#98: Q&A: Training after Illness, Lifting Straps, Boredom with Weight Training, and My HRT Journey

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, I’m answering questions submitted by my followers about training, equipment, and hormone replacement therapy.

I answer these questions:

1. How to get back into training after being sick?
2. Do I use lifting straps, and when would I recommend them?
3. How can weight training sessions be made less boring?
4. Am I on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and what’s my experience with it?

Do you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future episode? Drop me a DM on Instagram - I’d love to hear from you!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Overview
• 1:13 Holiday Greetings and Traditions
• 2:25 Question 1: Training After Illness
• 10:11 Question 2: Using Lifting Straps
• 15:26 Question 3: Making Weight Training Less Boring
• 24:43 Question 4: Hormone Replacement Therapy
• 30:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

#98: Q&A: Training After Illness, Straps, Making Training More Fun & HRT

00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women in perimenopause and beyond to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are, or I am going to answer a few questions that I got from my Instagram followers.

I was asking them if there were any particular topics that they wanted to hear about and get answers to. So here we are. I got four really good questions, I think. So the first was, about how to get back into training and how to train when you've been sick. The second was a question about, do I use lifting straps and where would I use them?

Uh, the third is an interesting one, how to make weight training [00:01:00] sessions less boring. And then finally, the fourth one is, am I on hormone replacement therapy? So we will get into all of those in turn today.

This episode is coming out on Christmas Eve. So Merry Christmas to all of you who are celebrating Christmas here where I am in Finland, we celebrate on Christmas Eve. That's like the big holiday. And. We have a tradition that when you have small kids in the house, you actually have Santa arrive and deliver the gifts.

Yep. So even though I grew up in the U S in Washington, DC, we did have somebody. Who would dress up as Santa and come bang on the door with a big bag of gifts over their shoulder, come in and we would have to sing and, uh, play piano and all these things for Santa. So we got pictures of us with Santa in our own [00:02:00] living room, and then he would start.

You know, distributing a few of the gifts and then go. And that is completely normal here in Finland. You know, there's, it's a big business of Santa coming to visit your home, but so a very different tradition than waking up on Christmas morning and having the gifts, you know, magically have appeared under the tree.

So Merry Christmas to everyone. 

So on to the first question, which is around illness. And this is something that is very familiar to me because I just spent almost two weeks being sick. And just got back into the weight room yesterday. Now, I like to play these things safe because what I have noticed, and of course, each of us needs to get to know our own body and how we react.

But what I've noticed that at the first signs of getting sick, I should. [00:03:00] Rest. I mean, I start to take vitamin C and zinc and just taking it easy. And I find that normally the illness doesn't come on quite as strong. So I don't try to like go till the last minute, you know, until I have a fever and I can't lift an arm or whatever.

So I try to respond really, really quickly and stop the training. And, and I have to say that. You know, I think one of the fears that people have about not training is feeling like, Oh my God, I'm going to lose all my gains. Uh, I'm going to get weaker. I have to get back in. I'm being bad if I'm skipping these kinds of things.

And really, when you're sick, your body needs time to recover and you should give it that time. And when going back in, so my. I used to honestly Google like, is it okay to go back [00:04:00] to working out when you're still coughing or when you're still sneezing or when your nose is stuffy and all these things, but I think the lockdown COVID really changed my point of view on this because if you remember, uh, well, at least here, it was Like if you were to go into a grocery store, for example, nobody spoke to anybody, everybody was masked up, of course, nobody spoke to anybody.

And if you had coughed or sneezed while you were in that grocery store, I mean, of course, all the music was off. It was complete silence. The whole store would have heard you. And. It would have been like this mass ostracism that, Hey, how dare you come here and risk all of our lives? Right? So that stuck with me really, really strongly.

And. Also, the lesson that actually we have been doing [00:05:00] a lot of things when we've been sick. I mean, how many of you have been going to the office and you're sneezing, you're blowing your nose all the time. You go through two boxes of Kleenex. And what are you doing? You're infecting all your colleagues. In addition to the fact that you're not getting better because you're not resting, you're just going, going and going.

