In this episode, Brooke Davis with Elysian Women’s Wellness discusses the best exercises for women over 40. She emphasizes the importance of exercise for maintaining muscle mass, bone density, and overall health. Brooke recommends incorporating various exercises into a weekly plan including resistance training, cardio (limiting high-intensity interval training or HIIT to only a couple times a week), and intentional power training. Additionally, she highlights the importance of progressive overload and tracking progress in both strength training and cardio. Not only this, but Brooke encourages mobility and balance in creating a workout plan and emphasizes the importance of consistency with training and recovery alike.
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Contents
Welcome to the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist with Elysian Women’s Wellness, and I’m here to simplify your fitness.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Fitness Simplified podcast, where we dive deep into health, fitness, and wellness topics that matter most to you.
I am your host, Brooke Davis, and today we are focusing on a topic that is incredibly important for so many of our listeners, basically everybody, but this is also important to those of you over 40. So, finding the best kind of exercise for women over 40. As we age, our bodies undergo a wide variety of changes.
Metabolism slows down, muscle mass declines, and it can be harder to maintain energy and stamina that you used to, but here’s the good news. With the right exercise routine, you can not only manage these changes, but thrive feeling stronger, more vibrant and confident than you ever thought possible. So, in this episode, we are going to explore the most effective types of exercise that are specifically beneficial to women over 40.
Whether you’re looking to build strength, improve flexibility, boost your metabolism, or just feel better in your day-to-day life, this episode is for you. We’ll break down the science behind why some of these things are important, discuss how to incorporate them into your routine, and then talk about how to stay motivated, consistent, no matter where you’re at on your fitness journey. So, grab your favorite cup of tea, settle in, and let’s get started on the path to a healthier, more active you.
We as women are living longer than ever, but our quality of life is not following suit. We don’t just want to focus on the lifespan, but healthspan and exercise can help that. I think at this point, most women know they should be exercising in some capacity, but what I find is that most ladies are only making it a priority when they want to lose weight, which is a huge mistake.
The question though always remains, what exactly should I be doing to produce the best results, and mostly the unsaid part, in the least amount of time, right? We want our results fast, but we’re all busy, we’re not trying to waste time, so we’re always talking efficiency here. If you’re not already aware that you should be exercising, let me just give you a brief overview of the benefits of exercise outside of weight loss or even physical appearance. So, as a woman, every year after age 30, we’re losing one to three percent of our muscle mass.
After age 50, or following menopause, women can lose up to 20 percent of their bone density within five to seven years if you are not taking steps to negate it. So, you’re looking at osteoporosis, osteopenia, fractures, the ultimately breaks, but the right kind of exercise can help combat both of these things, allowing you to enjoy the activities you love long after retirement, keep up with your grandbabies, and to stay independent later in life. In addition to the structural benefits, there’s the regulation of glucose, reduction of insulin resistance, reduction of cardiovascular disease, which also increases with menopause, and the decrease of estrogen, along with, of course, the positive influence on mental health.
So regardless of your body composition, any weight loss goals that you have or struggle to achieve, exercise is something that will always pay dividends in some aspect. But what exactly should that look like once you hit 40? Maybe you’ve been exercising, but it hasn’t been producing the same results it used to. Maybe your joints and muscles ache more than in the past.
How can you best manage that? First and foremost, everyone is different. So what works for you, or for one woman, may not necessarily work well for your body or your life, which is why we individualize our client’s training plans. But there are some guidelines that you can follow to help create a well-balanced plan that you can tailor to yourself.
So on to a general weekly plan. If you’re over 40, and basically everybody, you need at least two days per week of resistance training. So one day a week is enough to maintain.
Two days a week is enough to increase muscle mass. So two days a week of resistance training, ideally lifting weights or something, okay, body weight, whatever it is, in the rep range of six to 12 reps at 75% or more of your one rep max. So heavy to you for at least two to three sets per exercise, which I just have to clarify because something I hear all the time is that, oh, I could never lift that weight, or people are intimidated by the amount of weight that myself or other people lift thinking that they have to do that exact same thing.
