Ep 105- No Special Exercises: The Truth About Strength Training Through Perimenopause & Menopause

If you've ever asked, "What exercises do I need now that I'm in perimenopause?"  this episode is for you. Kat breaks down the science of what actually changes in your body during perimenopause and menopause, why strength training is the most important investment you can make right now, and how training methodology shifts (even when the exercises don't). No magic programs. No marketing fluff. Just the real, research-backed answer to one of the most common questions in women's fitness.

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Topics Covered

• Why there are no menopause-specific exercises — and what actually matters
• The seven fundamental movement patterns and why they apply to every woman at every age
• What declining estrogen actually does to muscle, bone, metabolism, and soft tissue
• How training methodology (not exercise selection) shifts in perimenopause and menopause
• Progressive overload, intensity, recovery windows, and protein intake in this phase of life
• How to evaluate programs and identify marketing red flags
• Training for longevity: why the decisions you make now matter for the rest of your life

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Transcript

0:00

Today's episode is going to be a long one packed with a lot of information. So if you're out on a walk, you may want to save this one for a time. You can take notes or listen to it while you're walking and come back to it. So let's just dive right in. Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner and an ultra marathon runner, and a strength trainer in her 40s. With nearly two decades of experience, I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood, all while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice, or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in. I Welcome back to Miles Review. I'm Kat, your host, and if you're new here, this is the place where we really get to the heart of strength training, nutrition, cardio training, and all things for women who want to feel strong, capable, and resilient for the long haul. There are no quick hacks, no trending fixes. It is what is the current research dating, what are the tried and true evidence based practices that are gonna deliver real results? So if you're a subscriber of my weekly newsletter, the Strong Edit, when I go over this topic, I get replies I'm gonna give you the full picture science, the context, the practical application. And if you haven't subscribed to the Strong Edit there is a link in the show notes and it goes out every week and it's free. Trust me, I don't have the time to spam your inbox, but it's another great resource to get more free information and more on practical tips on how to incorporate them into your fitness training, as well as learn about how I coach. I have received this question more times than I can count. I'm going to stop being so mysterious about what we're gonna talk about and really get into this question that I've gotten, not only from individuals who are looking to work with me, but also individuals who have this question coming up because we see it everywhere the question is. I am in perimenopause or I'm menopausal. What specific exercises should I be doing? Another form of this question is what workouts will work for me now that I am menopausal? Another form of this question that I've gotten is, do you have a specific program that will work for me because I am perimenopausal or menopausal? All valid questions. And we're gonna go into why these questions come up when I answer this question. I wanna do two things simultaneously. I wanna give you a really good answer. One that is probably going to feel very overwhelming. So that's why there's a podcast to this. And then I also wanna dismantle that marketing machinery that made you feel like you need to ask it in the first place. And again, I still wanna preface it that it is a valid question, but the marketing machinery that has influenced that question. Bear with me. Like I said, that we're gonna go deep. We're gonna go into the physiological aspects of perimenopause and menopause into why strength training is arguably the most important thing you can do right now and into training methodology. And how it actually shifts because it does and into why exercises themselves don't need to change as dramatically as you've been told. Because the underlying thing, there is no magic menopause exercises. There is no magic menopause program. I train women on a full spectrum here from trying to conceive pregnant postpartum clients, women in their thirties, women in their forties, women in their fifties, sixties and seventies, women navigating perimenopause, women in menopause, women postmenopausal. I use the same exercises across all populations. There are modifications here. There are differences in volume, in load, and intensity in recovery time. The differences in how IQ movements and what I prioritize. Is based on the season in which they're in, but the fundamental exercise patterns, they are not reinvented for every season of life. This is where the fitness industry makes a lot of money. They take very real. Very legitimate changes