5 Community Fitness Questions from Women 50+
24 Jul 2026 · 49 min
In this 45‑minute podcast episode, Flipping 50 founder Debra Atkinson answers five common fitness and nutrition questions submitted by women in perimenopause, menopause, and post‑menopause. She begins with a brief promotion of the Flipping 50: The Stronger Way membership and the upcoming 2027 Boulder retreat, then moves into the Q&A: 1. Squats or deadlifts hurt? – Debra explains that poor cueing or individual biomechanics often cause discomfort. She walks listeners through cue adjustments, then offers a hierarchy of substitute lower‑body movements (step‑ups, glute bridges, hamstring curls, banded monster walks) that target the same muscle groups without pain. 2. Eat before or after workouts? – She cites recent research (including work by Abby Smith‑Ryan) showing that for women who are well‑fed the timing matters little, but for those who frequently skip meals or fast, a small pre‑ or post‑workout protein dose (12‑15 g) can help preserve lean mass and reduce anabolic resistance. She recommends tracking calories and protein with apps like MyFitnessPal or Cronometer and using calorie calculators to ensure adequate intake. 3. How often should I resistance‑train? – The scientific consensus is 2‑3 sessions per week, with a minimum of twice weekly to stimulate major muscle groups. Debra stresses the importance of 48‑hour recovery, especially during hormonal transition, and warns against over‑training programs that push 5‑6 days a week without sufficient recovery. 4. How to get “toned” arms? – She clarifies that spot‑toning is a myth; arm definition depends on overall body composition. Resistance training, total‑body strength work, and arm‑centric cardio (swimming, boxing, yoga) improve muscle tone and skin thickness. She also notes the role of collagen supplementation for skin health. 5. Can I get results with 20‑minute workouts? – Debra outlines a practical 20‑minute structure: 5‑7 min warm‑up, 10 min of a triset (e.g., squat, chest press, bent‑over row) performed 3‑4 rounds, and a brief cool‑down. She advises using short sessions when time‑pressed but recommends occasional longer sessions for variety and progressive overload. Throughout, Debra weaves in evidence‑based recommendations, practical cues, and encouragement to share the episode, while reminding listeners that the content is educational and not a substitute for medical advice.
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Quick heads up before we dive in. Enrollment for the Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is open all month long, and you can still save $100 on annual membership. That's a total savings of $379 compared to paying monthly. Inside, you'll find 12-week strength training programs, plus dozens of yoga, Pilates, mobility, balance, stability, core, corrective exercise, agility, power, and recovery all designed specifically for women in midlife and beyond, all evidence-based and waiting for you no matter what life is throwing at you in this moment. This isn't just about longevity for someday later. It's about feeling stronger, moving better, and having more energy today. The link is waiting for you in the show notes. I'd love to welcome you inside. Welcome or welcome back. If you're here for the first time or you're here for all the times, this episode is a roundup of community questions, maybe yours. But I've got 5 questions that I answered and there's no better depository to put them in. So I put them all here. I'm gonna let you know in advance what they are so that you know this is or this is not your show. Here's what's coming up. Number 1, what if I can't do squats or deadlifts? Number 2, should I eat before or after workouts? Number 3, the recommendations for resistance training frequency is all over. I'm confused about what's best. Number 4, I want toned arms. What are the best exercises and how often? And number 5, time is my biggest obstacle. Can I do shorter 20-minute workouts more frequently? So there you have it. That's what's coming up. So now you know if you want to come into the show notes and go to the timestamps and just listen to what question draws you the most, you can do that too. But I hope you stay for the whole thing, and I hope, if you will, share this with a friend. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down, you're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12 right here on this podcast and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get. Answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. Okay, so you got the list of questions. Today, I answer a roundup of questions from our community. By the way, this comes partially from the Flipping 50 Insiders Group. It's a Facebook page. You don't have to belong to a program. You do get screened when you ask to fin, It has to be a personal page. We don't let businesses come in. It is just you. It's just women asking other women and supporting other women for support. It comes a little bit from our membership and some common DMs. Those are direct messages, by the way, in case you aren't sure, behind the scenes on Instagram or on social posts. Just these— I hear that frequently