#137: How to Start Strength Training Safely After 40

Want to start strength training but worried about getting hurt? 

In this episode, I share my tips for starting safely. These are drawn from guiding women through my programs plus lessons from my own experience starting in menopause.

 The goal: get strong, stay safe, and keep making progress you can feel.

You’ll learn:

• Why I recommend starting with 2–3 sessions per week
• The exercises I wouldn’t program for a beginner
• How to master form before you lift heavier
• How to handle modifications and injuries without losing momentum

Resources mentioned: 

• Episode on grip strength: Episode #93 

Transcript

#137: How to Start Strength Training Safely After 40

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and today we are gonna talk about how to start strength training. Safely in midlife, and in this episode, I'm really sharing the things that I have learned along the way as a coach to hundreds of women who have gotten started with my programs.

And also from my own personal experience and from what I have seen women doing and maybe not doing so optimally in the gym when I've been training on my own. So a lot of input coming in there because the thing is that we are not 20 anymore. Our bodies are not the same as when we were 20. I'm 54 post menopause.

I was an athlete all through high school, [00:01:00] college, and worked out like a maniac, you know, in my thirties and forties running doing group fitness classes, bootcamps, and all those things. And I've definitely noticed a big change in my body that seemed to happen overnight as I was in menopause. And I've since learned where this all comes from and I talk about that in my masterclass.

So if you are interested in that, then check out my masterclass. But the thing is that we are not the same. And, and if you jump in a hundred percent head first, you know, dive into the thing, start doing it every day, going as hard as you can because you want fast results. So more will get you there faster then.

Yeah, it may, may not be the best strategy at this point in your life. 

So the [00:02:00] first thing I would recommend is to start slow, and I mean that on many different levels. One is that I would recommend starting by strength training two or three times a week. Now I offer the option to start strength training four days a week, and there are some women that will do that, but the reason that I think the two or three times a week is actually better is it gives you more recovery time and it gives your body more time to adapt to this whole new type of training. Because even if you've been doing things like body pump classes or you know, these kinds of group fitness classes, or even the ones where, you know, the YouTube follow along classes where you are using weights. It is different once you start to really push and progress. Okay. It causes a, a different kind of [00:03:00] stressor on your body. 

And I think by progressing slowly but surely you avoid a lot of issues. Plus, I think one of the biggest ones is that people's grip strength doesn't really keep up with their body strength.

And I have an episode where I talk about how to increase your grip strength and a few tips if you are starting to notice, like some elbow issues or whatever. As you increase your weights, what you can do about it. It's one of the most common things that I see women doing in the gym or people in general.

And I always kind of wanna go over and be like, oh, if I could tweak one little thing in what you're doing because you're, you're like setting yourself up for elbow issues, then I would tweak this. So, but anyway, but start slow because it allow your tendons, your ligaments, your bones, your grip strength, all of those things [00:04:00] to keep up. 

So don't, don't feel like you need to go from zero to a thousand immediately. You really are gonna get really nice results, strength training two or three times a week. You don't need to go all in, forget everything else, and just strength train. Okay. 

The second thing I would say is, and I've seen this over and over again, people that get injured because they don't have a good program and.

Just because you're paying for a program doesn't mean it's a good program unfortunately, so you end up in situations where the exercises have too many that are training the same muscles in the same way, so you kind of overdo it on certain muscles and then you end up with injury.

 A good program would be something like one workout session would be something that you can achieve [00:05:00] in an hour. I mean, even, even I can do my sessions in an hour and I take long breaks between sets 'cause I am lifting heavy. And so that means that actually you can only program about six exercises, maybe seven if you're doing fewer sets of a few exercises.

So when you think about, for example, doing a full body workout in seven exercises, you really have to understand biomechanics and what exercises, train what muscles so that you actually hit all of your muscles in that session. But I see it all too often that you'll have two exercises that are training the same muscle often, like even in pretty much the same way, just using a different variant that trains that same muscle, and that can really lead to injury because it's too [00:06:00] much of the session is just focused on that one muscle. Okay. 

So just watch out for those. And it often will come with things like someone might be like, oh, you do squats and then you do leg presses.

They are the same thing in both of them. You are doing a compound exercise where your knees and your hips are flexing at the same time. Now, they're not a hundred percent identical exercises, but you get my point, like they are the same thing versus if you chose an exercise that like your calf raises, which is training your calves, that is different. It's training a different movement pattern.

So you've gotta like mix it up in order to avoid the injury. With this, I wanna also say that make sure that there are alternatives for you because we're not 20 anymore. So there are gonna be some exercises that you [00:07:00] can't do. I mean, anything that you buy online.

That or you get online. It is a generic program if you're working one-on-one with a coach. If you're investing like that, then you are getting a program that's just for you. But otherwise, it is a. Generic program. It can't be anything but a generic program, right?

So they don't know you and they don't know your specific injury history and all those things.