So I've kind of taken a lesson from that and my personal feeling is that until I feel like I can go somewhere like I was able to go during COVID time where I'm, okay, maybe, maybe I'll get one little dry cough or whatever, but not the kind of phlegmy, gross coughs, or not like I need to be blowing my nose, I would not go back to training like that.

Plus, I just want to let my body heal. Okay. So that's about like when I would go back. And of course, this is something that each of us needs [00:06:00] to decide for ourselves. But I hope, I really hope that people don't go to the gym and to the weight room when they're sick, because you know, you're touching the equipment.

And no matter how much some people might be You know, wiping off the equipment, some other people aren't and some of these germs are spread airborne and this kind of thing. So I would hope that everybody makes sure that they're healthy when they're coming to the gym. So you're not infecting the other people at the gym and then.

about when you're going back. So think about it. Your body has not only taken days off, like in my case, I think it was about 12 days of not training. And not only that I wasn't training, it was that I wasn't even doing my normal stuff. Yeah. I went out on walks after about day five, uh, but they were short walks, like 20 minutes, 30 minutes slow outside with the dog.

So I [00:07:00] know that my body is not. It's not like I can just go back in and, and it's as if those 12 days didn't happen, right? So, my recommendation really is, and the way I approach it is to go in gently. So I go back in doing the same exercises as I've done before, but I cut all my weights.

So I use a lot of machines, for example, so I would reduce the weight on the weight stack by at least one peg, maybe by two, because even though yesterday everything felt really easy, right? Because I'm, I've, my whole body has had a chance to rest, I'm back, and the weights were lighter than I'm used to, and I suspect I am going to be fairly sore tomorrow.

So I did the lighter weights. And instead of doing my normal rep range, which is generally about six to [00:08:00] eight to 10 max, um, because I am already in the phase that I'm lifting heavier, I I'm going into year four of weight training consistently. So, um, yeah, I, I was doing my sets only up to 10, which Which for me, I was not getting close to failure.

I mean, I must have been at least five reps away from failure. But that wasn't the point. The point was just to get my muscles sort of woken up again, my body woken up again, get my confidence back. Because after being out 12 days, I don't know. I felt like, oh, I haven't done this in a while because I'm used to just doing it so regularly.

So that's how I'm approaching that. And now this week I'll see tomorrow cause it always, you know, it's the day after the day after that. Usually get the, the delayed onset of muscle soreness, the doms. And so I'll see how I feel tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be awful [00:09:00] and I'll be able to go back into the weight room over the weekend.

So now it's Wednesday. So I went on Tuesday to do my lower body today. I'll go in. To do my upper body, and then I'll look at Friday, Saturday, Sunday for going for my next two sessions. So, yeah, and I just, You know, I just want to remind you that this is like a lifetime thing that you need to be doing this weight training.

So the fact that you miss a week or two weeks or have a lighter week of training in the bigger picture is not going to make a difference. And I do encourage you to think about this as. This is like from now until forever, you will be doing some form of weight training and when you just think of it as a habit that you do every week the years kind of roll by, the progress happens I mean, this year has gone by so [00:10:00] fast. I can't even believe that I've already been weight training for three years.

 Okay, so that was question number one about illness. 

Question number two was about lifting straps. Do I use them? And the answer is yes, I use them. Um, I don't use them on very many exercises, Because like I said, I have been doing this for a while. So my grip strength has developed. My grip is very strong. I have my teenage son who comes and has me open jars for him and he's, you know, taller than I am. So mom is strong. He knows. But the exercise that I always use grips on is Romanian deadlifts. So RDLs. Because that is an exercise that's using my glutes, my hamstrings, and [00:11:00] those are big muscles. The weights that I'm using on them is more than my body weight. And I want to be able to really focus not on gripping the bar, but on using my glutes. So I don't want my grip to become the limiting factor.

Now that said, I don't use the grips on every one of my sets of RDLs. I generally start with the RDLs, I mean, unless all of the racks are taken, I will start with RDLs. So, I do my warm ups. My warmup is that I will do 10 to 15 reps with just the bar. Then I put on another 10 kilos on each side and then do four, five, six reps, a little bit depending on how my body feels. So this is my warmup and then add a little bit more weight and a little bit more weight. So I end up doing two or three warmup. sets because it's my first [00:12:00] exercise of the day. That is my warmup. And for those, I just have bare hands. Well, I have my weight training gloves, but, but I don't use straps. And then when I go to my working weight, then I do use the straps.

