5 Things I Do When I Need a Reset or I’ve Had a Fitness Plateau

I'm 61. I am 41 years into a full-time career as a fitness professional in every possible way. Senior lecturer in kinesiology for 15 years, international fitness expert who trains the trainers. I stand in front of audiences of physicians and teach them how to prescribe exercise for their patients. And I too still reach a plateau. So if this is you as well, this episode is for you. How I overcome it. I'm Debra Atkinson and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols. While living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve. There is nothing, or few things related to fitness and health anyway, that are more disheartening and frustrating than not getting the results that you feel you so deserve. And I mean, you who are feeling like, "I've made the changes in my diet and in my exercise. I'm lifting the weights, I'm getting breathless, I'm doing the walking, and it's still not working." This is for you, and I feel you. So here's the truth. I know the science, and I have had a lot of repetitions with the N of 1, which is myself, and hundreds of thousands. And I, I hesitate to say that because it sounds like, you know, inflammatory and a little bit of dramatic. But here's the deal. I've been in situations where not only have we had hundreds of thousands of women come to our YouTube channel, to our website, participate in our programs. But I've also been in a position where I have supervised dozens of personal trainers conducting hundreds of thousands of personal training sessions. And it was me if somebody wasn't having results or a trainer wasn't sure where do I go next with this person hitting the wall, who dealt with that. So just to give you a basis of where I'm coming from when I say if it can happen to me, it will most likely happen to you. Here's how to be prepared when you get there. Here's how to potentially avoid it. We call that periodization, so that you're rotating what you're doing on a regular basis with the likelihood that your results will continue to flow in and that you won't hit a plateau, you won't hit a point of burnout, and you won't put yourself at a point where you're vulnerable to the risk of injury because you, you're greedy with your results. And I hate to say I don't mean to say it that way, but that is quite a statement that I hope will get your attention. If you're thinking, no, I'm going to push and I'm going to push and I'm going to do this, even though you're hearing advice otherwise, you know, nobody is getting up in the morning saying, oh, let's see if we can prevent her from getting the best results. So I encourage you to listen to why would someone be sharing that? And the answer hopefully is so that you don't have to create or have the mistakes that I have already had or that someone has already had, that you benefit from the mistakes and accelerating learning. I mean, ultimately, that's kind of what science is. You know, studies that came out in 1980, we were doing with the hypotheses that were as advanced as we could possibly get for the knowledge that we had. As more and more science comes out, we realize, okay, now we're going to build on that piece of science and include it, but we're going to go one step further or take it so that we're really answering a question that in the public domain we're getting so much more frequently. This is a great instance. We're in a moment of time where menopause and menopausal women— and we're not just talking about that, we're talking about women in perimenopause going through that menopause transition. We don't necessarily know. We can suspect when we're getting close, and we do know when it just happened. There's some things that really transpire, or can, during that first 3 to 5 years after menopause that maybe we can prevent, and then long after. So those distinctions are coming out. We never asked that question in the 1990s. We weren't asking it in the '80s for sure, but Here we go. So though I'm always going to personally come back to working at my capacity with polarized training, and that happens in multiple ways within a workout— let's say for high-intensity interval training, it happens with getting breathless in less than 30 seconds and then complete recovery and alternating those. And it also shows up in the days of the week. I have high-intensity days polarized by low-intensity days that are recovery workouts so that I can monetize, if you will. I can go to the bank with the work that I've done on those high-intensity days. Otherwise, by the way, you don't get results if you don't give yourself those rest and recovery days. So I too, even though I follow that within the workouts, within the week, and even within quarter to quarter and what I'm doing collectively over the course of a year, I too sometimes hit the wall. And with the multitude of things coming at you and I at any one time that all impact our stress levels, you know, it is hard or can be hard to determine why the results are not coming, right? So even for women who are in our community, the Flipping 50 community, who will be hopefully very shortly, and by the time you might be listening to this in our app where