#136: Strength Training Myths Holding Women Back

This episode is a little different — I’m sharing a clip from one of my recent masterclasses where I busted some of the most common myths about strength training.

These myths hold so many women back from building the strength, muscle, and confidence they want in midlife. In this episode, I explain why they aren’t true — and what to do instead.

The 5 myths I bust in this episode:

1. Soreness and “feeling the burn” mean you had a good workout
2. Light weights and high reps will “tone” your muscles, while heavy weights make you bulky
3. Combo moves give you more bang for your buck
4. Constant variety is better than repeating the same exercises
5. Any workout “with weights” builds muscle

Come listen to why these don’t hold up and the smarter ways to train instead.

If this helped you, share it with 2 friends:  that’s how the show grows!

Resources mentioned:

• Past episode on progressive overload: Episode #114

Transcript

#136: Strength Training Myths Holding Women Back

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 Plus Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, and this week I'm doing something a little bit different on the podcast I have just. Been running my Lift-Off! Program. We just finished up, which is my 10 day introduction to strength training and as part of Lift-Off! Last time around, actually I did a masterclass where I did some myth busting about five common strength training.

Myths that we have really been raised on, and these are so ingrained, like we really believe these things to be true. And it's not just you. I absolutely believed a hundred percent in these things as well as recently as three years ago. So. So these are very, very [00:01:00] prevalent, but I think it is so important for all of us to realize that these things are actually not true.

So I wanted to share these this week on the podcast, and so this is gonna be a little bit different. This is a clip from a masterclass, the Five Myths and Why They're Not True. And without further ado,

and now let's get into some of the most common myths. And these are things, I mean, I, I hate that I come across these all the time. So I'm gonna start with a story, which was just such an example of this. So. Myth number one was, is that, you know, women, we have been taught that feeling the burn and getting sore are signs that a workout was effective.

And this came so clear to me. Uh, I was, so I'm a member of a gym and I've been at this gym for over 10 years, so I'm a platinum [00:02:00] member. They love us and they do little field trips and stuff to hold onto us, to, you know, so we don't break our membership, go away for a year because we lose our platinum status.

Anyway, so I was on one of these and after this museum tour we were in, uh, cafe. And so it was a bunch of us women who are platinum members at the same gym. So what do we have to talk about, but the gym, right? So we're talking about like, Hey, what's your favorite class and, and what's your favorite instructor?

All this kind of thing. And one of the women was like, oh my God, I'm totally in love with this new class called Upper Body. And you know, I have noticed that what classes they have there, I mean, we have a huge array of classes and I saw that upper body class come in and I thought, oh my goodness, you know, from the description that they are really gonna try to do real strength training.

And even though, you know, if you're not tracking and you're not applying progressive overload, it's kind of tough. But [00:03:00] maybe, maybe they'll do, I don't know, maybe they will have people have a piece of paper or maybe, you know, they'll do something like that. So I was, I was, I had high hopes, I was really interested to hear how it was.

And she said to um, to us that, oh my God, it is such a great class. It is so hard. And, um, I'll show you my favorite exercise. So she, she held out her arm like this and she started turning it and she said, oh my God, this is the best exercise. It makes you burn so much. You get so sore after it, and it is so effective.

Like, literally those words. And she said, it is so hard that I have to take the very smallest weight, the one kilo weight to be able to do it. And you know, I was sitting there like, oh my God, you know, where do I even start? Of course, I didn't start lecturing her or anything like [00:04:00] that, but it just, it just made me feel, in a way so sad because she really, really believes that this.

One kilo weight, feeling the burn, getting sore is the key to her staying strong and fit and healthy, you know, going forward and it just isn't so. Um, so the burn feeling that you feel it is from metabolite buildup. So it's lactic acid, hydrogen ions. And it generally happens when you're doing this kind of, you know, low weight, high rep kind of thing, which this kind of twirling your arm out at the side is, and it really usually is a sign that you are not stimulating those type two muscle fibers, but you're stimulating those type one.

