I Asked Chat Gpt for 3 Menopause Strength Workouts - Here’s What I Got

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What are you waiting for? Good night. I'm going to teach you what happened when I asked ChatGPT to write me 3 workouts.

Ready?

Buckle your seatbelt.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to help accelerate your results with 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. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and 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 scenes and 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 that you want, need, and deserve.

And now you may be wondering, why? Why would I ever do this? And the answer is pretty easy. I hope that you'll see it's because you potentially could or should be or are. And maybe let me take that back. Don't shit on yourself, and I should never shit on you either. I actually would prefer that you don't, of course, but it's out there, and you may hear this just like I do. The other day, a very well-known, at least in my world. She's a little bit more on the business side of things and she's a little younger than us. She's still got really wee little ones and she may not even be on your radar. But she said, you know, I got this great workout from ChatGPT and I'm like, really? Really? What if I took your area of expertise and said ChatGPT, do this just like so-and-so would. Because let me just tell you what I gave you just now. I gave you a really good prompt. So if you are doing that, if that is where you're getting your workouts, you could and should say, acting like Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50, write me a workout that is X, long, has X exercises that is targeting whatever your goals are. Put it in like that, asking like an expert. Okay. All right. So here's what I got. I'm gonna point out that ChatGPT is not a human. It isn't yet able to process the nuances or potentially ask you questions. And please don't take any offense to this if you've just come out of a 4-year degree, Go you, okay? Or you've just gotten your basic certification for fitness or group training or Pilates or yoga. It is got the basic information to enter the field. We cannot say yet that ChatGPT is going to write a custom program for you. Now, here's how you would get this more specific. If you uploaded your health history, if you told it, here's my problem, these are moves I can't do. But again, it's not going to go deeper and think, why can't you do that? Let's figure that out because that's the real root cause of the problem. And how can we improve your mobility or your strength so that you can? Why, why isn't that healing? Why do you still have adrenal fatigue 2 years later? So all things that are really important, but let's dive into this and I'll just show you what I got. By the way, in the show notes today, I'm going to put the exact 3 workouts that I've got. I've highlighted things that I've said, uh, no, no, I wouldn't do that with a stranger, at least where I was writing it all out and I wasn't either seeing their form or making sure they saw mine. That's really important. So here's what ChatGPT is— very polite, by the way, and doesn't take offense if you get upset with it, so you don't have to be nice to it. But here's what it said: Sure thing, here are 3 strength training workouts designed specifically for women in menopause. These focus on maintaining muscle mass, boosting bone density, and supporting hormone balance. Each workout should be done 2 to 3 times a week, allowing at least 1 rest day between sessions. Boom, right away. Okay, so 2 to 3 times a week, but there's no criteria here for saying, should I do 2 or should I do 3? Isn't that interesting? So I don't know if you've probably been on the, the side of either been hired by someone or you have been the person hiring someone. Can I just ask what happens if there's a range? Like the salary range is between $20,000 and $25,000. What's the employer thinking? $20,000. What's the employee thinking? $25,000, right? Never ever give a range because those of you who are listening who are Type A, who think I'm already really pretty fit, so I've already done this for a year, so I should definitely do 3, could be dead wrong. Dead wrong and might not be as fit because you go for 3 instead of going for quality. And likewise, those of you who are beginners might think automatically, I should do 2, I should just do 2. And potentially I would probably lean into agreeing with you because I like to start you out with the same frequency and get the same habits. That we're going to progress to eventually. I don't love the idea of starting beginner out with more frequency because actually what we're doing is not going all that heavy. We're working on the neural connection, connecting your brain to the muscle. So it's like stronger Wi-Fi. We're going to get a better connection and that signal is going to go boom. I'm going to recruit you and I'm going to recruit you too, and I'm going to recruit you to work harder every time I do it. All of that is happening over the first weeks and months. And, you know, early studies when I was starting out 40 years ago, 6 to 8 weeks of the initial starting a program or a new program is about this neural connection. It's not about the power. So that would apply to strength training, but it would also apply to something like, let's say you're golfing, you know, and if you are somebody who feels like, I'm really fit, I should be able to hit it far. I can't tell you how I know this feeling, but you know, when you are learning it for the first time, you're relearning it after a lot of years of, watching other people do it, I wanted to hit it far again, right? And so I was trying to kill that ball every time.