we are, we're migrating to it to make it even more user-friendly than it has been since 2016. But for women who know kind of the language we've been talking since 2013, they've changed their mindset and their habits around quality exercise versus quantity exercise, who are following the suggested ways to use the framework but then really test their individual needs against that, who've abandoned the 1980 fitness habits. They're doing the right thing, not just based on advances of science that we know now, but advances of their own age and stage hormonally in life so that it is a better fit. This is really an important distinction. Results that you deserve may not be coming even if we've unpacked nutritional status and sleep when we're fixing deficits that may exist in each of those. How do we figure out what's going on? So first of all, by the way, if you want immediate help and you want to learn how to change those habits to support changes that occur in midlife and beyond and those hormonal changes, then I have two options for you. One, do it yourself. If you're a do-it-yourself girl, give it to me so it's convenient for me. You can watch an exercise planning video and get the PDF. So you've got a worksheet to work through that explains how do you plan your week? Optimally, or a done-for-you. If you'd rather join us, do it with me, have me coaching you live in a Facebook group— and again, this will be on the app very shortly— if you'd rather do it that way, you can join the 10-Day Metabolism Reset. It's often called the Hot Not Bothered Challenge, and I'll put those links in the show notes. But if you want just to listen, to sort things out yourself, Here we go. And before I go too deep into this, I want to tell you that a lot of times clients will hear from their trainers, I think too quickly, "Well, you should test your hormones." And I don't love that response or advocacy for trainers. I know they mean well, but here's the thing. Before a trainer or health coach tells you that, and— or before you say, should I test? My answer to that question would be, do you know what you're going to do with those results? Because we can guess based on your signs and your symptoms and your age and what's going on if you're in perimenopause or postmenopause, what those changes might be having on you. Those hormonal changes might be having the effect on your fitness. We can already know that. We teach trainers and health coaches how to identify the signs and the symptoms and support you with changes you can make to your lifestyle or to your fitness habits. But we have a pretty good idea of where you are anyway. Unless you want to do hormone replacement therapy and you're open to that, then I would say testing is not necessarily the first thing you want to do. However, all it's going to do, by the way, is then confirm, yes, Indeed, you are. So, so it's what are you going to do with those results? And if you are interested in replacement therapy, I would not go to the test first. What I would go to is a functional health doctor who will prescribe the type of hormones that you're interested in based on their interpretation of the test that they want you to take. So if you go testing and firing away without doing that and connecting with the physician, they may still want you to do additional tests. So that may be a greater, um, incurring a greater investment on your part, and your initial test may not be the one they wanted. So realize that much of this can be out of pocket depending on who your physician is. If they have a functional medicine only, they often don't take insurance. Just a heads up on that. But these days, post-pandemic, The world opened up. You are not limited to a physician within a 25-mile radius of where you live. You may live in Iowa, North Dakota, Kentucky, in the back roads, rural areas. There are physicians locally everywhere at this point in time, but no longer are you limited to working with somebody locally. I live in Scottsdale, Phoenix area where there are lots of doctors. But I've actually worked with a doctor in Texas and a doctor in Michigan, and you know, that's who's filling my prescriptions and who I'm talking to if I have an issue or feel like I need to update. I have a local doctor who I'm talking to about stem cell therapy and something very different, but you're not limited by where you live at all. I will shortly, I'm putting this out to the universe, be living in Iowa to be next to my grandchild. My current physician may or may not be licensed in that state. So I too may, may be shopping, but I'm not limited to somebody right there. I can look at anywhere. So if you do travel and you're willing to travel just one time, even to meet with that physician, that's often required. And then telemedicine opens the door for you working with anyone. So just keep that in mind. If you'd be interested in a short list of those physicians that I know, like, and trust where they do telemedicine, they're licensed in multiple states, let me know and we'll put you on the list and make sure if you're not already on our subscriber list. So here we go. The things that I do to change, and I tied that testing in, by the way, because sometimes