enough that it's like somebody's tapping me on the shoulder and I'm going to answer it today. These don't fit neat. Completely into any one category. So you heard me describe them. There's some about nutrition, there's some about specific exercises. Don't feel good to me. What do I do then? So I have two asks for you. The only common denominator here in these questions is they come from women just like you. If you find value from the podcast in general, and specifically this episode, please share it with a friend. It really helps us. To spread the word, and it's a way that you can pay me a favor. If you have a question that you'd like me to answer, please send your questions. You can do it the same way. DM via Instagram, just behind the scenes. I'm the only one right now who's answering those questions. And it is, by the way, Flipping 50 TV. There are two accounts. The Flipping 50 account is personal. Nobody's monitoring that, including me. Really. So if you want an answer, it's got to be at Flipping 50 TV, and there is where I will answer. You can either do it on a post directly or behind the scenes to a message. I have a question for you. Would you like to join me for 5 days, just hang out literally in our jammies? And I put mine on early, by the way, and you will find out exactly. We have limited space on site or plenty of plenty of options off-site if you'd prefer to stay in your own accommodations for the 2027 Boulder Retreat. It's gonna happen June 2nd through the 7th, and we have plans— so we have very cool plans we're looking forward to doing with our attendees this year. You've got two great options: either staying on-site— we have limited number of rooms left— you can stay in a single room. We don't have anybody share beds. Even if you do decide you'd like to share a bed, you can't book it like that. You're gonna have to reach out to us behind the scenes. I'll let you know what it would be for the two of you, and you would register two of you. So you get your own roommate. We don't match.com any travel plans, nothing like that. But it is an option, and we have several bedrooms available that do have two beds, two twins, or two full-size, and So it is an option if you'd love to bring a sister. Each of you end up saving a little bit if you want to do that. Or you can stay offsite in a nearby Boulder Airbnb or in a hotel they have on the right side of town. I can tell you exactly where it is because I've stayed there myself. It's close to relatives for me. So we have the option of if you stay offsite, you get to share in the access to the retreat. You get all the hikes, activities that happen in the morning, and 4 meals at night. So your breakfast, your lunch will be on your own. Your accommodations, of course, will be. Best rates happen early. If you want to know about those specific details, you can write in to support@flipping50.com or DM me on Insta. We'll just have a conversation about it. Is it right for you? And do you want to share a room? And if so, what would that be? I will take all the details and give them to you. Let's dive into this. All right. Number 1, if I can't do squats or deadlifts— and by the way, what I'd really like you to do as you listen to my answer to this one, make sure you're kind of taking this to— maybe for you this is chest press or bent arm pullover or whatever— that exercise that doesn't feel good for you. What should you do if it doesn't feel good for you? So my answer to this question is, if something does not feel right, it's not a sign that you are doing something wrong or that you should push through it. Well, I do want to make sure that you've gotten the right cues, that you are not just assuming squats have never felt good to me, so they're never going to feel good. I actually have found that probably more than 50% of the times a woman says that to me, Nobody's cued her very well. They haven't given her the, you know, where do you feel the weight? Do you know you want to feel it here but not here? So let's move your foot a little bit. Let's shift your weight a little bit. And when they get the right cues, often exercises they thought didn't work for them actually do work for them. So I do want to do that and eliminate that. However, if you've been watching our videos and you've gotten that cueing that I give And I don't mean to compliment myself, but I suppose I am. I give immaculate cueing. I give generous cueing about how it should feel, where the weight should be, where the weight shouldn't be, where you shouldn't feel it, what you will do commonly as you start to get tired and why that might not feel good so that you don't make the mistakes that I've seen over 42 years people making. That means I've watched a lot of bodies in real person. You're at a disadvantage in today's world from fitness influencers who potentially haven't seen anybody except themselves in the mirror as they film videos. That could be a dangerous situation waiting to happen. Okay, so what I want you to do is understand we all have different lever lengths. The distance between my knee and my hip my knee and my ankle and yours are different. And although we have the same body parts, you know, some