And I might—

the patterning not in the building, right? So it was doing myself no good going home and kind of feeling sore. It was really, it was really stupid. But I— maybe that should be there, not it, but The approach should be the same. Just got to get the pattern down. You got to back up a step and say, I— even if I go heavy or go hard, I'm not going to improve my results. I can't speed up that neural connection. So anyway, back to— that's the first error, and that was 1, 2, 3 sentences in. Okay, so that left a lot to be desired and interpreted by you. And so you tell me, did you take that? If it said 2 to 3 times a week, did you think, oh, I'm going for 3, or no, I'll just take 2. Thank you very much. But did you know why? And allowing at least 1 rest day between sessions, I would say, oh, hell no. And I'm sorry for the drama, but here's the deal. Leaving 1 day between, just so that you understand, this is 1 rest day between. So it is implying Monday to Friday, or I'm sorry, Monday to Wednesday. So leaving one day between sessions, that's not very well written out. And a lot of women, a lot of people in my 40 years misinterpret that, that shouldn't I lift every day and I can do a different muscle group then, or I should restimulate. Why don't we do it more often? Because it seems to be the thing and the answer and the best results come from that. I get asked those questions quite frequently. I'm hoping that in the last few years, because more and more people are finally talking about strength training, we're all getting that message to a greater degree than we have before. But it's really important that you understand, never, ever, ever, and nowhere in science does it say work out every 48 hours with strength workouts. It doesn't. It says a minimum of 48 hours request or rest and recovery between, a minimum of 48 hours. Older adults are less resilient, same as your old car. It's less resilient, maybe more predictable, maybe more consistent, willing to do it, shows up, but we're still not quite as resilient. I mean, the parts are a little bit older. It doesn't mean you can't be as fit. It just means it's gonna take both a little bit more stimulus and a little bit more recovery. So that was ambiguous to a beginner. You have to do a lot of interpreting. And so this is such a rhetorical question because it's a one-way street on these podcasts, but how would you have interpreted that if I stop you with this? Each workout should be done 2 to 3 times a week, allowing at least 1 rest day between sessions. That statement isn't wrong, but it leaves a lot to be desired. How do I know 2 or 3 and at least 1 rest day between sessions? In my opinion, if you're working hard enough during those sessions is not enough for an older adult. Okay, so here's workout 1, and I asked, by the way— well, no, I didn't. I take that back.

I didn't ask.