that needs to be changed. Let's say I notice other signs and symptoms. It's not just that, you know, I'm not getting the results or not feeling it, or I'm bored, or just, I like, workouts are flat. I also may come to the conclusion that, hey, you know, there's also this, I'm not waking up energized anymore. And typically that is who I am. I might say, I'm— I think I need to look at my level of progesterone, or maybe I need to look at my thyroid. Can we retest? And I might go to my physician and say that. But before I do that, I would look at these things. Number 1, I would do a week of complete change and no lifting weights. That would be one option. And I would anchor myself in walking, hiking, getting outside. I might get back to swimming on a regular basis. I don't always do that or find time to do it because with work taking up certain amount of time, there being a commute to the pool, a get ready— swimming is a little more time-consuming. Can we agree? Because you have to actually get wet. You gotta redo the whole thing if you have had to undo it with makeup, mascara, hair, what's gotta go on. It's just a thing. And you know, I don't have a swimming pool in my backyard. If I did, I would I love it, but I don't. So, um, I'm going to anchor though in those kinds of activities and yoga, you know. So that is weight-bearing, by the way. It is a functional workout, but I'm going to leave weights out, you know. And here's why it helps: parasympathetic nervous system activation. And you'll get that as a result of going lower tuning in a little bit more just with walking and hiking and dropping the high-intensity interval training, dropping the strength training. So really dropping out the high-intensity stuff for a week. You may be in a state of constant sympathetic activation. That is the fight or flight. Gotta, gotta be on alert. Your body is like, I gotta gear up, gear up. And we're terrible at detecting that that's where we're at because we're used to pushing through, and we often don't feel it until we're hitting the wall. You've just been, you know, pushing through. And I will say this, you don't like to miss your exercise. Anybody else? So I'm like that. I like to be a creature of habit. I like the exercise. I want to, to work out, and I know that it's gonna make my brain function better. I'll sleep better. I want to hit it. I want to stay consistent. Your mind feels right working out, but our body may not, and it may be in this preservation mode. And in that, you're probably storing fat, you're not actually gaining muscle, and you need a rest and a reset. So rest and digest is often what it's called. It's flown the coop for you, and we are lousy at rest. So truly rest. So This shift of the movement allows you to put movement on your schedule, still keeping something in that hole where high-intensity exercise was, so you don't feel like it's missing. It's just a new kind of a challenge. Sometimes this, maybe it's a vacation, a week-long meditation retreat, or it's being grandma for a week. But it's really important that you don't just wait for life to disrupt you and say to do this. When you follow a periodized training. What that means is we typically will go 3 weeks where we're starting, we're building, building again, and then that 4th week is a recovery week. So you're staying active, but you're doing just as I'm describing here, although there is a little lifting. It's just changed. We might be doing something special. We might be doing more functional workouts, lighter workouts using, uh, blood flow restriction bands. So we're tricking our body into thinking we work harder without working harder. But if I really need it, I personally know I have to do it now and not wait. And that's, you know, kind of initially that is number one, my go-to, a week of complete change. And let's leave out lifting and leave out HIIT. So it's really coming back down, getting in plenty of movement. But actually it also is like imposing a spa week, right? Not just a spa day, but I'm imposing this new— like, there's a reason for it, and it's gonna start and it's gonna end. It's not just randomly taking a day off, it's dedicated. So I'm aware of it. The second thing actually is a category, so I'm going to give you 4 other things that I do to change it up, especially for those of you who are resistant to this big one. Like, really cutting back for a week may not fit. These things might work. For you, and they're all under this category of I'll take a week or a month or even a quarter and really change my lifting methodology. So if you think of the lifting, the way I lift, as a cocktail, this will make sense because I'm gonna add something later that will feel like, oh, that fits with the language. So number 1, I typically go heavy. I go as heavy as I possibly can because I'm focusing on metabolism the neural benefit that are a little bit greater when you're going heavy, and the bone density benefit. So it's always as heavy as you safely can. It's not just— if you can't do, you know, 5 sets of 5 repetitions, you're wasting your time. There is nobody who needs to hear that message ever. And remember, when you're starting out, you have to start light anyway. There