of us can very easily move the arm all the way up. That has nothing necessarily to do with frozen shoulder, but it may have something to do with you're just running into yourself. You know how some little girls, even little girls, could do the splits and others of us sat on the other side of the room wishing we could do the splits and no amount of effort was making that happen. Excuse me, you know now, I think, what side of the room I was sitting on. The envious one. Yeah. So I was never that little girl. I was never that little girl who could do handsprings across the yard. I can tell you who could. Chris Hickens could do that. If she's listening, she knows. I was super envious. I never could really comfortably do a backbend. I could do it, but I was always very cautious. My body was like, okay, I'll do that for you, but I'm not going to feel good about doing it. So we are all different. We all have the same parts, but some of us are put together differently. We have, we have a variety of different things that we've got to manage, and it's not that you are doing anything wrong. Our muscles are attached in different places along our bones. We have 3 deltoid muscles, the anterior, the medial, and the rear. And yet they might attach really close to the top of your upper arm bone, or they might attach a little further down. And none of that makes it right or wrong, but it does make certain movements more or less comfortable for you, it makes muscle development easier or not as easy for you. So what we want to do is if you find something after doing corrections, following cues on good form, and it still doesn't feel good to you, it's time to stop forcing it or trying to make yourself some— do something that doesn't feel good. What we want to do is go shopping for a substitute that targets the same muscle groups ideally, or body parts if it's not possible to find a good muscle group substitution. So that is, let's say we're doing a squat. A squat focuses more on the quadriceps on the top of your thigh and your glutes. So if we can't do that because maybe it bothers your lower back when you do squats, or maybe it bothers your knees— if it's your knees, by the way, I'm probably going to give you a series of corrections in cues and try to get that to feel more comfortable. But if we don't get there, we're going to go shopping. So we might do, okay, I want to try a deadlift with you instead. Let's say a deadlift isn't comfortable, but let's say, okay, maybe neither squat nor deadlift work. Now let's go do something that is at least glute-oriented. And I might say, let's do a step up. So if you're wondering what is that? So think about a bottom step in a series of steps at your house or a Step Reebok. If you've done step back in the day, and I think it's back, it's a little retro. So it's back right now, but you step up with one leg and you might be holding weights when you get used to this and you do it repeatedly on one leg and do your series of say 10 to 12 repetitions. And then you'll switch sides. By the way, that works your quadricep and your glute, so it's a great substitute if you can do it. So squats and deadlifts and step-ups, very similar muscle groups. If one doesn't work, let's try another one. We might get through all of those and you're going to say, nope, nope, my XYZ, my knee doesn't love that, for instance. I'm gonna say, okay, let's substitute lower body exercise, a different one that we know still these are large muscle groups. So if we can stimulate your lower body, your glutes and/or hamstrings, even if we have to flip that over, we're going to be using major muscles that are probably some of the largest in your body. So I might say, can you lie down on the floor and do a hamstring curl with a ball? So we bridge up there's glutes, and we hamstring curl. There's glutes and hamstrings. Quadriceps, not so much, but we have really stimulated major muscle groups still. So we're still going to get a little boost of metabolism, really in a big way. So that would be kind of where I'd go. Now, if you say to me, I can't do that, I can't get down on the floor, then I would suggest maybe we do some standing work. We put a band around a loop, we put band around your knees and have you do sidestepping and maybe some forward, what I call monster walking. So we're still in the lower body, but we're not stressing the thing that was resisting the stress. There's my answer. Okay. Question 2 was, should I eat before or after workouts? And, or I might say to you, should you eat before and after? Right? That's also a possible question. So here's the answer to, I think, why this question came up. And I am, of course, having to intuit why this question or where it came from because there's not a two-way conversation. But often this question comes up like— This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. It is the framework that we designed our entire membership and program based on since 2016. 