that happen in your body during, perimenopause and menopause, and they use those changes to sell you the idea that you need an entirely different specialized, exclusive program. Menopause specific workouts, hormone balancing exercise sequences, programs marketed with gentle or designed for your changing body. Some of those programs I'm sure are amazing. But the marketing framing is often so misleading because it implies that what you were doing before no longer applies, or that their program is a secret formula that you have been missing and there isn't. So a solid training program is built on seven. Fundamental movement patterns, and these are the patterns that work. Major muscle groups develop full body strength and support functional movement for life. The first one, and the order isn't of importance, it's just this is the order of which they're in and how they're often. Presented number one squat. This is loading the lower body through a knee dominant pattern. So think about goblet squats, back squats, front squats, box squats, anything where it's a knee dominant pattern number two, hinge. This is loading the posterior chain through hip dominant pattern. So think deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, kettlebell swings, hip thrust. So the hip is the dominant movement pattern here. Number three, lunge. It is a unilateral meaning a single-sided lower body loading movement. So think split squats, reverse lunges, step ups, Bulgarian split squats. These are focusing on one side of the body being the dominant side and strengthening, and that's why you work both sides. So left and right sides independently of each other. Number four, push. This can be horizontal or vertical pressing, so I think pushups, bench press, overhead. Press dumbbell, press. This is where we're pushing either in a horizontal movement pattern or a vertical. Number five, a pull horizontal. This is also horizontal or vertical pulling. So think rows, pullups, lat pull downs, face pulls. Number six, carry. This is a loaded locomotion and stability movement. So farmer carries, suitcase carries, overhead carries. Number seven is rotation, rotational movements and anti rotational patterns. So we wanna think about payoff, press, cable rotations, chops, and landmine work. These seven patterns are not menopause exercises. They're not beginner exercises, they're not advanced exercises. They're the architecture of human movement. They are the architecture of a well balanced program that is going to serve you in your teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond. So what changes in perimenopause and menopause is not in which the movements you do. What changes is how you train the methodology, the programming, the periodization, and the recovery strategy. And that's what we're gonna spend the rest of the episode on. To understand why the training methodology matters so much in this season of life, we're gonna take a deeper dive into what's happening in your body. But not the watered down. Your hormones are changing overview that you hear a hundred times. So in perimenopause typically begins when a woman is in her early forties, although it can start as in late thirties. It is marked by fluctuating and eventually declining levels of estrogen and pro projection. This phase lasts anywhere from two to 12 years before you reach menopause, which is defined of 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. Estrogen is not just a reproductive hormone. It is an anabolic hormone. This means it plays a role in building and maintaining tissue. It supports muscle protein synthesis, which helps regulate bone remodeling. It also has anti-inflammatory effects. It supports insulin sensitivity, promotes collagen production in your soft tissues, and influences mood, cognition, and sleep. So when estrogen declines, the downstream effects are really significant, and they're not just about hot flashes in menstrual irregularity. They affect the very tissues in the systems we use during training. So you might've heard muscle is really important. As you age or when you're in perimenopause or menopause, why this is after the age of 30, whatever current muscle mass you have in your body, on average, you lose three to 8% per decade. That accelerates with the onset of perimenopause and menopause when the loss of estrogen. Anabolic support means muscle tissue is harder to maintain and harder to build. So sarcopenia, if you've heard that term means age related loss of muscle mass and function. It's not just an aesthetic concern, it's a longevity concern. Muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors we have of health span. It affects your ability to move independently. Your risk of injury, your recovery from illness, your metabolic rate, your blood sugar regulation, and your quality of life as you age. So women who maintain the greatest functional capacity as they age are those who prioritize. Building and preserving muscle strength training in this season, as you may have heard, becomes not optional. It is an intervention, and we're gonna get into. Strength training, what it really means oftentimes, and sometimes even myself being in the business for decades, I think strength training a bodybuilder comes to