may be periods, moments in your time where say you're dealing with gut issues, that means most likely you're not absorbing food that you're eating. Don't ask your body to perform at peak level when it's not getting peak nutrition, right? That just doesn't make any sense. So be careful what you're doing. And sometimes think of it as, how would you advise your daughter if you were in that situation? What would you want her to do? Because we're nicer to right? All right, so I will go lighter than my typical. And, you know, so if you already lift and you're— you found you're heavy, this is all just relative. Try going lighter. What would that look like for you? For some of you, maybe that means I'm just gonna spend a week doing Pilates, or I'm really going lighter, but that means more repetition. So this can mean things will take a little bit longer, but going to muscular fatigue can still be very important. So the example I gave you of Pilates, you may not reach muscle fatigue when you go to Pilates, when you do organized Pilates, because what is it? It's more of a, we'll do 10 of this, we'll do 5 of some things, and it is initiated in activating the muscles. It's not necessarily reaching muscle fatigue, or, you know, there is no Jane Fonda cause a burn because that's That just means no, let's not even go into that. We don't need to have it burning in order for it to be effective. So think about how could you lighten it up and still reach muscular fatigue, or if you have already been lifting fairly lightly and the place for you to go to lift more, um, to muscular fatigue doesn't exist without going higher than 30 reps because that's a wear and tear on your your joints, then I would say try just a Pilates workout. Try something else. If you want to try, say, a barre class— I mean, those are not what I would say for sissies, right? There's a lot of muscular contraction going on. Just be careful and cautious of your knees and know good form. Know that your instructor, whoever's teaching that class, has probably got a lot of mobility we may not have and realize they're drawn to it because they are very mobile and they're great examples. But if you try to mimic her and don't have her mobility, you could put your knees in jeopardy. It's probably the one joint that most often is in jeopardy in a barre class. Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there's one thing that you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself to not only get the protein but the fiber, fruits and veggies that I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day over 30 years ago when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want hiding in most protein powders or pre-made shakes. I finally caved in after years of saying I'd never never ever sell supplements. Look, stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning and after workouts by always being prepared. Protein plus fiber kill cravings and boost satiety and build muscles and a strong future. Use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com. Today. Number 2, so it's under this category, um, going lighter. And then number 2 is greater frequency but shorter workouts. Particularly what I mean is the higher intensity things like resistance training. You could also apply this to HIIT, but if you're changing one thing, the anchor of everything I do, the highest priority is the strength because that's focusing on the muscles and doesn't mean I'm doing it every day because the recovery is when you get fit. But I'm prioritizing those things. I prioritize 2 total body workouts a week. Sometimes that shows up in 3 days post-menopause. More and more it does, but it depends on my schedule. So I'd rather do, if I'm really busy, 2 total body workouts, and I might do that Monday and Thursday, so they're evenly spread out. But more importantly, the recovery minimum is met. I want a minimum of 48 hours. Personally, I do better with 72 hours between, so I'm really fresh. I come to it ready, wanting to work out, and I'm picking up heavier weights. So as an example, please don't compare what weight you're lifting to mine. I'm just giving you this for example's sake. When I'm doing chest press, for instance, I usually have a little bit of a build. So I'll do my first set with something fairly light, like 17.5 pounds, and then I will work my way up to— I'm doing maybe 22.5 and 25 and 27.5 and 30. But when I'm feeling my strongest, I can do a last set 35 pounds. And, you know, I can tell I have not really been fresh and firing lately because I'm sometimes will hit the 30-pound on my last one, and other times I'm just like, eh, not feeling it. And so when you hit that, I didn't suddenly lose strength. What I lost is recovery. My muscles just are not ready. So realize that you've got to catch yourselves. So instead of doing those 2 total body workouts with greater frequency as a tweak, greater frequency of shorter, instead of doing 3 workouts the way I do with 2 total body workouts, one of them literally total body on Monday and Thursday and Friday upper and lower body, not necessarily in that order, but either or. That's 2 total body workouts a week, right? Can we agree on that? But it