2013, I've been developing that after 30 years of working with women in midlife. That was born, and in 2018 we rolled out the Menopause Fitness Specialist to train other fitness and health pros on how to actually prescribe exercise. Here's where we're going next, in case you want to get started now, that we're actually training physicians on exercise prescription, knowing they get very little of it in medical school and hoping that it also bridges the gap for you who may be a fitness or health professional, or want to be, who works with women in menopause, because there is so much demand and so much room for you right now. If you are working with women in menopause but not getting all the results, don't have a reliable, predictable framework that gets you results over and over that people know, like, and trust, Come and talk to us. We'll put the link in the show notes for today. That's the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. And if you want to head on over to fitnessmarketingacademy.com, it's where we have all of the content dedicated to you, health and fitness pros. Can I exercise fasted or do I have to have been fed? And so here's the research that within the last year it's become pretty clear. If you are— this 'if' is the biggest two-letter word in this sentence, by the way. If you are well-fed during the day, it matters less if you have any exact timing to your eating before or after. We've learned that if those who skip or skimp meals regularly and they chronically fast so that they're dieting because it's really hard to get enough calories in if you're fasting for long periods of time, then timing could be more important to you. And I would, because it will probably mentally help you give purpose to your eating, do it before and/or after a workout on purpose because otherwise you're probably not fueled to exercise and you're not recovering as well as you could or would have. If you eat 3 meals a day though, and you have adequate calories and protein at each of those meals, simply doing a workout between it or before one of those meals, you are naturally eating with adequate intervals throughout the day to help your recovery and to fuel your effort. I would not be that concerned about it unless you feel like, "I'm weak or tired during my workout," or, "I'm doing this and darn it, I'm not getting my results." That's when I would take a look at, okay, maybe your body's telling you, "I have a lot more anabolic resistance." And remember, anabolic means the ability to gain lean muscle or even just to hold on to what we've got. We have to work for that these days. It's not just going to come to you naturally and stay with you naturally. We have to hold on to it. So there's a little more tug-of-war going on. So you may need to say, All right, I'm gonna hold on to my muscle best by eating a little bit of protein before. And this research was thanks to evidence done with, um, Abby Smith Ryan, and I'm hoping to have her back on for an upcoming interview this summer sometime, that a little protein before a workout, even cardio, not just strength, could help preserve muscle mass. That's gonna be particularly true for women and peri, but definitely post-menopause and as we get older. So it doesn't have to be a full meal. If you just get, say, 12 or 15 grams of protein, that might be a couple boiled eggs before a workout. Um, whatever feels comfortable, sits in your gut really well, doesn't make you feel bloated or like you're overly full, that might help because then your body won't go searching for essential amino acids, which it needs for muscle contraction. From your own muscle and begin breaking that down. So especially if you are older or you're a hard gainer, you're just like, "I'm not seeing results even though I'm doing this." And I want to give you a quick reminder. If you are not losing muscle, not just not gaining it, but if you're not losing muscle, you are still winning. Remember, all of the, all of the influencers and all of the researchers, and we're all right in this one, The average person loses between 3% and 8% of their muscle mass per decade after the age of 30, or starting at 30. So between 30 and 40, 40 and 50, we lose 3% to 8%. So if you say, "Well, I'm not— I mean, my muscle's not changing," that's pretty good, right? We're not losing it. So you are, in a way, winning. By not losing. I hope that makes sense. But I think a lot of women just feel defeated because, because influencers will share, I gained lean muscle mass by doing this, yin, blah, blah. And so you might not be doing X, Y, and blah, blah, right? Maybe you're not taking the extra peptides. Maybe you're not taking the extra creatine. Maybe you're not really getting adequate calories or adequate protein. A lot of us I include myself in this. A lot of us think, "I'm eating plenty, I'm doing all the things," and I have to sometimes count my calories and do a spot check to find, "Wow, my calorie count was really pretty low." So, you know, if I'm eating 1,600 calories but I'm, you know, going for an hour walk here and there, I'm doing some interval training, I'm doing resistance training, and I work pretty hard, You know, potentially for an active woman who wants to sustain lean muscle mass, I'm not necessarily eating enough for my body weight and my activity level. So you've got to really be honest about your own intake. So best thing for you to do, by the way, if you want