So it's not all the time. However, earlier in my life of weight training, I did use the straps more. And that is because what happened was that the rest of my body, like my back muscles, Got stronger, faster than my grip strength did, and I ended up having an issue with, elbow pain. I started to get some elbow tendinitis because my grip strength was not keeping up with the strength of my back.

So I was rowing heavy weights, I was pulling down heavy weights, and my grip was giving out. Or, I mean, it wasn't like I slipped and let go, but [00:13:00] like my grip was not strong enough for that to be super comfortable for me. And so I was getting this elbow issue and I went to see a physical therapist and they recommended that, Hey, on your heavy sets, use the grips. And so that's what I did. And in a very similar way to what I just described with the RDLs, what I did was in my warmup sets, I wouldn't use the grips. But then on my working sets, I would, I would use the grips and another thing that that actually helped me with, particularly on a horizontal row, because when you're doing a horizontal row, so where your arms are in front of you, and then you're pulling them back, you often want to pull back. further than you actually can and you start to do like a wrist, uh, kink where you'll like bend your wrists in and that can cause also [00:14:00] issues with your forearms and your elbows. So when I used the straps, it really taught me to think of everything from my elbow forward, you know, to the tips of my toe, uh, fingers as just something that's holding onto the equipment. And, and I didn't use any kind of, well, of course I had to hold on with my grip, but the point was that it was just like a way of holding onto the equipment. And then I really was able to focus on. Driving my elbows back behind me, you know, and squeezing my shoulder blades and this kind of thing. So for that, grips was good, and I, I do think that everybody will need grips. If you are doing R DLS consistently for a year, and you're not using grips yet, then I would say you need to look at, are you pushing yourself hard enough? Because you should get to the point where it is going to be too heavy [00:15:00] for you to do RDLs without the grips. The grips that I use, by the way, are called VersaGrips, and I will put a link in the show notes so you can take a look at them. And also I'll put a video on how I use them so that you can check out how I use them. You can use them with dumbbells or barbells. Or machines, any one of them, but they take a little bit of getting used to.

All right. And so now question number three, how can you make weight training sessions less boring? Now, here's one where I would love to hear more details about what your weight training session is actually looking like, because the solution may, I mean, there may be a lot of solutions. So let me talk a little bit about this.

I can understand sometimes it does get boring. And I think that you do also go through kind of phases. Where you're really into it, and then you're kind of like, Oh, I'm just coming here [00:16:00] because I need to do this and I want to do this and I don't want to lose my muscles. I don't want my body to decline. And it is more boring. And then you're thinking, Okay, so how can I just make this happen faster 

 One of the things that I've noticed when I have seen programs that my clients have done with other people and then come to my program or where I see some free programs online is a lot of them have a ton of different exercises in them, like 10 different exercises in one workout. And then you have four sets of each of them. And it's an insane amount of volume or people who are spending two hours getting through their session and they're not even taking breaks. Okay. 

So the way that I program is six exercises in a session, and really four of them are the main [00:17:00] exercises for that session. And then there will be two that are more accessory exercises, or they're targeting more specifically a particular muscle group.

So one way to make the training session less boring is to have it be just simpler, shorter. So you don't have this feeling like, Oh my God, I've done two of my exercises. I've got eight more to go. Right? Cause, cause that can, I mean, mental fatigue is a thing and it actually does affect. Well, you can train if you're starting to feel like I'm getting tired, I'm getting bored. This is annoying. You know, all those kinds of things. So rather shorten it and, and for myself, if I, go into the weight room and I've got my, six exercises and I'm like, I'm, I, I don't have time or I just really am not feeling this today. I want to just kind of do the, I don't want to call it the bare minimum because it's already [00:18:00] like way more than the bare minimum, but I will do the four first exercises and then do one set each of the other two exercises or cut it down to just two sets of each of the exercises so that I stimulate my muscles properly, but that I don't make it hugely long.