What is heavy to you and is going to elicit muscular adaptation for you may not be heavy to me. And what’s heavy to me may not be doable to you. And that’s okay.
The goal is to work at your capacity, and your body will adapt to what you can do. And then you will get stronger and eventually, maybe lift what I can do. So there are two main scales for measuring exertion during exercise.
For lifting, I prefer to use the RIR scale, which is reps in reserve. For cardio, there’s an RPE scale or rate of perceived exertion, which I’ll talk about when we get there. So, for RIR, like it says, it’s a scale one to 10, based on how many reps you feel like you have left in the tank to perform.
We’re talking quality reps with good form before you hit technical failure. And for beginners or new programs, aiming for the three to four RIR range is great, which means you have three to four reps left before you can’t do any more. So this ensures that there isn’t too much initial soreness, which can increase the risk of injury or reduce the ability to get your next workout in ability or desire to get your next workout in.
And it doesn’t make your life completely miserable. You could do 100 reps of something with terrible form and to where you can’t walk. But then you can’t sit on the toilet the next day.
And most people don’t want to live their lives like that. So, this scale helps you do that. Then as you work up from there, as you do those exercises over the weeks, okay, and you get comfortable with the lifts, you know how your body responds to the new stimulus of either the exercise in general or the volume of that workout.
And ideally, the majority of your work should be done in the one to three RIR range, which I will also say that most people, especially when lifting weights, vastly underestimate. So ladies, don’t be afraid to push yourself, you will probably surprise yourself on what you’re actually capable of when it comes to lifting weights. You also don’t even have to use weights.
Tons of our clients get amazing results and are absolutely able to build muscle and get the benefits that we talked about earlier. From only using resistance bands, bodyweight exercises, you just sometimes have to get a little more creative. A gallon of water is eight pounds.
Soup cans are one to two pounds and a great thing to start out with. Paint cans, five gallon buckets of water, logs, rocks, you can use chairs and steps for various exercises. There is really zero excuse to not get moving like yesterday.
Now, before you come at me with “I don’t want to get bulky,” I’m going to tell you that if you have ever used the word “tone” before in regards to a look that you want, then you would better believe that whoever you saw that was toned was doing some sort of resistance training, whether they were lifting weights or doing their band or bodyweight exercises. And because she wasn’t a man with male levels of testosterone, she didn’t get bulky. Are there women who have more testosterone and build muscle faster than others? Sure.
Are there women who train hard as hell for years and years and build more muscle than you might personally prefer? Sure. Will you accidentally do that by starting to lift weights after age 40? Absolutely not. It is not something that you will get to on accident.
So back to my point, at least two days of strength training, and I’m going to break it down by option. So if you’re only training for two days a week, then they should be full body days. If you’re doing three days, then you could do an upper lower body split and then a full body.
But I would mostly suggest doing three full body days, but it also depends on how much time you have your capacity and honestly what you enjoy. If you are doing four days, then you would definitely need to break it up. I would suggest an upper lower split.
So upper body, lower body. I like to do a rest day and then upper body, lower body. Four full body days, especially again over 40, but honestly for most people is too much and it is difficult to recover from.
So, if you are determined and you want to bust out five days, then I would suggest either doing an upper lower split and then a full body on day five, or a push pull legs, upper lower, if you must. But you also need to leave room for cardio and recovery, so keep that in mind. I’m not going to dive too much into daily program design with specific exercises because I have a whole other podcast planned for that, as well as a resource.
But you do need to make sure that you are targeting the five main movement patterns, mostly balanced throughout the week, unless you have something that you need to work around for whatever reason. And that is going to be one: a squat or knee dominant movement. And that is bilateral and unilateral.
So, both single and double legged, right? Squatting is a fundamental movement pattern that you bend at the hips and knees to lower body down towards the ground. Great for building strength in quads, hamstrings, glutes, but can also help improve your mobility in your hips and ankles, if you are using full depth squats. We’re going to get into mobility a little bit later.