mind. That's not what we need. And there are multiple forms of strength training. So diving back into really what's going on in the body, we're gonna go into estrogen a little bit more. So you may have heard you become more. Your insulin sensitivity goes up. Estrogen plays a role in that, so it plays a role in how efficiently your cells respond to insulin and take up glucose from the bloodstream. So as estrogen declines, insulin sensitivity tends to decrease and increasing the risk of insulin resistance. This is one of the reasons why many women notice like the changes in their body composition during perimenopause without the change in their diet or exercise. Muscle tissue is metabolically active. What this means is every pound of muscle you carry requires energy to maintain even at rest. This is why muscle mass is directly tied to your resting metabolic rate. More muscle means more calories burned at baseline, but it goes further than that. Skeletal muscle is one of the primary sites of glucose disposal in the body. So when you contract a muscle during a strength training session, during a walk, during any movement, it takes glucose from the bloodstream. So glucose is sugar, so it takes sugar, glucose out of the bloodstream. Okay? And resistance training improves glucose uptake in insulin sensitivity through mechanisms that are partially. Independent of estrogen. So this means even when estrogen declines, strength training continues to provide metabolic benefits. So regular strength training and aerobic conditioning together are the most powerful lifestyle based interventions we have for metabolic health in this population. And I argue every population, but because we're focused on perimenopause and menopause, I'm gonna say this population. Now bone density, how does that play a role? Estrogen is protective of bone, and it helps regulate the balance between osteoblasts, so the cells that build bone osteoclast are the cells. That break it down. So when estrogen declines, this balance shifts toward net bone loss. So the rate of bone loss accelerates significantly in the first several years of menopause. So the peak window for bone loss is roughly the five to 10 years immediately following the transition to menopause. This window is the foundation you've built or are building. In your training that matters most. So weightbearing exercises and progressive resistant training are two of the most well supportive interventions from maintaining and even improving bone density. So mechanical load of bone during lifting stimulates osteoblast activity. So compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, caries, they create a multi-directional loading that is most beneficial for bone health. So it's not about doing bone specific exercises, it is about loading the skeleton consistently and progressively over time. All right. I'm just gonna take a deep breath here. And we're gonna move on. I know I'm throwing a lot at you, but I really do feel it's important that we go deep into this because there's so many terms that are thrown around and it can be so scary, and I get it. I am a woman myself. I am in my early forties and being in the business I wanna understand not only so I can help provide myself with the best outlook, but also for my clients and future clients. Because your health is vital. Your independence is vital. Your resiliency as you progress through the decades is vital. All right, we're gonna keep going. We've discussed the estrogen, we've discussed some of the muscle, we've discussed the bone, and now we're gonna go into soft tissue health and that injury risk. Because you may hear as you get older, you're at risk to hurt yourself, and I don't want individuals to be afraid of moving their bodies. I really want individuals to take back control, to be the authority on their body, and to feel as though they can move their body. So estrogen also plays a role in that collagen synthesis. Collagen is a structural protein that makes up tendons, ligaments, and the extracellular MA matrix of muscle. As estrogen declines, collagen turnover changes, and this is one of the reasons why in perimenopause and menopause, women often notice that they are more susceptible to those soft tissue injuries, joint pain, and slower recovery from training stress. This has real training implications, and it doesn't mean you need to stop loading those tissues. In fact, progressive loading is what stimulates collagen synthesis and tissue adaptation. It means you need to be smarter about how you progress, recover, manage training, stress. And we're gonna go a little bit more into that in a moment. Okay. So what I'm hoping you're hearing. Is that there are solutions that you don't have to look at yourself as an experiment. I am trying to simplify this, and I know it seems complex. I'm using a lot of physiological terms for deep diving into science, and I'm hoping by the end of this podcast that there. Is tangible takeaways. Anytime I talk on this, I feel like, oh my goodness, I'm giving a, course on this. So we're gonna dive into that training piece now because. Marketing glosses over this. The exercises stay the same. Methodology shifts, so progressive overload. Progressive overload, systematically increases the