So, so one is how many exercises you have in your particular session, and I would recommend between four and six. Then the other thing is how many sets you're doing of each exercise. Each set that you do is a little bit less stimulating than the previous set. So if you were to go in with your six exercise program and you do one set of each, that would be, maximizing your bang for your minute. Okay. And then if you do a second set, great, you [00:19:00] know, it's a little bit less effective than the first set, but, but it is still very effective. Third set is a little bit less effective, but you know, if you go to four or five, six, you know, all, all that, it's just, you know, yeah, if you really enjoy spending time in the but, but I'm all about optimizing my time.

Okay, so we've thought now about the length of your program. So how many exercises you have to do. So, four to six is great, and how many sets of each, so three is plenty,

third thing is, uh, maybe Um, a little bit of an obvious way of doing it, but at least for me, music really helps keep it entertaining. So during my breaks, during the rest between sets, I kind of pace around. I don't look at my phone, very much unless I just took a video because. Of course, I'm videoing myself [00:20:00] a lot to check form and then also to have stuff to post online. But, um, I listen to music. Some people like to listen to podcasts, but to me, it's a bit too distracting. I want to be able to really focus on my session. And. I get kind of into this zen mode. Okay, now I have two minutes. You know, I might look around at the other people in the gym. Yeah, I do do that. So I recognize everybody that goes to my gym. But yeah, so music is something that could help there.

One way to save time also, which will make the workout maybe more interesting because you don't have so much of this rest period, is doing supersets. Now, I would recommend doing the supersets with two muscles, that are antagonist muscles. In other words, that do the opposite motion in your body. So for example, your bicep and your [00:21:00] tricep, when your biceps working, your tricep is relaxing. When your tricep is working, your bicep is relaxing. So you can get through the session faster if you pair up your bicep and your tricep exercises. Do one set of biceps, a set of triceps, then take your one to two minute break. Then again, set of biceps, set of triceps, and then your break. Same thing you can do, leg extensions and leg curls, right? Quads and hamstrings, superset them. If I'm doing inner thighs and outer thighs, so adductors and abductors, I will superset them. For upper body, some supersetting that's good is to do horizontal push, so like chest presses, supersetting with horizontal pulls, so rows. Or pull downs, supersetting with, uh, anything where you're pushing up, so shoulder presses. [00:22:00] So these will get you through your workout faster.

Another thing that people have said has made their training more interesting is when they have finally started Tracking and the reason for that is that then you see what you did last time you're seeing the progress it just makes it more interesting, pretty boring, actually, to just go into the weight room and be like, Okay, I'll do a little bit of chest press machine.

Let me try this weight. Oh, that felt pretty light. Maybe a little bit more. Okay. And then just doing like the 12. But when you start to do a progressive program where you're progressively overloading, where you're challenging yourself a little bit more and a little bit more over time, it becomes more interesting.

It's like, you know, if you've ever done running, for me at least, and I think for a lot of people, you time how far you run, [00:23:00] right? I mean, I guess there probably are people who don't, but I always looked at my watch like, Oh yeah, I did a 12 minute run today. Okay, tomorrow I'm going to do a 13 minute run or, or yeah, I did a 30 minute run and look how far I got in my 30 minutes.

You know, when you see the progress and you see the change. You see how much stronger you're getting. That can be really very motivating that makes it less boring to be doing that thing that is the same thing over and over again. I mean, think about jogging. I mean, how interesting is that? Right?

You're just like running. One foot in front of the other. But when you start to add that element of, Hey, I want to run a little bit faster over time, then it does become more interesting. And this leads into the fact that when you're doing the tracking and you do the progressive overload, you keep applying that you start to see results and wow, that is super fun. [00:24:00] Okay. Seeing the results. Yes. Like the visuals of, Oh, I like the way my shoulders look now, or wow, I can see my bicep muscle, like sticking up a little bit or, or I can feel that my waist is firm And then also things like, Hey, I'm picking up my son's hockey bag, and this is no problem, even though it's as big as I am, right?

Those kinds of things are also very motivating. Even if like in the moment they might not be so motivating, but they're there, you know that this weight training session or the ones that you've done before that. are the ones that have led to you being able to do those cool things

 And then the final question I got asked is, am I on hormone replacement therapy? And the answer is Yes, I am. I am. I did an episode on my journey through perimenopause, my hell, my [00:25:00] hellish journey through perimenopause. I really went through perimenopause in the dark and early. Nobody had talked to me about this.