But I would say, especially for over 40, the more range of motion you can use, again, with proper lifting technique, the better. Knee dominant movements are things like squats, lunges, reverse lunges, any kind of a split squat, a side lunge, anything where your butt is dropping down below your knees is generally a knee dominant movement. Going to the second is a hinge, which is a hip dominant.
And that is, again, bilateral, unilateral, so both and single leg. And then this is, again, prioritizing the hips as the movement. So generally, even in a deadlift, you will get a little bit of quad, but a deadlift is going to be a hip-dominant movement.
That is bending at the hips while keeping your legs mostly straight, but also the like a bridge could be considered a hinge type movement. There is some nuance to that. But this is a posterior chain exercise.
So focusing on hamstrings, glutes, and low back, you’re looking at deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, kettlebell swings, and bridges, things like that. Number three is going to be your push. And that is going to be anything that you are pushing weight away from your body.
And this is both horizontal and vertical. So, this is going to work shoulders, chest, triceps, which yes, even women need. But you’re looking at push-ups, bench press, overhead press, and things like dips.
Number four is going to be a pull. So, pulling movements is anything where you’re pulling the weight towards you. Again, horizontal and vertical.
So this is going to work back, biceps, grip strength, forearms. And you’re looking at things like pull-ups, rows, chin-ups, any kind of lat pull-down. Again, both single and double arm for both push and pull.
And then lastly is going to be your carry. So carrying movements are where you’re holding the weight in your hands and you’re walking with it. This is great for grip strength, core stability, and just overall, honestly, functional capacity.
So I love the grocery bag example, because I am a person who likes to take one trip from my car to the house. And so, I am carrying all of the groceries, and that is an exercise called a farmer’s carry. And then we have carrying our children, always on one side of our body.
I always, my left arm is way stronger than my right, but also my core is working to stabilize as I’m holding on one side. So, making sure that you are training those movement patterns is super, super important. So, there’s farmer’s carries, suitcase carries, and then overhead carries.
Then of course, there’s a whole other tangent we could go on with accessory work and core. But for now, these are the most important just to make sure that you have included all of these in a balanced way throughout the week. So lastly, and possibly most importantly, I want to talk about a mistake that I hear so many women making when it comes to their training.
So we offer personalized plans in our free Facebook group. And something that I hear so, so often is that they are not implementing progressive overload, or they’re not being intentional about progressive overload, because there’s the concept that progressive overload is not something you implement. It is the outcome of training properly, but you can also train properly and not implement progressive overload.
So it does need to be intentional. But progressive overload is the gradual increase of either reps, weight, the improvement in form or time under tension over the weeks of the same exercise. This is what ensures that you’re building muscle and you’re getting the most out of your training plan, that you’re fueling enough and that you’re recovering enough.
So this, again, if you’re able to implement progressive overload, you are seeing strength increases without injury, then you know you’re doing things right. And that goes for, again, not just training, but also your nutrition. Because if you are not fueling properly, if you’re not getting adequate nutrition, then you likely are not going to progress at least the same way in your strength.
Even if you’re taking a group class, writing down the weights that you’re using for how many reps, even if it’s just the main lifts, like your squat, deadlift, bench press, row, then over a few weeks, checking in to see if you can use more weight while you do them will be so, so beneficial. Otherwise, if you’re lifting by yourself, just winging it each week and feeling like you’re not seeing the changes that you want, this might be why. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
With our clients, we use an app, which makes it super easy. They can just plug in exercises that are programmed for them. They can plug in their weight, how many reps they did, and it keeps track week after week.
So they can look back on a graph or on a chart and see all of the weights, right? Week one, you were using 12 pounds. By week four, you’re using 20 pounds. Cool.
We’re on the right track. We’re doing good. If you don’t have an app, you can just grab a regular small notebook, or you can get a specific one for tracking workouts off Amazon.