happens in 3 times instead. If I were going to go shorter and greater frequency, I would do 3 workouts— Monday, Wednesday, Friday potentially. I could go Monday, Wednesday, Saturday if you want to use the weekends— that are total body, that are really just focused on the key and core compound muscles. Like, I would do squats generally, or a leg press. Might do lunges because those are all same muscle groups as well. Lunges are going to take a little longer, right, because you have to go right and left. There's different placement. When you have squat or leg press, you're doing both legs same time. It's a little more time efficient for me. Chest press, I'll do some kind of a pull. So it might be a bent-over row, it might be, uh, pull-ups, either assisted at a machine at the gym or assisted in my garage with bands. But pull-ups are a great exercise, kind of a substitute for a lat pulldown, which is another pulling exercise. And then those are my focal points. I get in and get out of there. Another day I might do— okay, I'm gonna do a squat or leg press, and I'm gonna do a hamstring curl. I love actually hamstring curl on a ball as much as on a machine. Sometimes for clients I've worked with, machines don't work. Number one, they don't fit. But it's not just that. It's like we can we can put the— we can put the length of your lever, we can set it up so it's properly fit, but it doesn't feel good to you, then we would just leave it out. The hamstring curl and the ball is equally as challenging. If you're not challenged doing two, you just do one. Perfectly fine. So realize that there are lots of options, but each of those three workouts doesn't have to be the same. So Monday and Friday, maybe they're very similar, but Wednesday is a different set of exercises. So squats and hamstring curls, maybe one chest press and lat pulldown or bent arm pullover, and maybe a renegade row as well. But again, I'm in and out of there in about 30 minutes, no more, including a warm-up and a cool-down. So that's efficient, effective move from one to the other. And that again, just to change things, not go in and do the static. You can fall into a rut if you're not following a program and we just all fall into doing what we're used to doing. Not a good idea. And your body probably is telling you, yeah, yeah, stop, shake it up. The third variation that I do in changing my lifting methodology is I add a chaser. And this is where the cocktail to what I normally do, And I, I normally do a pretty core workout, but I will change the sequence. I do exercises, I will change the, the protocol, meaning I might superset sometimes, I might tri-set other exercises, I might go in a circuit if I'm at home. I generally won't do that in a gym because you can't count on getting back onto anything you want. In a hotel gym where you're basically just using dumbbells the same way you would at home, a circuit, very doable. And I will do that for time's sake and efficiency. The problem in a gym, if I'm at a conference, is running into colleagues who are like, I'm in the middle of a circuit and they want to chat. And I'm like, yeah, it's great to see you, I got to do this, let's talk later, or do this with me and we can, we can talk while we go. So the chaser of cardio or of a sauna after an intense workout is really helpful for supporting fat burning afterwards and, and increasing your VO2 max, potentially, both the sauna and the cardio chaser. So when I say cardio, I don't mean that I'm gonna get on it and run or do a high-intensity interval training. You could, but you don't have to. So it could be just you get on for 10 minutes minutes and you walk at an intense pace, and walking, remember, does burn a higher percent of fat for fuel. That may be more true after you've done your strength training because you've used a lot of oxygen during that resistance training workout. You've used a lot of glycogen stored in your muscle, and so now you're tapping into your fat stores. So realize that just saying 10 minutes of I'm going to do a walk, brisk walk on the treadmill. I don't mean just a cool-down walk. Get on there, do it with intention. So you're either pace or it's based on incline to make it challenging for you. Or there's plenty of research and we've been hearing, seeing, talking, but this is pretty well known that if you can get into a sauna— so I have a Sunlighten Solo Sauna, we'll put that in the show notes I purchased this for pampering, really, for recovery. When I lived in the mountains in Colorado, I was like at 8,800 feet. It snowed like May 14th, 14 inches, and it would snow at the end of September where I lived. You know, Boulder itself didn't have snow, but I was above that 6,000-foot mark where if it's gonna snow, you're gonna get snow. And I was like, what did I just I'm a beach girl. And so I loved the idea of feeling warm because I felt like I was always cold. So I got a sauna, and I didn't want one I had to build into the house because it would change the electrical, and I didn't want to do that in the house I was renting or get permission and then have to tear it down knowing at some point I'm moving, not gonna live here forever. So I bought a Solo that was easy to move. I've