My mother also, by the way, went through perimenopause or went through menopause early and never bothered to tell me, but I had so many symptoms, including a very severe depression, which didn't lift despite therapy and antidepressants. After a year, I was in worse shape than I was before.

And that's when I read somewhere about the 13 most common symptoms of menopause. And I was like, uh, I have every single one of these. I mean, the hair loss, inability to sleep. I had such brain fog. I just started a new job. I was building a marketing operations team for this company and I had to hire the [00:26:00] team and figure out the processes and everything.

I have so many notebooks full of notes from that time because I could not remember. anything. I mean, I did a great job at that job. I'm like patting myself on the back, but it required me writing everything down because I was just not remembering things the same way as I used to. So, I mean, I had, I had so, so, so many symptoms.

So when I read that list and I was like, okay, here I am, miss, menopause, I went on hormone replacement therapy and the fog started lifting. My mood started to improve and all these. So I do credit it as giving me my life back. So I'm on a, estrogen progesterone patch and have been on it. Oh, I'm 50. This is great. I'm 53. [00:27:00] I was about to say 52. I'm 53. And it started like, maybe I was 47, something like that. And it, it wasn't like I was, Cured overnight, but finally my depression started to lift and I started to see the sky was blue.

You know, my hair wasn't falling out. Didn't, didn't need to order that wig after all. So all kinds of things happened and I am not letting go of that. No way, Jose. And then when I started studying All this stuff I've studied around menopause and fitness and what happens with our bodies and how much estrogen loss affects our bodies, how much our bodies start to decline when estrogen walks out the door, that even though, you know, even though it's called hormone replacement therapy, it's not, it's not like reversing that, right?

We don't go back to what we were before menopause, [00:28:00] but any little bit helps. And it's also why I'm so religious about the weight training because it, in addition to the hormone replacement therapy does help and hormone replacement therapy. helps with maintaining your bones and your muscles and building more muscles.

No, it is not steroids. It's not like you can just start hormone replacement therapy and things happen. No, that's not how it goes. But it supports that. So yes, I am absolutely on it and a huge advocate, but I know this is a very individual decision for each person to make on their own. I am not a doctor. I am not going to give you medical advice, but I will tell you that that was my experience.

And I know there are a lot. I know a lot, lot of women who are so grateful that they're on hormone replacement therapy. And then I also know some people who get migraines from it, you know, so, so you do need to test it [00:29:00] out. And I will say this, I was lucky in that the first combination that I use, I use Everell Conti, that one works really well for me.

You know, I feel good, but. When at one point there was actually like a global lack of that brand and they couldn't get it here in the whole of Finland. And so I had to try other combinations and they're basically not so many combinations that the gynecologists prescribe, but I tried two other combinations and holy cow, I realized how much hormones have an effect on how we feel when I tried those and they didn't make me feel like me, you know, um, on one of them, this is a really interesting one is that I, it was, it was wonderful in the sense that [00:30:00] my libido just shot through the roof between the sheets was amazing. But I was also crying all the time. You know how you are during pregnancy where you see a cute commercial and you're like, wah, you know, that was me.

So it wasn't maybe the best option for me. So I tried another one. And that also wasn't as good as this one. what I have now. So as soon as I could get back on my tried and tested good formula, I got back on it. So it's worth testing around. If the first one that you try doesn't really agree with you, try out another one.

Okay. And it can take a little while to take effect. It's not like you start it today and tomorrow you're like, no, they say to give it like three months or something. So, yeah.

Okay. So, I hope that those [00:31:00] were useful to you to hear my perspective on these topics. And um, if you have some topic that you would like to hear my take on, then please drop me a note in the show notes.

There is this opportunity to send me a note. Now that's a one way communication. You can say something to me. I can't respond to them, unfortunately, but go ahead and send me your ideas that way or through Instagram, because, I want to talk about the things that you want to hear about. 

 I am once again wishing you a very Merry Christmas. If you are celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah, if you're celebrating Hanukkah or whatever end of the year celebration that you have. And I will talk to you again next week. In the meanwhile, happy training.