In other words, those endurance muscles, the ones that we're not losing as we age. So that's not really an effective measure of [00:05:00] what, what we wanna be doing and gaining strength, holding onto our muscles, building our muscles, strengthening our bodies. And then the sore part is something that is also, a myth like soreness is not cor correlated to something being effective, even though we've been taught that for so so long.

So new exercises are likely to cause soreness. So probably a lot of you in this challenge when you did the split squats, well, split squats are hard, but, um, you know, you probably felt some muscle soreness just because you were doing something different. And probably if you went and played tennis for the first time in, you know, a long time, you would also feel sore or if you went hiking.

Or pretty much anything. You tried water boarding or surfing or something like that, you would have used your muscles in a different way and you would feel sore. But that doesn't mean that [00:06:00] you've stimulated them in a way that makes them get bigger and stronger. 

Okay. Myth number two is that low weights, high reps is the way that you're gonna get toned and lifting heavy is gonna make you bulky.

Now this term toned is something that was made up, uh, by the fitness industry. I mean, I grew up with that too, and I definitely believe that hey, yeah, you don't wanna be lifting super heavy. You wanna be doing a lot of repetitions 'cause that will give you this long, lean, toned muscle like a ballerina. And the thing is, the thing that gives you the long, lean muscle like a ballerina, is that you have amazing genetics, um, that you are.

Your bones are long, that your muscles are just structured in a way where they aren't like having this bump in the middle, in the muscle belly, that they're more, you know, [00:07:00] flat and leaned. So it's a lot of genetics that decides that. And so toned is really the toned look that women are looking for. And you know, what I like as well is that you have enough muscle and then you have a low enough subcutaneous body fat to have that muscle show.

And um, I'm just thinking of a colleague of mine who now lost a lot of weight, or ex-colleague of mine, she's a friend. Um, she lost. Oh, I have to ask her what it was. 'cause I'm so bad at remembering these numbers, but it was like 20 or 30 kilos. It was amazing. And, and she looks totally different. Like her face looks different, everything.

'cause she's lost all of this weight. And she said, yeah, I was really looking forward to, you know, getting on the beach this summer and like being in my sleeveless and everything 'cause I've lost so much weight. And then I realized that my arms are just like not looking so great. [00:08:00] And the thing was that she wasn't strength training at the same time, so she just became kind of like this skinny, fat looking person.

And so now she's starting strength training. Um, and then she will get the toned look. So the toned look that women are generally after is that you have muscle and low enough body fat. So it's, it's the two things together. Okay. And then, and, and building muscle. There's just one way to build muscle, right?

It is what we have been going through in this challenge. There isn't a way to build toned muscle versus building like bulky muscle. I mean, it's, it's just muscle. And, and so this kind of goes into how there's this thought that if you lift heavy, you'll get bulky. And now a lot of women or a lot of influencers online will just say, Nope, that doesn't happen.

That won't [00:09:00] happen to you. And, and I kind of, I get what you mean. If that is your fear of, of feeling bulky because you do see these 20 so things online who are like, this is what I used to look like, and they look like. What, at least my growing up ideal woman would look like. Like Paulina Posco or Kristy Brinkley, you know, this kind of lean toned look.

And then they show their after picture and they are, they have big muscles, their thighs, muscles are big, their butt muscles are big. Their everything, like their muscles are big. And just visually, maybe not my aesthetic that I'm like after. And yes, they have put on a lot of muscle and it is bigger and, and so maybe that's the bulky that you're thinking of that you're like, oh my God, I don't wanna look like that.

And here I really wanna reassure you that that [00:10:00] does not happen overnight. I mean, those girls, women are putting in huge amount of effort. They are like. And over a long period of time they are lifting heavier and heavier and heavier and pushing themselves. And really, really that is their goal to do that.

So it definitely doesn't happen overnight. And a lot of them that are going online are of course genetically more predisposed to put on muscle. So they're kind of unicorns. So, so, and yes, there might be a few of us in midlife who are those kinds of unicorns, but here's what you can do if you are that kind of unicorn.

And even if you think you might be that kind of unicorn and you're worried, is that Take progress videos. All right, because this is not gonna happen overnight. So progress videos, I'll post in the Facebook group and [00:11:00] actually I can share, make a little note to myself, the how to take progress videos. 'cause it takes like a minute, okay.