to take action, number one, I challenge you to go get yourself an app. I like Macros First. Maybe you like Cronometer. I don't care what app it is, but it might make it easy for you to use an app and track your calories. Don't go looking for what it should be, just go track them. How many calories are you eating on average and how many grams of protein? Those would be the only two things I'd look at right now. And then I would go plug into— after you do that, not before— go plug into caloriecalculator.net. Put in your— I'm a female, I'm this age, you know, here's my height, here's my weight. And it may ask if you know body composition. I'm not sure it does. And then put in your activity level, but read the descriptions there so that you get it according to them. And then ask them for a projection. It's an estimate. We're not measuring you in any kind of a lab, but it's a good estimate of this is what it would take to be— this is your maintenance calories. If that maintenance number is way above what you've been eating, there's a good chance that you've been putting the brakes on your metabolism. So you're not going to lose weight doing that. What you're doing is saying, hey, metabolism, shut down, shut down on me, please. And I know you would never say that, right? But it is what's happening. You can't stay lower and lower and lower. And then what's happening with all the micronutrients that you're not getting? Your skin is probably aging a little faster, your tissues in your body are not as resilient, your immune system is suffering a little bit. And we don't need those things to happen, right? You don't want them to happen. So I just want you to think about that. All right, I'm gonna move on from— there's so much to say about that question, but the next question is, the recommendations for resistance training frequency, it's all over the board, I'm confused. And the question really, I think, is what is best, what is true? So just to be clear, the scientific recommendations are not all over. Only influencers, people who've created programs and have individual coaches' preferences, they interfere with the all over the board. That's who's all over the board. The science is not. So a part of this is based on personal preference and on your results. So I will say to you, if you are somebody listening and you really love, love, love strength training and love it, you want to do it more frequently and you're getting good results, the ones you want from doing it. Okay, don't fix it if it's not broken. However, if you love, love, love it and you hate, hate, hate the results you're getting, we might want to compromise a little. Right? So maybe you take some of that love, love, love for resistance training and you pour some of that into yoga instead, so that you're feeling like you do something that does require muscle in between, but it's not interfering with your ability to recover, because that might be the problem. So I want to get really clear on this. Science states and it has clearly for decades, 2 to 3 times a week resistance training. Recently, the guidelines were changed to just 2. Simple, not 2 to 3. 2 to 3 is a range. I mean, imagine this, you're applying for a job with me and I say the range, the range of pay is between $200 and $500 a week. Guess what? We come to the meeting, I'm thinking $200. You're thinking 5, right? Not a good thing. So similarly, when we say 2 to 3 times a week, that is— what is that? I mean, depending on your mood, like, you should do maybe 3 or 2, but that's just— there's so much confusion around exercise and so much reluctance. I mean, we're not getting— we're not getting America fit. Over the 42 years I've been doing this, We haven't seen the statistics change and our metabolic health is worse, in part because either we're under or over-exercising and not recovering. We're not eating really good quality foods. And so, yeah, we're not in great shape. Let's just say it that way. So when we say 2, you only have to do 2, that, by the way, was an effort to simplify, stop confusing, make it easier to access The resistance training we'd love everybody to do 2 times a week minimum for stimulation of major muscle groups in compound exercises. So in case you're relatively new, you want me to say that in plain English differently, it's going to go like this: twice weekly, you want to stimulate major muscle groups like your chest, so pectoral muscles if you must,— or the back, your latissimus dorsi or your trapezius in pulling exercises, or your lower body exercise or muscles like glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings. We want to stimulate all of those twice weekly. So best and easiest, a short, efficient total body workout twice weekly. You can move that around very, very easily. You can say, I'm going to do it Monday and Thursday. Something can come up and Monday you don't get it done. You can say, oh, I'm going to do it Tuesday. And then you can wait and do the next one on Friday, or maybe you have to wait till Saturday. And easy peasy. There's no big, oh my God, I didn't get my workout in. So do I do that workout or do I do the next day's workout? When you have 4 or more workouts