I will link my favorite one in the show notes, and then write down your weekly plan, write down your workouts for each week. And that way you have something to look back on to make sure you are making progress and making the most of your time. I’ll be honest, right? There are times when I just want to go move to move.
I want to sweat. I want to get some energy out and not worry about what weights I used or what I did the week before. But if you’re wanting to optimize your time spent on the exercises, the results that you’re seeing and getting the benefits that we talked about earlier, then having some sort of a gauge for your progress in this way is imperative.
It’s a non-negotiable. So find a way that works for you and go that route. Next up, we have cardio.
So I want to start with what cardio is good for and what it’s not good for. Cardio is great for, as the name implies, cardiovascular or heart health. It is great for improving muscular endurance, your immune system, and even brain health.
What it’s not great for is fat loss. If you’re trying to lose fat, you should still be following the exact same guidelines I’m going to lay out below, just with adjusted nutrition. Cardio, if anything, should be actually limited to kind of a minimum in any kind of a fat loss phase.
Cardio is kind of in its spotlight right now because people are, I don’t know, finding it again and enjoying running. But it has been largely bastardized over the years. And I think because, unfortunately, it still remains to be most women’s exercise of choice, despite it not necessarily being the best thing for us for many reasons.
And whether they’re only doing cardio because out of, you know, fear of stepping in the weight room with all the big boys, fear of getting bulky, like we talked about earlier, or simply the lack of desire or capacity to learn the complexities of it, we have to get over that. Cardio is great. It’s necessary, but it should not be the main thing that women are using for exercise, especially over age 40.
Especially when you are eating in a deficit and trying to lose body fat, when you are restricting carbohydrates. And especially when you are struggling with hormonal balance, then you add high stress jobs, a high stress life on top of that.
It’s all just way too much for your body. So that being said, the American Heart Association recommends getting 150 minutes of moderate cardio or 75 minutes of vigorous cardio per week. So I suggest getting at least one to two sessions of specific cardio in, working in a capacity that feels doable to you, then getting the rest in walking or hiking.
Cardio has been shown to be more beneficial at reducing specifically visceral fat. So that abdominal belly fat that acquires, during perimenopause and menopause cave when compared to strength training alone. However, the benefits of strength training are different.
As we discussed above when looking at optimal training and overall and best overall results, a combination of them is going to be the best thing for you. In addition to of course, nutrition, some studies suggest that especially during perimenopause doing rucking or weighted hiking with either a backpack or a weighted vest can be really beneficial to reducing the effects of osteoporosis along with that strength training, right? Because it is in essence weight training. In a study on women conducted by the University of New Mexico. It found that a weighted vest can actually also increase VO2 max when including slow treadmill walking, showing that it can be just as beneficial as running without the joint stress from the impact of that.
So what about HIIT? H-I-I-T high intensity interval training. For women over 40, this is very, very individual. Most women could benefit from one short high intensity training session per week.
There are two different types. So if you were talking about HIT, H-I-I-T, that stands for high intensity interval training. This should consist of 10 to 20 seconds max of work followed by a three to four times ratio of rest or multiple of them with shorter rest periods, followed by a long period of rest.
For example, if you are sprinting or jumping, doing any kind of plyometrics, 10 seconds of work resting for 30 to 40 seconds before repeating or 10 seconds of work, 10 to 20 seconds of rest for four to eight rounds followed then by a longer period of rest of about two to three minutes before doing any kind of repeating to that. So you’re looking, that’s explained the Tabata format. An entire session of work like this should take no more than 30 minutes at the absolute most, including warmup and cool down.
What I often see though in classes like F45, Orange Theory, other bootcamps, is that it’s actually MIT, moderate intensity interval training, and it goes on for an hour. Anything you can do for an hour is not high intensity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, especially if you enjoy it and it gets you moving, but it’s definitely not optimal.
