#151: What’s The Least You Can Strength Train and Still Get Strong and Build Muscle?

So, you want to start strength training because you want to stop getting weaker, build muscle, be healthier, and age well, but there's no way you're going to do it four days a week. 

But can training less frequently really be effective?

YES! 

I believe that whether you like lifting or hate it, you need to be doing it. Like brushing your teeth. 

In this episode, I share the minimum you can do and still get the benefits of lifting. 

You'll hear:

1. How to get started without becoming a gym rat (including client examples!)
2. How to fit strength training into your life without doing one-hour sessions
3. How one cardio queen has incorporated lifting into her life with amazing results

If you have any questions about how to do it in your own situation, reach out to me through Instagram DMs. I would love to help. 

Enjoy the show!

💪

If you’re enjoying the podcast, and would like to support my work please consider buying me a cup of coffee – link’s in the show notes! 

Transcript

#151: What’s The Least You Can Strength Train and Still Get Strong and Build Muscle?

Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach.

If you are one of the women who has been thinking about strength training, knows they need to get started, but you just haven't done it yet because. You hate weight training or you just know you can't fit it into your busy schedule. Then I think this is the episode that you'll wanna listen to.

I wanna talk about the minimum that you could do and actually get to see results.

 So my Lift-Off! Program was last week, and I have a lot of women who are finishing up the challenge and thinking about will they start strength training or won't they start strength training?

 And. These are women who know that they need to start strength training and they have clear reasons that they wanna do it. When I admit women into the Facebook group, which is part of [00:01:00] the experience, I ask them, so what are your motivations to want to start strength training? And it's amazing.

These answers have really changed over the years from. You know, women who were not so aware of the benefits of strength training to nowadays, that they understand that this is what's going to move the needle for them as far as getting stronger, getting fit, feeling confident in their bodies, strengthening their bones, being able to play with their grandkids, not becoming a burden on their children as they age. Being able to live independently age strong. So it's like you understand that you need to do it right, but somehow it feels super daunting. You look online and there are people that are working out all the time. They're working really, really hard and you just can't kind of see yourself doing that, or you know that your life is super, super [00:02:00] busy.

And that's why I wanted to share a little bit about, you know, how little it actually takes. To get you stronger, to get you firmer. So I'll start with a story. This actually inspired this topic for today. I got a message from the queen of the cardio queens from my gym. Okay. And I've mentioned her before on the show.

She's somebody who I've seen in the locker room for years. I actually. Think that I have been only in about two cardio classes with her ever because she, um, likes the more, you know, kicking and all that. And I usually do the dance, but I have every now and again been in a spin class with her. But in any case, she is somebody who might even come in twice a day to work out in the cardio classes.

And when I started my strength training journey. So now I'm on, like, this is my fifth year of strength [00:03:00] training. So after my first year, I was really curious to see how my. Cardiovascular health had suffered or not suffered from Pretty much I like stopped doing cardio for that year and uh, and there, you know, I had somebody who does cardio all the time and so I said, well, why don't we do our V02 max tests together?

Because I'm a competitive person, so if I have somebody in the room with me who I know will kick my ass, I will just work that much harder. So I thought I'll get my best possible result if she's there. Now, of course you can't really cheat your V02 max, but, but it definitely pushed me to really push my body so I could, you know, see how far I could go.

Anyway, so she and I go down there and before it we got a body composition check done, and then we did the v02 max test. And what she discovered [00:04:00] from her body composition check was that actually she. Could really use some strength training that she was pretty low on the muscle scale. So that was her first wake up call that, Hey, I, I should really start strength training now.

She didn't start right away. And, um, and you know, we've remained friends and hang out in the locker room together and chat. And she listens to my podcast, so, hey, she's probably listening to this right now. Like, that's me. That's me. Anyway. So she joined my liftoff challenge and after that she actually started strength training.

And she did it in a way where she had a few exercises that she would do and she would do them before going to her cardio class. So for sure she's not like going in there and thinking. Uh, now [00:05:00] I'm doing a strength training session. I'm all serious about strength training. She's kind of like, okay, I'm gonna do this strength training, and then I get to go do the thing I wanna do.

All right? And that is perfectly fine. So I run into her in the gym every now and again, like in the weight room as she is finishing up her sets. And she takes advantage of things like super setting so she doesn't take very long breaks. So she's able to get through her routine pretty quickly.

And then she runs off to her cardio class. Yeah. So she reached out to me yesterday 'cause she now went in and did another, body composition scan. And she said her jaw dropped when she got the results because. Despite the fact that she hasn't become a lifter, you know that, that she does it like this before going to her cardio classes, she has increased her muscle mass.