demand placed on your muscles over time, and this becomes a fundamental principle of strength adaptation, and it has always been. But in perimenopause and menopause, it becomes a greater priority because your anabolic hormonal environment is less supportive and you need a stronger training stimuli. Maintenance level training. Doing the same workout week after week at the same weight is less effective at this stage of life so than it may have been in your previous decades. Your body needs a reason to hold onto muscle, and progressive overload is giving your body that exact reason. So this doesn't mean you need to be adding weight every single session. Progressive overload can look like this. Adding a rep, adding a set, decreasing a rest time, improving tempo, improving technique. There are so many different ways to change it up, but the direction needs to be forward. And research on resistance training in peri and postmenopausal women consistently show that training to or near muscle failure. Working with loads that are challenging within your rep range produces greater muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophic adaptation. Then high volume. Low intensity training. This is a shift from what many women in this demographic have been doing, and if you've been doing three sets of 15 reps with a weight that feels comfortable, you're leaving adaptations on the table. So in the literature. Supports training with heavier loads, closer to failure, and even in older populations. I have clients where we are lifting heavy and I wanna say. Heavy is bespoke to the individuals. I have clients wear 20 pounds is heavy. I have clients wear 50 pounds is heavy. I have clients wear 10 pounds is heavy and we are working on progressing. Them where they are at. So what I don't want you to think is, oh my goodness, again, we're going back to that bodybuilder image. I need to be in there lifting hundreds and hundreds of pounds for heavy, no heavy is where you are currently and we're gonna move it.. I mentioned before, there are multiple ways to progress. It's not always about adding more weight. There are other ways to get that stimulus that we are getting that muscle adaptation there. Because every session is at maximum effort. Because that is going to be a recipe for injury and burnout. It means. Your program should include sessions where you're working at 70 to 85% of your maximum effort. You feel challenged. You're feeling the effort, but you're not just cruising through. Now recovery. This is one that I find is hard to grasp and admittedly I can gloss over recovery too. So as estrogen in its anti-inflammatory tissue, supportive effects decline. Recovery from training stress takes longer. So that muscle protein synthesis, the process by which the muscle is repaired and rebuild after training may take more time to complete. So this means the same volume and frequency that felt manageable at 35 may genuinely be too much at 48, not because you're weaker. It has nothing to do with that. But it's because the recovery machinery is working different. It's just your body's working different. Does not mean you're weak. I cannot say that enough because I argue you can handle just as much as you do when you're 35. We just need to adjust here. So training adjustment here is not necessarily fewer challenging sessions, it's just being smarter about programming. So in practice, this often looks like two to three focused strength sessions per week instead of four to five programming adequate rest between sessions that target the same muscle groups in closely monitoring subjective markers of recovery, like sleep quality, muscle soreness, motivation, and even performance in the gym. So if you notice persistent fatigue, nagging aches, declining motivation, that's your cue just to adjust. And recovery is not an option. It is a pillar of progress. I'm gonna say that again. Recovery is not optional. Okay. That is where your muscles repair, that is where your training adaptations occur. Your body may have been able to handle, and it does recover faster when you are younger, but as you progress through the decades, as you anabolic hormone declines, your recovery changes. We're gonna just take a little detour and we're gonna dive into nutrition here because along with heavy lifting the fitness, marketing, I'm gonna say propaganda out there, I know that's a strong term, pushes protein. If you're not eating protein, you are left behind. Muscle. How does protein, why is protein so important as we progress to the decades? So muscle protein synthesis is a process that rebuilds muscle after training, and it is stimulated by two things, the training stimulus itself. And leucine an essential amino acid. So as we age, the threshold for leucine require to trigger muscle protein. Sens. This increases. So this phenomenon is called anabolic resistance, and it means that older muscle tissue is less responsive to the same protein dose than younger muscle tissue. The practical implication here. Women who are in perimenopause and menopause need more protein than you think across the day. So it's gotta be distributed across the day. So oftentimes I hear clients say I eat protein at dinner, or maybe lunch and dinner, but we want it