on the week, it gets complicated. Like, if you miss one, it's like, okay, I don't know where to pick up. Do I just skip that one? Do I move on? Do I move them all? Um, and people get so caught up in their own thought about what to do that they don't do anything often. So compound exercises means just as we started, we started talking about squats and deadlifts and even the step-up. Compound means multiple joints, because if you work multiple joints flexing and extending in an exercise, multiple muscles cross those joints. That means better ROI. So if I were just to— I have my pen in my hand right now and I'm doing a bicep curl, my elbow's in at my rib cage. That is not compound. That's a single joint, and in fact, it's a fairly small muscle, I'm not going to get too much benefit out of doing that. Not too much metabolism because it's a small muscle group. But when I'm using glutes and quadriceps and hamstrings in a squat or in a step-up or deadlift, I'm now getting a lot of stimulation for my metabolism. So we want to combine, and then you could do a few exercises and you can get many muscle groups. Even if you only did 3 exercises 3 times, which, by the way, that is my go-to when I'm in a hurry, when I have 10 minutes or 15 minutes to do the workout and do a— it's called my consistency workout. So I got it in, stimulated major muscle groups, and I didn't get those smaller ones in, but I still stayed consistent. And so I'm going to not lose any momentum. So I want to say this to those of you who are listening. I know you're out there who are Type A's. When you hear 2 times a week is the minimum for stimulation of major muscle groups, some of you hear, oh well, I'm going to do more because that's the minimum and I am better than that. I want to stop you in your tracks for a moment. Here's why 2 minimum can also be optimum. So it's not just a minimum. And overachievers like us can say, I mean, I'm going to do more, I'm going to do more. Recovery gets tricky, gets problematic in perimenopause and continues postmenopause as hormone levels are so much either on a roller coaster in perimenopause and lower in postmenopause. And age compounds our need for greater recovery periods. If we're trying to hit 3 times a week, it's hard to get the recovery in. Do the math. You do 3 times a week, it can't be a workout every 72 hours. It has to be 48 hours. And I want to remind you of something I've said many times: 48 hours is the minimum recovery time. And a lot of people have thought that to mean every 48 hours I should do something. It's not true. A lot of women, younger, older, middle-aged, feel feel better, less sore, but soreness, not the gauge of is it good or am I ready? It just means you're probably gonna feel better, fresher, work harder when you do it, but it's not gonna feel harder, which means you're going to get better results. So yes, move between those two, but you have so many things to do. We wanna do some jump training. You should do some agility training. You want to do some long, slow movement, and maybe you want to do fluid movement like yoga or swim. Maybe you want to do reaction kinds of things like ladder drills or boxing. You want, you want to play pickleball and have the energy to do that or play golf. So you want to move, move your body in lots of ways, but not all of it should be intense. So there you have it. It doesn't mean also don't ever try 3 or 4 times a week, because if you really love it, maybe that's beneficial. But do it as a test rather than stubbornly say, I'm going to do this, right? Do it as a test. And if, by the way, you're in a program that encourages you to do 4 or 5 or 6 times a week and you feel exhausted, don't you think that's a little backwards? I know women who've gone to— and I hate to throw programs under the bus, but I'm going to because they're some of the best examples— any, any old-fashioned boot camps often recommended, you know, this is 6 days a week, you can come as many as 6 days a week. And so overachievers did, right? But we saw lots of injuries when we saw that kind of model roll out in the late '90s to probably a decade later. And then the injury rate was so high that it backed off a little bit. But also, I would have to throw in CrossFit to that and Orange Theory. And I've heard a good friend of mine say this about boot camp, and she and I were good partners. Um, we ran a couple events together, and I knew her really well, but she said after she started boot camp, she's like, it's Big thing. And there is something, by the way, about the brain chemistry change. BDNF, it's brain-derived neurotropic factor, actually increases. So it's why you do some really high-intensity interval training as opposed to go walk for an hour. Your brain will be like lit up, and you're going to probably think better through your problems and do some more creative thinking at your desk the rest of the day because of it. But it is a little addicting in that way, in, in a good way to the brain, but not so good if you beat your body up doing really high-intensity, high-impact and don't have the recovery. A little bit of some things is really great, but a lot of the something that's good in a little bit