So you need to be in the driver's seat and understand and listen to your body and be like, okay, now this is hurting, or, no, my knee doesn't want me to do this, and this kind of thing. And either modify the exercise, so don't do a full range of motion. 

So for example, if you are doing split squats, which is one of the favorite ones that I start off with because it is just an amazing exercise, but it is a tough one.

But for some people, their knees just won't [00:08:00] take it. They're just so weak in the lower body or they have knee arthritis or whatever, that they can't do that as their first exercise that they do, they need to do it further down in their history. And I was actually one of them, split squads started to really, when my arthritis started kicking in, then I had to take that out of my programming for a while.

So, so I completely understand that. So if you have that kind of a situation, then please reach out to whoever you're getting the program from and ask for an alternate exercise to that one. 

And then the other option that you can have, for example, let's stick with the split squat example, is that you are not able to do it fully because you're just not strong enough.

You know, if you go all the way down in the split squat, you're not getting back up from there, right? It's not that your knee hurts, it's just that you are just too weak to do it right? And then you can modify the exercise. So start by doing it less deep. [00:09:00] Start by holding onto a table or a chair or something and helping yourself, do it body weight at first.

And hopefully the program that you have purchased or are doing can suggest some ways to modify the exercise. So be bold and ask for modifications when you can't do an exercise, okay? 

Because that's how you're gonna move forward. But you can also just once you know that, oh, okay, I can modify this by not going down as far.

Then do that modification and then slowly but surely start doing it further down and further down and further down and further down till you do the full range of motion. When you're strong enough to do the full range of motion, then start loading it. Okay? So there are kind of two routes you can take.

You either are like, let's say you have an arthritis in your ankle or knee or whatever, that you [00:10:00] just cannot do go lower than a certain amount no matter what. No matter how strong you get. You just can't go lower than that. Then yes, you do a shorter range of motion and you load that smaller range of motion.

If, however, it is a strength issue and that's why you can't get all the way down. Then you first work on slowly but surely getting to the full range of motion and then you start loading the exercise. I hope that makes sense. Okay. 

Third thing is exercise selection. So there are certain exercises that I would definitely not start with. One of them is a barbell back squat that is an exercise which requires quite a bit of technique to do correctly, and there is a big chance of you hurting yourself. So none of my programs have that.

If you want to learn that you see it online, you think that's really cool, I wanna be [00:11:00] able to do that. Then please get a trainer to stand there and actually watch you do it. Invest in a few sessions just to really, really, really nail down that technique, that form, so that you're doing it correctly. Otherwise, I wouldn't do that. So choose exercises that are in a way safe. Okay. 

This brings up the next point, number four, which is that really work on doing the exercises correctly. Before you start loading them, okay, yes. I talk about progressive overload all the time, and you hear it all the time online, like you gotta lift heavy, you gotta lift heavy, or you're not gonna get results and all that.

Yeah, you need to be challenging your body, but you first need to learn how to do the exercise. It's like a kid cannot start [00:12:00] learning how to sprint before they have learned how to walk, like get one foot in front of the other, right? So same thing with strength training. So make sure that you are watching the videos where they explain the exercise.

So watch the video. Do the exercise. Watch it again. Because once you've done it once, you're gonna be like, oh, yeah, okay. I, I, now I realize that she mentioned that your elbow should be pointing this way, or I should be thinking about this, or My knees should be going in this direction. So please, you have those videos explaining how to do the exercise.

Take advantage of them. And also take video of yourself doing the exercise. Just prop your phone up against a water bottle, or you can get a flip stick. That's what I use, which is basically this little sticker that you put on back of your phone. If you're watching me [00:13:00] on YouTube, I'm gonna show you what the lipstick looks like, so.

On the back of my phone, I have this sticker that takes up about the center, a third of my phone. It's very flat on my phone, so my phone still fits into my case. And then you basically just. Lip it down, you can maybe hear that sound. And it reveals a stickering surface. And this sticky surface sticks to just about every material.

It's one of these, one of these materials that's been, invented by this space agency. So anyway, you can attach that to a mirror, a wall, a piece of equipment, whatever. And it's a very, very subtle way of taking video. And then you just kind of twist your phone to get it off. And this flip stick, sticky surface lasts a long time.

When it gets dirty, all you do is you kind of wipe it down and then it's super sticky [00:14:00] again. But take those form videos, then watch yourself. So for example, if you are working on hip thrusts that your shins need to be vertical with the ground. When you look at the video, you can see, okay, eye vertical with the ground, you can watch the instructional video.

And the video of yourself doing it back to back and see, wait a second, do I look like that or something? In my form different. One of the big mistakes I see, for example, for people who are doing lat pull downs. Is they tend to, at the very bottom, they'll uh, arch their shoulders round, their shoulders forward rather than keeping them back.

So they're actually going too far in the pulling down. So you can catch a lot of these. Errors, fix a lot of your form mistakes, and when you're doing proper form, then you're less [00:15:00] likely to get injured. So use form videos. So watch the instructional videos, take form videos of yourself and if you have access to a coach.