And if your body is already under a lot of stress, this just adds to it. So not only do women often feel like they’re burning more calories than they actually are in these classes and your watch or Fitbit will also tell you that, but they also consider it strength training, which I hate to break it to you, but it’s not. The other problem is that a lot of women are using this as their sole form of exercise four to six days per week, and not only then missing out on the benefits of actual strength training, but also adding a lot of stress to an already stressed-out system.
So back to my main point, HIT or even MIT should be used in moderation, talking one to two times per week at the very most for most women over 40, with any remaining time needed for cardio being performed at lower intensities, like the walking, rucking, whatever that we talked about. And you’re looking at zone two for those. So your heart rate zones, which is going to be about 45 to 65% of your max heart rate, which is 220 minus your age.
I also suggest keeping track of your cardio somehow, maybe in that same journal, but either the time spent, the distance moved, or an RPE rating. So going for RPE, RPE stands for rate of perceived exertion, and that is the inverse of that RIR scale. On a scale of one to 10, one would be that was easy, I could do that literally all day, and 10 being I’m dead, but somehow still here.
So, for steady state cardio, ideally we’re working in the three to six RPE range, that’s kind of the zone two, you can still have a conversation. With any kind of MIT or HIIT landing in that seven to 10 range, again, as we build capacity, become more comfortable with the exercises and the workouts. With this gauge, you should begin to notice as the weeks go on, that when you repeat a workout, which I suggest doing in some sort of a pattern or capacity, okay, that it becomes easier, you can go faster, or you can go a longer distance, that is the progressive overload component of cardio.
What I like to do with my cardio sessions is repeat them every two weeks, or weekly, right, depending on the modality. So, if it’s a Metcon of some kind, then generally every other week is fine. I don’t like repeating a Metcon every week, it just seems redundant to me, despite lifting the same.
So this gives some variability in each week to help you not get bored, right, since main lifts really should be consistent over four to eight weeks. So those should stay the same over the weeks. But this also gives you a way to gauge your progress.
An example, I’m currently training for a 10 plus mile race, so my goal has been to increase mileage each week without being too sore or injuring myself, of course. I ran seven miles this last week, and I had some mild soreness in my calves and knees.
So next week, I’m going to go for eight. And hopefully, it will be basically the same soreness levels, I would like to be able to, you know, generally easily recover from that within a day, and ideally keep my time per mile about the same. So it’ll take me longer to do the run, obviously, because I’m adding a mile, but I’m trying to keep my split the same.
So that would be an example of progressive overload, increasing distance. These cardio sessions, though, are also an opportunity for you to switch things up and incorporate things that you enjoy, like dancing, the group classes, hula hooping, right, whatever sport you like to play, you name it, as long as you’re getting your heart rate up, and your main goal isn’t training for some sort of a specific race, it really doesn’t matter how you move your body and get your heart rate going. Using different options here can help keep motivation up, it can keep you more excited about the exercise, especially if you find yourself someone who gets bored easily and really needs that to stay consistent while still making progress.
Another training consideration that needs to be addressed, especially as we age is power.
Power is strength times velocity or speed. One beneficial thing that comes out of classes like F45, Orange Theory, etc., bootcamp classes that I talked about earlier, is at least some types of power work. The problem similar to the largely misused HIIT concept is that you only have true power for very low reps.
After that, it’s just endurance. Power is something that we lose almost 17% of every decade after 40 if we don’t intentionally train for it. Some examples of this would include squat jumps, lunge jumps, box jumps, any medicine ball slam or throw variation, and kettlebell swings.
As long as they’re done as fast and as hard as possible for less than 10 seconds or six to eight reps max, these are great things to add into your HIIT sessions, but can also be done prior to strength sessions for one to two sets. And then making sure that you are resting for at least 60 seconds in between sets to allow the body to recover and get true power back into your next set. So doing these prior to strength sessions has actually also been shown to help prime the nervous system, enabling you to lift heavier.
So similar to strength training, including this at least two days a week would be ideal.