across the day. Now current research is a little bit on the higher side of 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. I'm not gonna say don't strive for that. It may feel impossible, but what I've seen is 1.2 to 1.5 in that area. Look at how many grams of protein you are consuming. Per day. Okay. So if you're in perimenopause or if you're approaching those years, what I would recommend is start to become aware of how much protein you are. Consuming and when you're consuming it. So I don't want you to think if I don't consume it at a certain time, what I'm looking for is, and what I want clients to do, and even myself, is to consume it throughout the day, not just in the evening. When we are under consuming protein, it just means you're leaving muscle on the table. You are doing all this fantastic work in the gym. You're lifting consistently, but if you're not hitting those protein targets. It can be you're working against yourself and I'm not trying to blame, but I also wanna further layer it is you don't have to hit your protein targets perfectly every single day. We wanna get as close to them every single day, if not hitting them. More times than not, we wanna do it throughout. All of the times we eat, whether it be breakfast, lunch and dinner, breakfast, a snack, lunch, and dinner, or maybe it's three meals and two snacks a day. However you consume your food in a day, we want to be sure that we are getting some protein every single time. The reason why, aside from the fact that the muscle protein synthesis and leucine decreasing that essential amino acid is. Protein is the only macronutrient that isn't stored in the body. So your fat, which your body needs, fat is another macronutrient. And the other macronutrient is carbohydrates. So protein, fat and carbohydrates are all macronutrients. Fats and carbohydrates can be stored in the body, but protein is the only macronutrient that cannot be stored in the body. So that is why we get this. And. We wanna make sure it is a quality protein source. I want your protein to be coming from Whole Foods. What that means is animal or plant-based proteins and supplemented in with a protein powder. One that might be a higher, greater protein powder and less sugar in it, less fillers in that protein powder. Now you can find a lot of protein mixed in with everything. But most of your protein should be coming from Whole Foods. I want most of your nutrition, your nutrient density to be coming from Whole Foods. I do understand that it may feel complex at first, so cardiovascular training, we're gonna pull away from nutrition. We're gonna get back to training because some individuals are fantastic at cardiovascular training. Some are not. And you may have seen on social media that cardio training becomes ridiculed as, don't do zone two. It's killing all of your gains in the gym. That is absolutely not true. There is multiple types of cardio training where. Cardiovascular training is not the enemy of strength. If you have a great movement training program, and we're not solely talking about running here, we want to be sure there is diversity there, chronic excessive study, state cardio is not always the best course of action. The research shows that prolonged high volume cardio without adequate strength training accelerates the loss of muscle mass and does not provide the bone loading stimulus that resistance training does. So how are we supposed to incorporate cardio training? So zone two cardio. This is sustained conversational peace aerobic work. This supports the cardiovascular health, mitochondrial density, fat oxidation, and metabolic flexibility. So this is. A long run, a long walk, your easy hike, your steady bike ride, and it supports recovery when it's done right at the correct intensity. So it's a very chill, we're just moving our body. We're not overly stressing ourselves. Another type of cardio is hi slash sprint intervals. So a HIIT workout or sprint intervals is defined as short duration, high intensity efforts, and they provide cardiovascular metabolic effects in time efficient format. So hi also creates significant systemic stress, so it needs to be programmed carefully and not stacked on top of hard strength sessions without adequate recovery. It's a balance, and you don't have to give up one or the other. We want to treat strength training with our cardio as a non-negotiable and not an afterthought. So if you are a runner who is training for a race. Long time listeners know I am a runner and I train for races. My strength training is a non-negotiable, to be quite honest and very transparent. I cut back on my runs so that strength training is in there. I'm an ultra marathon runner. I have completed races up to the a hundred mile distances, and it is one of those things where I would rather cut back on miles because I know strength training is the glue that is gonna hold it all together. It is going to allow me to continue to be an active moving person and help prevent those injuries. So another pillar that is so undervalued is mobility. And so changes in soft tissue, as we've discussed, and the collagen synthesis combined with a natural reduction of joint fluid production that comes naturally with age means that mobility work becomes