in order to build muscle, you can use a wide rep range. So anywhere from, I would say about four to 30 reps that you're doing, but you have to be training with intensity. In other words, getting close to failure or going to failure. All right.
So that's for hypertrophy building muscle and that applies across the board, men, women, young, old, all the rest. 
Now, what's the difference between having a small rep range and a large rep range has to do with how heavy that weight that you're using is going to be. Now, if you just think about this logically, if you know that you're going to do a bicep curl and you need to get to failure or close to failure in five or six reps, you are going to pick up a heavier weight than If you're going to do 20 reps before you hit failure, 
so just think about that for a second. Think about the weight that maybe you've gone to a group fitness class and you know that you're going to have a lot of reps. Maybe you've gone to body pump. You're not going to pick up a super heavy weight because you're going to do like 30, 40, 50 bicep curls. You can't do that with a huge heavy weight because your muscles are just going to give out before you're able to do that.
So the lower, the smaller your rep range is, so the smaller the amount of reps that you're going to do, the heavier the weight is that you're going to use. And if you have a larger amount of reps that you're going to do in your set, you're going to pick up a lighter weight because otherwise you're not going to get through the set.
And this also translates, like, if you think about running, right? If you know you have a 10 meter sprint, you can take off a heck of a lot faster than if you know you have a 10 kilometer run, you're going to go a lot slower for the 10 kilometer run. So same kind of logic with shorter sets versus longer sets. All right. 
So to quickly summarize what we've learned so far in this episode or what we've gone over so far in this episode is that you can actually build muscle in a wide range of reps. So anywhere from about four or five to 30. But you have to have the intensity. So you need to be working close to failure or to failure. And then we've also discussed the fact that if you are working in a smaller rep range, so with less reps, you need to use a heavier weight than if you're working in a larger rep range. So if you're doing five reps, you're going to pick up a heavier weight than if you're aiming to do 12 reps. Okay. 
Now for women in perimenopause and menopause, our bodies, are running low on estrogen, are struggling with decreasing bone density and all those things, there are a lot of good reasons why we should be lifting heavy.
So actually working in these shorter rep ranges, some recommend as low as like four or five reps. But I would not recommend that as you start out weight training, that you go directly to that. And let me tell you why. So when you work in a smaller rep range, when you're lifting heavier weights, like relatively heavier weights, the first rep that you do is going to be hard, right?
And that means that First of all, your muscles need to be warmed up already before you do that working set. That means that you need to feel really comfortable with your technique so you don't hurt yourself. All right. So It's not the place where I would start your weight training journey. And in fact, with my students, the people in my programs, I take them on a journey from not lifting to learning how to lift heavy. And that has various stages. And the stages for that are that you start out by learning how to lift because honestly, these movements may be completely unfamiliar to you. You need to learn like, where should my elbow be? Should my shoulders be hunched up or down or pressed or, how do I. Use my back muscles, all the things. I mean, there is actually a lot of learning. And with all the women that I've worked with, um, it is very, very clear. Some, some people are extremely good at, uh, coordinating their bodies. Maybe they. They're just more gifted that way athletically. And for some women, it really takes a long time to learn the movement patterns and feel really comfortable in them
so that just brings up another point, which is that please, when you are starting to weight train or even when you've been doing it for a while, take some video of yourself every now and again, every two weeks. Or when the gym is empty, or, you know, if you're training at home every couple of weeks, take video of one set of each of your exercises and watch the video and check your own form because you will miss things. Even if you're looking at yourself in the mirror. For example, doing bicep curls, you see the front of you, but you don't see the side of you. And if you video the side of you as you're doing your bicep curls, then you might notice that, Hey, I'm swinging. Hey, my elbows are in the wrong place. Wow. My wrists are looking kind of funky, you know, all kinds of things. So technique is really important and that's kind of the first part of the journey of learning to lift. And so when you're still learning, you want to be working in a larger rep range because that is going to be safer. It is going to allow you to focus on the form without having to be struggling to move the weight.
Plus you're going to have a little bit more time to warm up your muscles in your sets. So you don't need to be as. I don't want to, well, maybe I shouldn't even say this, but you don't need to be quite as careful about warming up. And so it's just in general, a good way to learn. So I recommend if you're just starting out on this weight training journey, that you are working in higher rep ranges. So let's say eight to 12 or 12 to 15, you know, depending on the exercise and what that allows you to do is to get in the reps to get in the practice of doing that exercise. 