To take a progress video. And if you do that once a month, you know, the video allows you to kind of see yourself from all angles. You know what you really look like. And then when you see at some point that, oh wow, I'm, I'm really starting to look more muscular than I wanna be, you know, or whatever, then you can ease up and you can go more into a maintenance mode where.

You, you train either hard once a week, which has been shown by research to be about the amount of training to maintain what you have. Or you can continue to train, you know, twice a week, all your muscle groups, but then just not push as hard so you're not like pushing so hard to progress so fast. But I'll tell you from experience [00:12:00] that I have so many women who have joined the membership or have been clients of mine, like one-to-one clients and, and they start out and they're like, oh, I wanna get toned and whatever.

And then they kind of get into the lifting and they're like, oh, I just love that I'm stronger and I love that I can do things and I love how my body feels. And they're like, you know, they're not worried at all about getting too big at that point. So, yeah. So I hope that helps ease some fears around that.

Okay, so myth number three, ho, ho is the combo exercise myth. And oh, I just like, yeah, so you hear these instructors that say, we're gonna combine moves together so you can get more out of your workout and spend less time doing it. And then they do combo moves. So if you've done the exercises, both [00:13:00] workout number one and workout number two are exercises that you can do as a combo move that are very often done as a combo move.

And the thing is that when you combine the moves, it's often a lower body move. So we had the split squat and then we had the shoulder press as as our two exercises. And you can combine them. Sure, you can have your dumbbells here on your shoulders, you can be in your split squat position, you go down and then as you come up.

You know, you do your shoulder press and you might think, wow, cool, neat. You know, I can do them at the same time. But the problem is that those dumbbells are, you know, that's one choice of weight that is being used on both exercises and maybe not the first day for sure. Not the first day. Your split squats, you know, that may be enough for your split squats.

But if you think about what muscles are driving your split squats, it's your glutes [00:14:00] and your quads, which are big muscles. And when you get going with this, they will need more challenge than these little muscles that are your shoulder muscles. Right? So when you are combining exercises, you are really depriving one of the, one of the muscle groups of the correct stimulus.

You're holding that one back, the the stronger muscle group back. Because you are being limited by whatever the weaker muscle group can do. And then the other thing that, you know, take into account there is if you think about the split squat, it is something that requires some balance. So I. You know, there you're also taking away from your body's ability to focus on doing the exercise.

'cause it's worrying about balance and how do you hold on if you've got two dumbbells like this? Because the holding on is definitely something that you can do and should do. You know, if you have any kind of balance issues, there's [00:15:00] no shame in that. In fact, very much encouraged. So, and then when you think about your shoulders, as you come up from the split squat and you start doing your shoulder press, well there you've got momentum helping you, right?

So you're not even making your shoulders do that whole exercise. And it's actually this beginning part here where your shoulder is, uh, where your arm is fairly low down, which is the hardest part of the exercise for your shoulder. So that's the one that you really want. That's the part you really want your shoulder to be working.

Um, there. So, yeah, so rather separate the two exercises because you will get so much more, um, effort or so much more for your workout. So. And, um, and it, you know, this is kind of one of my pet peeves. 'cause there's for example, one woman here in Finland who, [00:16:00] she does a lot of these online workouts where she has a lot of combo exercises and she looks great, you know, she's strong, she's lean, she's toned, and all the things.

And you think, oh, if I do those exercises with her, then I will look like that. And if you start to follow her stories, every now and then you realize that actually she's training in the gym with a pt. That's how she's building her muscles. She's sharing these very, very popular combo exercises because she gets a lot of followers and a lot of popularity and sells her book.

And, you know, and it is good exercise, but that's not how she's built her strength. Okay. All right. So onto the next one.

All right. Myth number four. And. This is one that I had heard even from instructors at my gym who were like, oh, because we do body pump [00:17:00] at my gym. And then they kind of forced you to do the same body pump routine for two months and the instructor was like, no, we should be mixing it up because then our muscles get stimulated and all this.