increasingly important as maintenance and injury prevention. This is not a separate workout you have to add on top of everything else. Mobility can be woven into your warmups, your cool downs, and your active recovery days. So hip mobility, thoracic spine mobility, ankle mobility, shoulder health. These are the movement capacities that allow you to train the seven fundamental patterns with good mechanics. So if you're moving well, you load well. If you load well, you adapt and mobility. Is what keeps you in the game. We are gonna take a quick break and I'm gonna tell you about something that is directly relevant to everything we've been talking about in this episode. If you've been listening and thinking, okay, I hear you. I need strength training consistently. I need progressive overload. I need a program that actually adapts to my life, but. You don't know where to start, or you've been piecing things together from Instagram and YouTube and it's not really working. That is exactly what C Fit Strength Online Coaching is built for c Fit Strength is my online training program, and it is specifically designed for women who want to train with intention, not just move for the sake of moving. But build real strength that translates into feeling capable and resilient in their everyday lives. I offer two tiers Essentials, which is a structured programming option for women who are self-directed in one solid well designed plan and Premier, which includes a more direct coaching, support and personalization. Whether you're brand new to strength training or you've been lifting for years and want to make sure your program is actually serving this season of life you're in. I'd love to have you inside Cafe Strength. You can find all the details in the show notes. Click on the link, or better yet, book a fit Call with me and we will see if this is a good fit for you. All right, let's get back into it. I wanna give you a practical framework for evaluating training programs because you are gonna see a lot of marketing out there, and I want you to have a filter. So we're gonna dive into the red flags in program marketing. Be cautious of programs that claim to have exercises that are exclusively for women in menopause, as if the movements cannot be found in any other program. Lead heavily with fear-based messaging about what will happen if you don't follow their specific protocol. Rely on extremely light loads, high repetitions as the primary training modality. Framed as safe for your hormones. Do not include progressive overload as a structure, structural feature of the program, and do not address recovery, nutrition, or sleep as a part of their overall system. So those are the red flags, green flags to look for in programs are. Are they built on compound multi-joint movements that work major muscle groups. Include mechanisms for progressive overload. A way for the program to get harder over time as you get stronger can adapt to your current fitness level, your goals, and your available time. This one is a huge one. I see a lot of women who have done programs or try to do programs and they do not adapt for who they are, and this, I would say is like one of the biggest things you wanna look for. Two other green flags are include guidance on recovery, not just the workout itself, and also treat you as an individual, not as a demographic category. You are a beautiful, unique individual. And you have autonomy on your body that is so huge in programs. A lot of my clients have commonalities, but I do not say, oh just because they are in this season, therefore this, no, they're a beautiful individual. So the best program is the one that's designed to meet you where you're at, move you forward. And that looks different for every woman, and it should, but the fundamentals it's built on, those are universal. We're getting to the end. This has been a long episode. I don't normally make them this long, this heavy, but this is something that has been popping up in my inbox and I wrote a newsletter about it, and I wanted to go more in depth. The thing that I think that gets lost so much in the conversation about perimenopause and menopausal fitness, and most of the marketing around fitness in this phase of life is focused on managing symptoms, reducing hot flashes, improving sleep, losing weight, and those are all so real and Valley goals. But I wanna challenge you to think bigger than that. The decisions that you make right now about training in your forties, your fifties into your sixties, are the decisions about who you will be in your seventies, eighties. And that's not hyperbole. That is what the research on muscle mass, bone density, metabolic health, and functional capacity tell us we don't train. So grip strength is a proxy for all muscle strength. It's one of the strongest predictors of all cause mortality in aging populations. So fall related injuries are one of the leading causes of death over adults adults over 65. The ability to get off the floor independently is a marker of longevity. These are not performance metrics for athletes. These are markers of whether you'll be able to live fully and independently on your own terms as you age, and a well balanced program that holds those seven architectures of