You know, technique is something you can perfect forever. There's always something you can do a little bit better and a little bit better. So don't think that, Oh yeah, I know how to do a fill in the blank. You can always do it a little bit better. So keep working on your technique. 
But in any case, in your journey, you're going to be starting out by learning how to do the exercises. Now, once you've learned how to do the exercises in this kind of safer, and I'm putting air quotes for those of you who are listening to this on podcast, um, Then you are going to, uh, yeah, it's going to be a little bit safer to do that bigger rep range.
And as you get more and more used to the movements, your body gets more and more used to lifting, then you can start shortening your rep ranges. And you'll notice that, let's say you're doing bicep curls, I always use bicep curls, right? As an example, but let's say you're doing bicep curls and you've been working in, a 12 to 15 rep range well, when you shift down to doing eight to 12 reps, you're going to need to pick up a little bit heavier weight than what you've been doing before, because you need to get close to failure or to failure sooner. Okay. So that like adjusting down to doing fewer reps, you're going to need to do a little bit of a change or reevaluation of the weight that you're using.
So then you get used to doing those exercises, with the shorter rep range. And then you can shorten your rep ranges again and again, until you're working in this really short rep range, which means that you are really lifting heavier, your first rep will feel like work at that point.
And I really want to emphasize to you that please, when you are doing your weight training, and you're starting on your weight training, that you, you do focus on the form before you start shortening your rep ranges and lifting heavier and heavier. You can evaluate your own form if you have an eye for that video yourself and take a look, compare it to hopefully you have some kind of program that you're using where the person that is demoing it is doing it correctly. So you can look at the videos side by side, for example. 
Or if you have a coach or if you're one of my clients, then please send me the video. I am so happy to look at form videos. And if you have, access to a live personal trainer, if you're training on your own, otherwise programming on your own, or, or getting a personal trainer to write a program for you, you know, somebody that works at your gym, then have a session with them and just have them. Look at you doing each of the exercises and your technique we want to be improving our technique over time to keep ourselves safe.
Oh yeah. And I had one more point, which is one of the reasons why I wouldn't go straight to super heavy lifting, which is that remember in previous episodes, I've talked about what happens to your body as the estrogen starts to decline. And there are. Issues like that, your tendons and ligaments start to get weaker and more easily injured. So when you start lifting again, or when you start lifting in general, it's not just your muscles that need to get stronger. It's kind of your whole system that needs to get stronger. And that doesn't happen in days.
So going from no lifting to very heavy lifting, honestly, like maybe you can even manage it like your muscles could manage it, but then what about the rest of you? So you don't want to be getting tendonitis and all these things. Um, That is one of, I think the one of the, I wouldn't say common, but if you are going to have issues, tendinitis is one of them that could happen in your elbows if you don't have good enough grip strength and I'll, I'm going to do an episode on that because the grip strength issue is one that has come up with a lot of clients that their grip strength is not keeping up with their body strength.
Okay. So let's sum that up. So yes, lifting heavy is what is recommended for women in perimenopause and menopause. And what that means is that ultimately your aim is to be doing short sets, right? I would say four to six to eight reps a little bit, depending on the exercise. There are some exercises that you don't want to lift as heavy as other ones, but anyway, shorter sets.
And when you're doing a shorter set, that means you are picking up a heavy weight and it's heavy from rep number one, but that's not where you want to start your weight training journey because you don't want to injure yourself. You need to. Learn how to do the exercises, you know, really get your form down, your confidence, let your body get used to weight training and let your body get strong too.
Let your bones get strong too, your tendons, your ligaments, your muscles, your grip strength get strong. Before you shift over to lifting heavy. So what I recommend really, and the journey that I take my own students on is we start with longer rep ranges and we're lifting applying progressive overload and all that.
And then gradually I shorten the reps that they do over time. So that in the end, they are going to be lifting heavy, but that is going to take months or even a year to get to that point because we want to be careful. We don't want to injure ourselves. All right. We have this one precious body that we're trying to strengthen, but we don't want to overdo it. So this kind of journey to lifting heavy is a safe way to go.
Alright, so I hope that that helps you understand about the lifting heavy and about how to get to lifting heavy. And with that I wish you a wonderful week ahead and happy training.