And so I was like, oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So we shouldn't do the same thing all the time, but it could not be further from the truth. And it's, and it's kind of mixed in with this soreness myth that, you know, obviously if you mix things up so you're doing new stuff all the time, then you will be more sore. And if you believe that soreness equals efficiency or effectiveness, then okay.

Yeah, it's no wonder you think you need to mix things up. But actually what will get you the best muscle development and the most strength development is. Doing the same exercises for a longer period of time and increasing the load over time. So it'll be increasing the reps in the beginning, and then when [00:18:00] you get to the top of your rep range, you'll increase the weights and then start increasing the reps again.

So progressive overload. And that was, uh, lesson number one. So you can watch that if you wanna know like more about that. So really what you want to do is you wanna get a good set of exercises and train them, do them for a minimum of eight to 12 weeks, applying progressive overload as you go. And then you can, you know, switch it after that.

But every time you change the exercise, there's a little bit of a you, you go backwards a tiny bit because when you switch the exercise, you go back to having to teach your body how to do that exercise efficiently. And then it usually takes about two or three weeks till you can start really progressing that exercise.

And it's one of the big [00:19:00] reasons why, for example, in my own programming, I never swap out all the exercises for anybody. So, so my members, um, I train, I program in 10 week. Sorry, eight week blocks. So for two months you're doing the same exercises. And then I will switch out about half of the exercises. And what that does is it allows you to continue to progress on those exercises that, you know, I don't swap out.

And then on the exercise that you do swap out, because it gets a little, you know, you have that little lag as you learn them. You know, it's not that your whole routine gets changed. So that's a really good way of, of training and. I know that there is a huge desire for variety, right? There's one woman who does these strength training, um, programs.

She's huge on YouTube and pretty much [00:20:00] anywhere that you ask. So I'm in a lot of Facebook groups for, for women who weight train and pretty much anybody who asks their like, oh, what would be a good program to start with? Like they will suggest this, this woman's program's on YouTube, and she's millions of people who have done them.

And, but it was interesting 'cause I had somebody, somebody there had commented like, oh, I've been doing her program for, you know, a few months and I'm not really noticing any change. So how long does it normally take to have changes? And, and then some of the. Like followers of this person who've been doing it for a long, long time, years answered that, oh yeah, you have to do it for like two years.

You know, when you've been doing it for two years, then you'll start to notice real change. And I was like, it should not take two years. If you are doing an effective, efficient program and applying progressive [00:21:00] overload, it will not take you two years. I mean, I had a huge transformation in my own body in a year, and my beginning was even like not optimal because I was still learning, right?

If I had the knowledge that I have today and got right, started like that, it would've been faster. So it it, you know, because the thing is with those online programs, because they're switching things up, you are not able to do the progressive overload piece, and that is, it is just such a key to getting results faster.

So then the last myth that I'll go over is the one that all workouts with weights build muscle. And, oh my God, I believed this, I so believed this. This is, you know, this is why I was doing body pump for so many years. I was like, I'm working out with weights. I'm sweating like crazy.

I'm, I'm using the biggest weights of any woman in the class. You know, [00:22:00] definitely this is effective. And I looked great for a long time. And then I didn't because age and menopause, you know, did their thing. And I realized that actually this is not the right thing to be doing because body pump F 45, orange Theory, they are more about muscular endurance.

So it's sweaty cardio with weights, and you're not like being systematic enough to really get results from it. So the keys that you need if you are really gonna be building muscle and strength is to follow a systematic program. You can do it at home, you can do it at the gym. You don't need a gym. You can absolutely do it at home, but you need to be applying progressive overload because as your muscles get stronger, you need to be pushing them a little bit [00:23:00] more, right?

Your body doesn't want to put muscle on. Muscle is an expensive thing for your body to carry around. So you need to trick it into thinking you need more muscle than you actually do in most parts of life. So, and you do that by like. Pushing it, okay. It builds a little bit of muscle, then you push it a little more, it builds a little more muscle, you push it a little more and, and you just keep going like that.