moved it now twice, and pretty easy. And I— it was awkward because it's heavy, but I've moved it like from upstairs to downstairs, downstairs to upstairs, unpacked it all by myself. So where there's a will, there's a way. It's not pretty, but I did it. And what we know is that getting into a sauna for about 30 minutes. Ideally, this is infrared, but it could be traditional. So infrared sauna for 30 minutes after an intense workout amplify the results. So you want to do it fairly quickly after the workout. It's not, I worked out in the morning, I'm going to do sauna tonight. You're still going to get some benefits, but it's not the amplification of that workout because you're already kind of drained and trained and you want to not necessarily like rehydrate right before you get in it, you want to let yourself be like in the status of I've just done a workout and I'm kind of still quote unquote working out and then gradually reintroduce. So you're helping yourself and your body make adaptations further and beyond what you physically done without the physical damage. So there's no joint, no additional joint damage, no wear and tear, no muscle damage. You're actually starting your repair while you're getting great results. It's like a 3 for 1. It's really quite amazing. So I am actually really focused on that during this last bit of 2025. I'll keep you posted. You know, very hard to say, okay, what's my VO2 max? What is it then? Because there will be weeks when I can't do it. I'm not at home. There will be disruption. But for the most part, whenever it's possible, my— if I go to a gym, gym, and I also could work out here or treadmill in the garage. If I do, it's 6 minutes away, so I can come home as long as I've turned on my sauna so it's hot and ready. I can come home, immediately hop in, and that's really what you want to do. So, um, that chaser of either cardio or a sauna— you don't actually have to have a sauna, but if you're going to a gym and the gym has a sauna, or you too want to invest or look at sunlight. And there's so many reasons why I have mine and love it. The fourth thing I do, and there's 3 subsets under here, so I'm actually giving you so many more, but new protocols. So I will try some things that I don't do every time. I will try some things that I would not recommend that you do every time, because often these protocols that'll get you over the hump are— they're intense, they cause a little bit more muscle damage One of those is called rest-pause, where you're doing a set that is a weight that you will fatigue by 12, 11 or 12 repetitions. You're gonna fatigue at that, and then you're going to rest for 15 seconds, and you're gonna pick up that weight again, and you're gonna do between 5 and 7 repetitions to muscle fatigue. And usually it is that same weight, you don't need to change change them because you didn't really allow yourself full recovery. So what you could fatigue at 10 to 12 or 11 or 12 reps, just a very short rest, you're going right back at it again, and the muscle's like, wait a minute, I'm not really fully recovered. So it may give you 5 to 7. Then you put that down, you rest for 5 seconds, so you got to pay attention, and you're going to go again and try to get between 5 and 7. And when you can no longer— you're fatiguing at 4, you're done. So there are days when I will do this and I can't, can't even get the second one. So I get maybe 5 repetitions, I put it down, and then the next time I go for that 5, I can't even get 4, and I'm done. And it's, you know, maybe what I did prior to it in the workout, it may be just my recovery status from sleep, rest, stress, best guess, who knows, but realize that's success. Don't try to keep going. So when you can't hit the mark, you're done. It's called rest-pause. Again, I don't recommend doing that with everything, not necessarily every workout, definitely, but also certain workouts when I do use that, I'm only doing it for some exercises. So I might do it for a chest press. I might do it for a lat pulldown. I might do it for a bicep curl. It's one of my favorite places to do it so that I can fit that in really easily to more workouts without being too time-consuming. I sometimes will do it for a tricep exercise. It's hard to do in an overhead press, which is my favorite tricep exercise, but I pick and choose during a workout. I'm not doing it with every single exercise, but trying to to do it with specific exercises and really focus on it. So again, that goes— the rest pause goes. You do 11 or 12 reps, rest 15 seconds. You're going for between 5 and 7 reps to fatigue, resting 5 seconds, no more than that, in between each until you can't do, do 4 or more. And you'll thank me later, but maybe not right away because it's hard and it's gonna potentially make you a little bit more sore. Don't repeat it during that same week. Next, I will do something called monster or drop sets. Now, I regularly incorporate this, but I don't necessarily incorporate it with every exercise I do. So you can do this with squats, you can do this with chest press, you can do this with bent-over row, you could do it with lat pulldowns if you're at a gym. So it's got to be extra weight, so you