is not so good. So I need you to think about that just for yourself. Is what you're doing working? If we're exercising regularly, we should be the most energetic people walking into a room. People should see you walk in and their heads should turn because of the way you carry yourself, because of the energy they feel from you. You should look vibrant. Not just they look at you and say, I want your arms. They should look at you and say, like, what are you taking? What are you doing? Right? And it's going to be beyond creatine that you answer. You're just going to say, I, you know, don't know, been lifting regularly. Are you lifting? You should say that. Should be it. And because it is very true, I'm doing HIIT regularly. A little bit of those things gives you exactly what you want. More of it doesn't give you better, more of it. Okay. All right. Speaking of toned arms, next question. I want toned arms. What are the best exercises and how often? Okay. So if your body composition is good, your arms don't require extra arm work. If you're doing resistance training for total body, good body composition means both optimal fat, meaning there's a little of it overlaying the muscle, but that's called subcutaneous fat, just below the surface. And it's the fat that makes us look subtle— subtle, supple, supple, it's that one— and not so thin-skinned that we look old. So by the way, did you know resistance training is the only exercise that actually thickens the skin, right? So those of you out there who get your feelings hurt easily, it's not that, but, but maybe it— well, maybe a little bit toughens you up, but it does thicken the skin. And you know why we can start seeing our crow's feet, smoker's lines around the lips, And we can get skin that feels a little bit more crepey. If you've ever been in shorts and you've done a downward facing dog, you know, probably in your 60s as opposed to your 50s, you're like, where did that come from? Like, where this— how do I get rid of that crepey skin? I'm like, wear long tights and don't look at it because it's probably not going to go away, you know, especially if you've lost a little weight. You know, but part of that is lack of collagen. Our production does go down, by the way, consuming it. We have Collagen Boost, I swear by it. Definitely see a difference and feel it in my gut and in my face. Less so in my legs, unfortunately. But realize that your toned arms or legs don't come from over and over doing arm exercises. Now the legs is slightly different. Why? Because those are major muscle groups. Squats and lunges and step-ups and deadlifts are going to show up in toned legs, but doing arm work doesn't. And here's why: because just doing arm work does not condition or change body composition. Doing the leg work does. Yeah, so you might for a period of time say, I'm going to do a 30-day challenge and I'm going to not lift arms every day. You have to recover. And if you do arm work every day, what you're doing is interrupting your ability to recover for the chest and the back work that really helps decrease your body fat so you can see the muscles. It's complicated when you say it like that, but here's secret support. A form of cardio that is arm-centric. Swimming and boxing are two of my favorite. So by the way, you don't need a bag and you don't have to put gloves on. Just air boxing works. They both help shape the muscles and increase circulation to the arms, which can reduce the visibility of cellulite. Do yoga. That's another one. So it's not cardiovascular, but doing yoga that includes the transfer. Of weight from upward facing dog to downward facing dog. That's actually a lot of pushups built into yoga, up and down dog. And that you don't see many yogis with flabby arms, do you? I don't think so. So now you're, next time you go to yoga, you're gonna be looking around the room. But okay. Doing yoga that includes that, that could be good. It's not enough alone. Right? I, I think you've got to have total overall body composition improved. But resistance training also helps to thicken the skin, don't forget that. And while you can spot tone— not spot reduce, you can spot tone— you can't lose fat in a certain area. So that is going to take a combination of overall strength training, total body, and yes, doing some cardio, but It's not do cardio first to lose the fat and then do the strength training. 1980 called and wants that back, y'all. Okay, so you can do them both simultaneously, and you should. And you're gonna see the most benefit— see and feel the greatest benefit from resistance training. It takes a while to see or feel change from cardiovascular exercise alone. Next question. "Time is my biggest obstacle. Can I do shorter 20-minute workouts more regularly?" Meaning, it sounds to me like this individual has 20 minutes, you know, a few times a week, but not necessarily, say, an hour 1 or 2 times a week. That's harder to fit in. Okay. And that can be true of somebody who's got an energy problem too. So here's my answer to that. You can, but, or you can, and it's almost impossible to really do only a 20-minute workout knowing you need to warm up and cool down. So here's what that looks