She has decreased her visceral fat, so her [00:06:00] overall body composition has really improved significantly. Even in this very short amount of time, and even though she's been, you know, doing this as a little addition, right? Not like she's plunged head first and done the deep dive into strength training and visually when I see her, I see that change.

She does look more muscular, you can see the muscle definition a lot better on her now. So. I think she's such a great example of that really. Just getting started and adding it into your routine in however way you can is going to make a difference. You are going to get stronger. You are going to. Put on muscle, or at the very least, stop the slide because as we age, we lose muscle mass [00:07:00] and cardio classes won't fix that, right? Cardio fitness and muscle fitness are two different things. They're two different types of, of health and fitness. So I hope her story could be inspiring to you. 

And I wanted to bring this up because I have had that question now of women in the challenge had one woman reach out and she said, I hate strength training. If I have to do a one hour session twice a week, I know I'm going to quit. What else could I do? And I told her that, well, she has actually a couple of options.

So the way I have set up my programming is to make it really flexible and lower the barrier to get started. So I'm gonna explain it in the context of my programming.

So my minimum amount of strength training program is to strength train twice a week. So you get two full body sessions and if you [00:08:00] do the full body session, it has, six or seven exercises in there, and it includes upper body exercises and lower body exercises. So you have two sessions, each of them full body, and when you do the whole session all in one go, it'll take you about 45 to 60 minutes to do, including the warmup and the cool down.

Okay. But if you are somebody who would rather do mini sessions and get it over with, but get into the habit of doing a mini session every day, then that actually works really, really well with this two times a week program, so you can split up the two times a week full body sessions so that instead of having two full body sessions, you have four sessions, each of which is either upper body or lower body.

So here's an example of how you would do that. So you take session 1's, upper body exercises, and do them on Monday. Then you [00:09:00] do session 1's, lower body exercises on Tuesday. You do session 2's, upper body exercises on Wednesday, and then session 2's, lower body exercises on Thursday. So you get four short sessions rather than two longer sessions.

Okay? So that's one way of doing it.

And if you want to make it even less. Okay. And the even less will actually get you results because it is always going to be better than doing nothing. This is why I am even bringing this up. So you can take those two full body sessions and each session will tell you what are the primary exercises.

And which are the additional exercises. So I break every session down into the primary. There. There are three or four primary exercises. So those are the ones that I really want you to do. And if you did only the primary [00:10:00] exercises, you would hit all your muscle groups twice a week. Okay. And then there are additional exercises for those of us who want to do a little bit more, because yes, you'll get a little bit faster and more results from doing a little bit more.

Okay? I mean, that's just the way it is. But if you only wanted to train twice a week and do short sessions, just do the primary exercises of each of the sessions each week. So then you could train twice a week and only spend like half an hour on your session, and I promise you, you do that following the instructions in the program so that you're applying progressive overload and continuing to challenge your body as you get better and stronger, and you will see results.

It's just science, right? So it, you know what I'm trying to say here is even if you hate strength [00:11:00] training, think of it like brushing your teeth because honestly, this is the only body you have. For the rest of your life, and though right now it may work just fine, you may be able to push yourself off the sofa.

You can get off the floor somehow, right? You can manage those groceries from the car. As long as you're parked pretty close, you can get up the steps still, you know all these things, but think about where you want to be in the last decade of your life. And if you let your muscles continue to get weaker and your muscle mass continue to decline over the next 20, 30, 40 years, you are not going to be able to live independently.

Your world is going to close in on you. So. [00:12:00] I want you to think a little bit long term what it is that your final decade you wishes you would have chosen to do now. So anyway, so that's kind of my message for today, that it doesn't need to be. Dive in and do a hundred exercises, five days a week. Live at the gym, become a gym rat.

You can make a lot of difference in your fitness, your health, your strength, your muscle mass. Just by doing twice a week short workouts. And if you wanna ask me more about this, then please reach out to me. Um, best way is through my dms and Instagram and, and. Talk to me about your situation, and I can help you figure that out because why am I doing this podcast?

It is because this is so [00:13:00] important for our health and I feel like you know, the message is getting out there, but if you're only looking at the stuff on social media, it can feel very overwhelming and a lot of the programs out there, you know, start at three days a week, you know, four days a week, or five days a week.

And really, you don't need to be training that often. If your goal is not to be a bodybuilder, if your goal is health. Aging well, maintaining your independence, putting on more muscle and feeling good in your body, keeping your joints happy, those kinds of things than the twice a week is really going to take you far.

All right. And with that, I hope I have inspired at least one person to go ahead and yes, let's try it. Let's try to fit this into my life, and, uh, for those of you who are already in that lifestyle, yay for you. And, with that, I wish you happy training.