body movement are going to deliver this, and every single one of those capacities is trainable. Okay. If you find, you're like, oh, my grip strength is very weak. I don't feel steady on my feet, I can't get off the floor, or it's getting harder. You can train those with the exercises you already know. Squats, deadlifts, rows, presses, carries lunges with progressive loading, with consistency over time. You can do this. You don't need some special program hidden behind a paywall. And I'm gonna throw myself out there if you choose not to train with me. And you're like, okay, she gave me the seven key movements, the architecture of body movements, and you research and you do those things and you educate yourself. Fantastic. I love that. I want that for everyone. Sure would. I love you to work with me. Absolutely. But I fully respect that. So the women who do train through perimenopause and menopause are not just man managing the transition. They're building that foundation. And that's what we want. We want that foundation. So I also wanna say, if you are listening to this and you're in your forties and you're like, I am in the early wake of perimenopause, but I have never lifted, oh my goodness. There's no hope. There is so much hope and so many gains. I work with clients who have never lifted, who are in their sixties, who are building muscle, okay? They are building muscle. They are seeing body composition changes, so time is not lost. All right. I really want you to hear that time is not lost. And if you start today, and even if you're listening to this in your fifties or sixties, and I even have clients who start working with me in their seventies and they still see results, time is not lost. Start, start now. So to answer the question. What exercises do I need now that I'm in Perimenopause is exactly this. The same movements that always build strength, trained more intentionally, recover more strategically, progress consistently over time. That is the program. There is no secrets. It's just the work done consistently, and done with the understanding of what your body needs in the season. Before I wrap up, I wanna give some bonus here, and we're gonna hit on some common myths and questions I get on this topic because misinformation is everywhere and it's so easy to get lost in noise. Trust me, I get lost in the noise and this is my life. This is what I study. This is what I geek out on. So myth number one, you only need lightweights and high reps after menopause reality. Heavier resistance with good form. Proper recovery is safe and beneficial for women in this stage, high reps with lightweights won't provide you the same muscle and bone stimulus as progressive overload. Number two, myth strength training will make you bulky, and stiff. The reality building significant muscle mass is a slow process, especially in low estrogen environments. So strength training will help you maintain muscle and function, not suddenly make you bulky. Number three, myth Cardio is more important than strength. After 40, the reality. Both are vital, but strength training is uniquely protective of muscle, bone, and metabolic health. Cardio supports heart health and endurance, but muscle is your longevity currency. You need both. Okay, both are vital. Number four, do I need to avoid certain exercises? The reality. There are rarely forbidden exercises just because of age or menopause. So if you focus on good form, appropriate progression, and you're listening to your body, modify as needed for injuries or limitations, but you don't need to exclude movements solely based on age. Number five, how do I know if my program's working? Okay? So the reality is you wanna look for improvements in strength. Can you lift heavier, more reps? How's your energy, your sleep quality and recovery? The consistency and progress matter more than perfection. If you have any questions on things that I covered, things that I didn't cover. Send them away. You can go to the podcast and just message a podcast, all right, we're gonna wrap it up. Hopefully you're still with me. This was a long one. And I hope I cleared some things for up for you and cut through some of that noise when it comes to training and perimenopause and menopause. If you wanna work with me inside C Strength. Head to the show notes, click on the links there, and I would be happy to speak with you and happy to see you inside. If you're not already subscribed to the Strong Edit My Weekly newsletter, the link is in the show notes, and every week I'm in your inbox with training mindset and real talk about women's fitness. And if this podcast resonated with you, share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it. That is truly the best way. You can support the show. You can also find me on Instagram. I'll link everything in the show notes. And until next time, keep moving, keep lifting. And remember, strong is not a season of life. It is a practice. Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast, and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into next. You can connect with me on Instagram@catfitstrength or share this episode with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection, it's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.