And that is the key. But it's very hard to apply progressive overload if you don't have kind of a controlled training program and you wanna push close to muscular failure. And this is something that I don't want you to worry about if you are just getting started right now, because progressive overload is plenty for that.

When you've been training for, let's say, three months, six months, applying progressive overload, you've learned, you know, they exercise as well, then you [00:24:00] start like thinking about how close to failure you are. So that's like a little bit, let's say that's an intermediate level topic. You don't need to be worried about that so much right now, but that you need to be pushing yourself in order for your body to realize that it needs to do something.

And then you need to be stimulating each muscle group twice a week. So research is going on all the time on this, right? Because there are bodybuilders who make money. That industry is a lot of money. So there is a lot of research done on how do you build muscle, and now it's being applied to health, right?

And. If you've ever done any research. So I, I did, um, I actually did diabetes research at Dartmouth Medical School when I was an undergrad, uh, you know, in the US and, and there, you know, we were doing experiments on white mice that were I genetically identical to each other. They were living in this exact same boxes, [00:25:00] eating the exact same thing.

They had, you know, the same lighting conditions. Everything was identical. And even in those conditions, like you've got variation in results, right? So you can imagine that when you do a study of humans who can be doing whatever they want, but they don't put 'em in little boxes and monitor everything that they do and control everything.

And everybody has different genetics things are also individuals. So, but right now what it's looking like is stimulating each muscle group twice a week is a good amount for growth. And that's a great place to start. And then further along your journey, you can do little experiments with yourself and see that, hey, what if I did three days a week?

You know, and then start maybe training one muscle three days a week instead of just two days a week and see if, if you get some better results. Okay. And then important is [00:26:00] also the recovery. You need time to recover. Your strength training session is the stimulus. And after that, the growing starts to happen.

And if you train too soon, it's kind of pointless 'cause you've already triggered the growth to start happening. So if you're gonna do two sessions a week, don't do them on back. Well, two full body sessions or twice that you're hitting the same muscle groups. Don't do them on two back to back days because you already stimulated on the first day.

Second day it's already stimulated. So, so it's not really gonna help you much. So wait, you know, take a day off and then do it again. Okay. And that's another thing that with, when you go to these classes and everything, then you, even if you were able to get some stimulating reps in there, if, if you don't have the recovery time there, it's kind of, yeah, it's not so efficient.

Alright, [00:27:00] so kind of the takeaways I hope that you will go away with from this whole challenge are that aging and menopause bring a lot of negative consequences to our bodies in particular, and that proper strength training can really halt and reverse many of these. And really, the sooner you add it to your weekly fitness habits, the better.

Because every day, every week, every month that you put it off, I mean, you are weakening all the time. It's not like, oh, it's not like if you're gonna paint a room. Right? Right. If you had a project like that to start, oh, I'm gonna start painting my house room by room, it's like, okay, yeah, the, the room's gonna look pretty much the same a year from now.

Okay. But your body isn't, your body is going to be weaker. The hole that you are in is going to be deeper, and the effort that you need to make to get out of there is going to be bigger. It's just gonna take longer. So [00:28:00] I do encourage you to get started sooner. 

All right, so those were the myths. Busted. And if you wanna be sure that the workouts with weights that you are doing are actually moving the needle and. Stimulating your type two muscle fibers, making sure that you are going to stay strong and healthy through midlife and beyond, and start toning up for real.

Then join my Learn to Lift programs. Right now I'm running and discount of 10% off with the code. SEPT10, so SEPT10 and then if you are already strength training, then why don't you join my membership and see what it's like. The biggest difference that I see when women that join my membership show me what other memberships look like, is that, a lot of memberships do a lot of swapping [00:29:00] up of the exercises, so it's harder to do the progressive overload they get into. A lot of this variety thing and the exercises can be very difficult and often the sessions are really, really long and they don't need to be, they can be, as short as. Three exercises per session up to I think seven would be about the limit of being able to actually do something effectively.

And certainly if you're spending more than an hour, strength training, then you could look at whether you're actually following a very effective, efficient program. All right, and with that I will leave you to ponder these myths and enjoy the rest of your week and as usual, wish you happy training.