can't do it so easily with your own pull-up weight, that's not going to work. But this monster set— and again, you could do this one too with biceps or triceps— you're going to— and I like to choose a standard number of repetitions that I always am going to hit— but the first set, it is paramount that you reach muscle fatigue in I choose 15 repetitions most often for this particular— even if you are going heavier and often do 5 or 7 repetitions to fatigue for, say, bone density or metabolism benefit, great. But in this drop set, I would typically increase the number of reps that you're doing just to be a little bit safer. Okay, so I'm gonna do— I will do this most often, and if I'm at a gym, on a leg press. You could do this at home though. And when I do it at home, I will wear my weighted vest. I'll pick up my very heaviest weight and reach muscular fatigue, say with my, um, squats and adding a tempo to it as well. So holding at the bottom before I push up so that I really truly can reach muscle fatigue. And then I will drop Drop, the weighted vest comes off, go again. Then I will reduce the amount of weight that I'm using. So instead of a 35-pound kettlebell, I might go to my, um, 25 pounds or 20— well, it's going to be 20 actually with 10 and 10, or 30 pounds with 15 and 15 dumbbells. Then I'm going to drop to the next lower weight and the next and the next. There is no real rest. If you're on a leg press at the gym, you're doing this with your heaviest weight, fatiguing at 15, immediately changing the pin, generally by dropping by 10 pounds, and going again. You will not want to— just saying, you will not want to if you really haven't rested. Your body is like, what? We just reached fatigue. You're just lowering the weight. You're going to go right away again, but reach 15 reps on that next one and then keep going do at least 4 of them for it to be a monster set. Then you're done. You're not repeating this. So this monster set is 4 times 15 with no rest between other than change the pin or take the vest off, go again, change from a kettlebell to 2 dumbbells to change the weight, whatever your situation is at the So that is monster sets or drop sets. Again, I wouldn't recommend doing that all the time because then it's no longer an anomaly. You're wanting full range of motion with different weight loads. You want to change it up and you don't always want to do the same thing. A split routine is another one for me. Now some of you are listening and maybe you're using split routine, so this is not different for you. You might change the other way and do total body. Body. But I will do a split routine and really break it up during the course of the week. So I'll look at a week where I might do, um, one muscle group, and I'm just spending 15 or 20 minutes a day doing the work. So again, really, I've lightened the load of the stress. I'm not doing very much. I'm not potentially increasing my metabolism enough because there's not a lot of volume in that workout. There's not a volume of sets, and that's what we're after. There's a volume of frequency, but that potentially is not really what gets women in midlife the results that we want. So I want you to hear that. But trying to do something different is really our focal point here. We want an anomaly because what you're doing is not getting results at the moment. So changing to do something else, and this is in a sense, it is still lightening up the load. So in this way, when I go to the gym, probably in and out, you know what I'd really like to have so I don't feel rushed or pushed and I can get in really the whole list of exercises I like to hit, that's gonna be an hour. It's about 60 minutes. 10-minute warm-up, really effective, and then I'm really ready to go. And a 10-minute cool-down, doing that cardio chaser at the end, right? You're getting all of it. And in between, I am hitting legs with 2 or 3 sets of— or 2 or 3 exercises of 4 to 5 sets. And I'm hitting upper body with similarly 4 or 5 exercises with 4 or 5 sets. And, you know, sometimes if you're at a gym, you don't have the benefit of getting on something when you want it. I think I was there yesterday actually, and I kept going back to the leg press because it's one of the reasons out the gym in the first place. I'd hit that if I'm at a gym and somebody was on it. So I'm like, okay, now how many sets you have left? And I was like, I don't have very much time, so I'll come back. I came back, somebody else is on it, and then I would go away and I came back and finally it's empty. But I will get on it and make sure that I am getting the most from that. But think about You know, how could you do something different? If you're used to total body workouts, try breaking it up. Just a muscle group every day. Might do, say, chest and back one day, but you also might do— I'm gonna do my chest and triceps because those two are complementary muscle groups. I might the next day do legs, then the next day I might only do core and shoulders. The next day then I might do back and biceps, and then Another day I might do legs again because those are major muscle groups. That might be the whole week, but each of those workouts, just 15 or 20 minutes long