Lastly, is mobility, flexibility, and joint health days. So those can be on your recovery days, looking like at least 10 to 15 minutes of joint health movement, including or followed by 15 to 30 minutes of yoga, intentional stretching. That being said, the rest of the day, I don’t suggest being spent on the couch, but still at least going for a walk, hitting your step count, that kind of thing.
Personally, I incorporate a lot of mobility during my strength days, I use it for warmups, I do it in between exercises, I end with them. Some of my exercises are specifically mobility based. So I do that kind of throughout the week with some more specific sessions on mobility and flexibility on cardio days, since I’m super warm, I use that to prioritize flexibility.
And those cardio days are often shorter workouts. But that schedule also leaves just one to two days have open just for recovery. So if you’re doing five strength days, which I don’t suggest for most, but then you would have to combine your mobility with cardio and/or strength days in order to leave at least one full day for recovery, which I highly recommend.
But I think two is a mobility and just general recovery. So to recap, ideally, we have three to four days of strength training, we have two days of cardio, and then your mobility.
And that’s pretty much it. So some tips for implementation are, number one, not just to have a plan, but to write it down from where and you know, which day in the week your workouts will go to the actual exercises you’re going to do each workout.
And that way you’re not trying to use more mental capacity in order to get it in. Oftentimes, if I’m not following a plan, even if I have workouts that I’m like, okay, I could do this, it takes me way too long to get into my workout and be like, okay, I’m going to do this today, that tomorrow, if I don’t have it pre planned, plan it out, write it down, have it ready to go. And if possible, schedule, even down to the time that you’re able to, or at least would like to get your workout in.
We want to eliminate as many excuses as possible and having it in your schedule, treating it like a doctor appointment or any other appointment you have and keeping that commitment to yourself can be very helpful. And then number two is to throw it all out the window. No, but really to be flexible.
So while having your plan, having your schedule, it might be ideal. And you might start out with all these really great intentions. Life is life and it’s going to life.
And it likely is not going to work out like you want it at least every week. So, what I tell clients is that as you go throughout your week, prepare to be flexible. And if you find that you can’t get all of your planned training in to try and keep it balanced, try and keep somewhat of a ratio of prioritizing strength while keeping your cardio.
So, if you get two strength sessions in, but you missed your cardio, instead of getting your third strength session in, do your cardio instead. Okay. That way you get two strength and one cardio.
So if you’re only able to get in two training sessions in a week, do one strength and one cardio. If you can only get in three, do two strength and one cardio. If you can only get in three, do two strength and one cardio. Then stay moving, get your steps the other day, right?
Go on a walk with your kids, your family, whatever. What matters most is that each week you keep showing up and you keep doing the things that you know are serving you and your body.
You won’t reach your goals any faster. You won’t feel any better by giving up. And remember that every action is moving the needle forward, even if you don’t see it.
If you are new to this or even if you’ve been training but need something new or want some more support with this, then check out our beginner strength guide linked in the show notes where it will explain a lot of this and has a done-for-you plan for the gym and at home that you can start with.
If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram at Brooke underscore Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website ElysianWomensWellness.com and if you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half second to leave us a five-star review. Not only will you be helping others find our show, but you’ll also be entered into our monthly $100 giveaway for new reviews. New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more.
Thanks for listening. See you soon.
Coach Brooke Davis Links:
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Instagram: Brooke Davis (@brooke_elysian)
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Strength Training 101: https://elysianwomen.myflodesk.com/i0q61klkdb
Fitness Journal & Workout Planner: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PFCGH26/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
Hormone Analysis: https://brookedavis.typeform.com/to/quKUjmTI
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Women’s Functional Nutritionist & Fitness Specialist along with CEO of Elysian Women’s Wellness.
God, family, fitness – in that order. Fitness isn’t my job, it’s my passion. My favorite things include traveling the world, being a mama and making a difference.
14 years of experience in the wellness industry has brought me to an understanding that when you’re ready – you’ll do it. So when you are, we’re here to keep you simply well.
The last “program” you’ll ever buy. Your individualized training & nutrition plan that teaches the why & how to create lasting changes with me by your side every step of the way!
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