So if you're in a program like mine, send me the form videos. I am happy to take a look at them. And offer you suggestions on how you can improve your form. I take form videos of myself almost every time I go train. If I'm really in a hurry or the gym's really, really busy, then I'll skip it, but I do. I check all the time.

Are my elbows staying up? Am I cheating? Am I swinging? Am I, you know, whatever. And I'm checking them all the time. So it's not something like you should maybe get in the habit of videoing yourself. It sucks. In the beginning, it really does. Or I'm in the meeting, I'm like, oh my God, I look like that. But nowadays, I've done so many of them that.

It doesn't bother me anymore. Plus I know how to do this [00:16:00] stuff now. So it's more pleasant to watch the foreign videos. Yeah. Okay.

And the final thing that I'll say is that. Injuries happen. I know that's not maybe like the best thing to hear, but they will happen. Anybody who exercises will every now and again hurt themselves doing it. You might overestimate how strong you are. You might, let your form slip one day.

Whatever, like injuries do happen, you may overload yourself. It's not the end of the world. It is part of being an athlete and training. That's what we're doing. We are training and it will happen, and I really wanna encourage you not to throw in the towel when that happens because it will just happen every now and again.

I think it's inevitable. Anybody that you follow online. Including me [00:17:00] has times when, oh, now I overdid it on whatever, and then I need to take a little break or pull a muscle, whatever, strain something. So for me, for example, my most recent one was that my, hamstring tendon. I started acting up because I've been loading my hyper extensions maybe a little bit too ambitiously.

Okay. So, okay. Learning from me. But my point is don't throw in the towel. Find exercises you can do. And even if, let's say you're having knee surgery, or your hip replacement or whatever, where you actually cannot do everything, let's say lower body. Let's say you have to take a break for a few weeks.

There's still the whole other half of your body. There's the whole upper body that you have. And also even if you have one leg that's injured or one limb that is injured. And then there is the whole other limb and there is [00:18:00] this phenomenon whereby when you train one arm, the other arm actually gets some benefit from that.

So while I might not continue to like massively progressively overload. And really try to strengthen the leg. You can train. I would at least keep it at about where you are today. So why let both legs get weak? And then when you're able to train the other limb again, then you start doing unilateral stuff so that you work that, previously injured or operated on body part so it gets strong again. 

And of course for that you follow your physical therapist's instructions and do it exactly like they say so that you get the best result.

But you can always find something. I mean, strength training is so important, and it shouldn't be an all or nothing kind of thing because the more muscle you can have on your body, it really has [00:19:00] enormous health benefits for your metabolic health, for avoiding type two diabetes for, helping you maintain your weight.

All the things, so please don't give up just because I mean, and I'll just say that, you know, I've been dealing with this hamstring issue and, and I've really had to search for new exercises. Like I, I don't actually like glute thrusts, so, so I hadn't been programming them for myself. In probably two years, but it happens to be one of the few exercises that my hamstring doesn't mind because it's not being stretched. In that exercise. 

So I started doing glute thrust and I started off really slowly because of course I'm checking, is my hamstring gonna react to this? Is it okay with this? And I've started actually liking them. I think I'm going to keep them in my program. So you may find a new [00:20:00] friend in a new exercise when you are trying to modify based on injuries.

Okay, so to summarize what we've gone over today, and these may not come out in the same order because I went a little a different order than what I had on my bullet list here. But start slow. So the two or three times a week is plenty. Don't feel like you need to go all out full hog pedal to the metal with strength training. Start slow. Let your body get used to it. Let your tendons and ligaments get used to it. Let your group strength catch up all the things.

Get a good program. Honestly, it is worth the investment so that you are doing safe exercises. Don't do things like a barbell back squat. Not necessary. unless you have a, a coach watching you, I would not recommend starting with that. Plus a lot of the programs. Out there that are like, if you follow a free program, it might [00:21:00] be overdoing it on certain muscles while kind of totally skipping others.

Modify if you need to modify. Okay. And make sure you get the form down.

So watch the demo videos, like really well. Listen to the demonstrations, take form videos of yourself and if you have a coach, have your form videos checked. Why wouldn't you? You're paying for that. Do it. Okay. 

And then remember that you are going to get injured every now and again. It just happens, and it may actually happen that you get injured doing something totally different and it affects your ability to go to the weight room and train your entire program that you've been training, but just modify your program, swap out and do exercises that you can do. Okay? Which actually reminds me of one point I forgot here, is that if there is something in the program that you have bought that [00:22:00] is not something you can do and you need a modification or swapping out, don't be afraid to ask for it, okay? Because that's what you're paying for. To get the substitution, to get the alternative, or to understand how can I make this a little bit easier for me, if I can't do it fully right now.

Okay. So with that, I hope that you will stay as injury free as possible, and I wish you happy training.