with, you know, a warm-up and cool-down, you're getting to 25 or 30. You have to have that warm-up and cool-down. Please don't cheat yourself on that right now. Some days that recovery, the mobility work that you do, the stretching and the prep, maybe it needs to be the work. Out. So there's that. Okay, quick review of all of those. So the 4, 5 things that I do, 4 of them fell underneath one umbrella. So realize they're tucked in there. But let me review those 5 things. Just a week-long complete change and no lifting. If I feel like I'm not getting the results from the lifting that I feel like I'm doing, I will leave it. So I anchor in walking or hiking. I might get back to swimming. I I might do more yoga on a regular basis and just say 5 days a week I'm gonna do at least 10 or 20 minutes of yoga and hold myself to that, helping that parasympathetic nervous system. The second thing was in regard to changing lifting, totally go lighter. If I'm used to doing 5 repetitions to fatigue, I might use 15, 20, even higher than that, going really lighter with my work. But too muscular fatigue still. This— the third thing was greater frequency, shorter workouts. So kind of going Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and doing really shorter workouts focusing on the compound exercises. So I'm not going to include on those short workouts too much single joint like biceps, triceps, certainly no leg extension, that kind of thing. Then The fourth thing is adding a chaser of cardio, like 10 or 20 minutes after your strength training, where it's brisk or it's an incline, but it's not necessarily high-intensity interval training. It is to tap into that moment when your glycogen stores are already depleted. We may be tapping into fat a little better, or if not that, sauna workouts after. And this could be an and if you have sauna access as well. Potentially even better. And number 5 is apply one of those new protocols I talked about— rest-pause, monster sets, and/or doing a split routine if you're used to total body, or doing total body if you're used to a split routine. Changing the game is really the name of success here. So if you'd like some guidance that you can right now, if you're listening at the right time, join us for a 10-day metabolism reset hot tub other challenge. If you're used to doing what you've always done and that's not getting results, do it with me. We do a lot of parasympathetic resetting during this, but we also teach you so that you're empowered about the effect of working out on your hormones and how your hormones are impacting the workout. And I don't just mean estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. What I mean is insulin and cortisol, namely cortisol, because we are more prone to negative effects of it in midlife. And I know that's not a popular discussion right now. Cortisol does have levels that go up and down and should on a 24-hour period, and yet we are more sensitive to changes and blood sugar rise and fall, and that impacts our insulin, that impacts our belly fat, weight loss resistance. So it is quote unquote a thing. It's not a popular influencer piece. It is based on science. And I will also say this, sometimes I think more importantly, we don't have quite enough science yet for women in midlife. So we have to take together the physiology of exercise, the physiology of menopause, and I have to look at the thousands and thousands of women in midlife that I've worked with and know that not every single one of them has been represented presented, they've been doing the thing and it's not quite working. So this is where I'd start. It's where I start. So what I'm doing right now— so in the show notes you'll find some other assets, links to other things, because also it's worth not just looking at the change in exercise, but I look at how's my protein and carbohydrate. Do I need to look at that? Could I be short-sheeting myself on carbohydrates? And if your sympathetic needs a reset. Your adrenals may be needing a reset and some love. Carbohydrates love them back, and if you've been going too low, pay attention to that. I also look at, am I using consistently the tools that I know to use? Creatine is one, but I've also recently started using something else, and I'll be sharing that link with you soon. It's something called Fortetrip and egg yolks, and what I've been using lately to get really great results from not changing my effort at all. I'd love to hear from you, and I'd love it if you found value in this, that you share it with a friend. If you're interested in becoming a health coach or a trainer who works specifically with women in midlife and menopause, and you're interested in the science behind much of what I shared today, understanding it for your own clients, reach out to me and let me know that you're interested in the Menopause Fitness Specialist. I'll talk to you a little bit about whether you're great candidate or not and when the next opportunity to do that is. By the way, you don't have any prerequisites. If you're a woman who's just getting great results and is interested in being a coach, you too can go through the training. Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.