like. If it were a 20-minute start to end, because you and I are not going to get out of this unscathed, uninjured, unless we take our time in warming up and ideally cooling down after workouts. Those days are over of saying, I don't have time to warm up, I'm just gonna jump in and do it. The warmup might look different, but it needs to be there. So if you warm up, 5 to 7 minutes is minimum. Right? And then you do a 10-minute workout. We're at 17 minutes. So you're going to tell me you're doing a 3-minute cooldown. So that's as skimpy as you can get. And then if you get stiff and tired, don't come back crying to me. Okay? Well, you can, but I'm going to say, "I told you so." All right. So here's what I will do when I am really crunched for time and I need to do Just like that. I generally, my warmup part of it will be walking a dog because I have to do that. Some of you also do, right? Or if you've got other animals on a farm, you gotta do chores. So I will do that and then I will do a leg and a push and a pull. So it might be just as simple as a squat, a chest press, and a bent-over row. And I'm going to do those 3. I'm going to do them again. I'm going to do them again. 3 times, 3 exercises called trisetting. But I sometimes, if I have 15 minutes, I'll do it a fourth time. And it's about a minute per exercise. You're going to take a little time, but you know exactly what's coming, so it doesn't take too much to transition from one to the next. So it takes about 10 minutes to do 3 sets, and then I could cool down and I could say I stayed consistent. And if you reached muscle fatigue, I mean, you can't say Oh, I'm doing it, I'm doing it, put them down, I'm going to do it, do it. No, like, you know, hear the song that they play when doodles are pictured on Instagram. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. No, you can't do that. It's got to be hard. So you really have to reach that point of muscle fatigue to make it count. And then you can say, you know, well, yes, I worked my chest, but when I worked the chest, I also worked the triceps. I worked the back. When I worked the back, I also worked the biceps. I worked the glutes, quads, and hamstrings. And so calves, a little involved. You worked major muscle groups, even if they were not primary movers, they were secondary movers. And that's super valuable. So you can do it. I wouldn't do that like every time, all the time, for the rest of duration. Your body's going to need some variety, some stimulation, some days that are longer. But if during the week you can get one of those in and on the weekend you can get a longer one in, you're done. You've done 2 minimum. Great job. So there you have it. That would be my solution. Most often I try to fit in 45 to 50 minutes and I make it count. So I do a good warm-up, 10 minutes. I do a good cool-down, No less than 5. And in between, that gives me about 45 minutes of actual get the sets, get the reps, and enough variety from one workout to the next that I'm changing the game a little bit. My muscles don't get to say, "Ah, I knew that was coming. It's no big deal." I want them to say, "Oh, that's kind of surprising," right? You want the muscles to be a little stimulated, surprised, have to stand up and Pay, pay attention. So starting out, or if you're returning from fatigue or illness, shorter workouts could be the recommendation. Do those shorter ones. We have some directly in the membership that are 10 and 20 minutes long for this reason. And then when you have more energy, you can sew them together. Do two 10-minute ones, do a 10-minute and a 20-minute one, a little bit longer. You can take pieces. Of workouts and say, I'm gonna do this total body workout, or I'm gonna do this upper body and this lower body workout, and I'm gonna do a little bit more shoulder work today. Just gonna throw that in to spice it up a little bit. So I hope this was helpful. We answered all of these 5 questions with hopefully a little bit more nuance than just flat out answering it. Just in case this was your question, my hope is I hit on exactly the meaning that you had intended for it. And if it wasn't your question but you were along for the ride, thank you so much for being here. Again, I so appreciate it if you share this with a friend. It is how maybe you and your friends have meaningful conversations about what it is you're doing and the importance of doing it. And not to say I'm right, you're wrong, but to have a conversation about, you know, what do you believe, or what are you doing, and is what you're doing in alignment with that, or what do you think? Just having conversations about things like this can really make a difference in moving the needle for all of us. So it becomes mainstream that we're all talking about what's the best —thing for us to do for our health and our future and the time demands on us now? What's the best thing to say? I do need to spend time and do more of this. Thanks so much for being here. What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today. The information shared on Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is for educational educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.