I just said create 3 workouts. So here's what it did. Workout 1 is a full body strength. Workout 2 is upper body, and workout 3, lower body and core focused. Each of them is about 40-45 minutes, and I did ask about that, so I put in how much time. So it said warm up for me, and it tells me 5 to 7 minutes march in place or light walking and arm circles. Jane Fonda called and wants those back, by the way. And leg swings and hip openers. Now, I love that, but the hip openers— would you know what to do with that? Some of you would, but I'm guessing a small percentage of you might say, oh yeah, I know what that is. Exactly what I would do for that. So interesting, right? But arm circles, hard no. Thank you. And I have to say, I have a VA, a virtual assistant whom I love, and she was working on something for our members that I had to veto and say, you know what, we're going to need to go back to the drawing board on this one. We don't do jumping jacks or arm circles. In a warmup ever. And really never would I do arm circles unless somebody had a shoulder injury and we were taking those arm circles using a ball against the wall and circling there to strengthen those rotator cuff muscles. But we're not going to do them in a warmup for the apparently healthy individual. And here's why I don't do jumping jacks in a warmup, by the way, because that's asking you to go from 0 to 100 miles an hour immediately. To ask you to do a high-impact move immediately, and I'm not going to do it ever. I didn't like it when I was starting out in 1984. I didn't like it when I saw my undergrad students under my tutelage do it in 1990, and I still to this day do not like it. So there's that. There's a more intelligent way to work out., and I will choose that every day. It's not that I wouldn't do jumping jacks later in a workout, just not there. So the main workout after that: squats. And you know, there are some details here— with or without weights, 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps is the way it's written. It's number 2: push-ups on knees or toes, 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps. Bent-over rows with dumbbells— resistance band is an option— 3 sets of 10 to 12. Step-ups— sturdy chair or a alternating legs. Now, chair, that's a pretty high step for someone that ChatGPT doesn't know very well. Plank hold, 3 sets of 20 to 30 seconds. I'm good with that. Bicep curls, dumbbells or resistance bands, 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps. Deadlifts with dumbbells, focus on glutes and hamstrings, 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps. And then cool down, 5 minutes of stretching with a focus on hamstrings, quads, chest, and back, and okay on that. Here's where I would change things. So the way that was listed out leaves you to interpret, most likely if you were to read this, that you would do all of your squats, those 3 sets of squats, and do 10 to 12 repetitions, and you would be twiddling your thumbs or scrolling in between. And I say to that, hell no. So we're going to do this workout, potentially we would do it in a circuit. So I would say, okay, you're going to do squats, then you're going to do push-ups, then bent-over rows, then step-ups, and so on and so on, because each of them were 3 sets. And then we will come back to the top. So if we go from squats to push-ups, we're giving the squat muscles rest and recovery while we go to the push-ups. We're giving the chest muscles used in the push-ups and the lower body rest when we go to bent-over rows. By the time we get back to step-ups, we've had rest and recovery recovery for that lower body enough. So it's okay that we're doing lower body again. So that organization actually worked out really well, but I would never have you sit and rest and, or leave this up to your interpretation. And there, there are probably half a dozen ways that I could organize these exercises in a workout for you. And, and hopefully that, you know, you could play with it as well. Push-ups are one thing that I just simply wouldn't do and throw it into a list without seeing your form. Push-ups are one of the most probably erroneous or injurious exercise out there because your shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint just like your hip is, but there's so much that can go wrong here because of all of the actions you're at your shoulders. And so there's a lot that can go wrong there. You've got 3 deltoid muscles— those are the larger shoulder muscles— then you've got internally, you've got 7 or 4 rotator cuff muscles. So we've got 7 shoulder-exclusive muscles, and then we're attached to the triceps, to the biceps, to the chest, the pectoralis. There's just a lot going on at the shoulder. So push-ups or anything involving the shoulder like that really needs to be done with good form. So though, yes, potentially it's a great exercise, I would also say I'd rather put a couple dumbbells in your hand and have you do a chest press than a pushup. Okay, let's go into workout 2, upper body strength. So again, there's a warmup, light arm swings. That's an interesting thing. Shoulder shrugs for your warmup and walking lunges. So it's an interesting set because light arm swings, shoulder shrugs are very low level. I mean, hard to get your core temperature elevated doing that. Walking lunges, on the other hand, big thing, and assumes that you can do it and you know how to do it well. So that's asking a lot. The main workout is listed in the same way, so it is 3 sets of everything. Right now they're kind of going for 8 to 10, or in a couple ex— examples, 10 to 12. So it's listed the same way. So again, same kind of confusion could apply, but the exercises are dumbbell chest press, a lat pulldown, or assisted pull-ups if that's available, tricep dips. I'm sorry, dumbbell shoulder press came before that, then tricep dips. And both of those two exercises are highlighted for my team in yellow, meaning dumbbell shoulder press You again could interpret that any way you want to. Shoulder press overhead can be a quite injurious potential exercise, so I would be very careful and cautious. We don't do elbows to your sides, we do elbows in front of your shoulder, directly in front of it, with your, your upper arm parallel to the floor. And we go one at a time to be safest. So being specific on that matters to me. Tricep dips That implies that you are putting your hands back behind you on a bench and then bending at the elbow to lower yourself up and down. There's a lot that can go wrong in tricep dips. I actually personally do them. I may have included them over 8 years, and what have we done, 11 unique 12-week strength training programs? I may have included them once. Because there is so much that can go wrong. And unless I can see your form in the moment so that I can correct you immediately, that one-way street of teaching this way, and even in the front of a classroom where I'm doing a live class, almost never did I do very many tricep dips in my entire career because again, there's a lot that could go wrong there. We were just talking about the shoulder and what can go wrong. Namely, it can go wrong there. Hammer curls, that's a bicep exercise. Renegade rows, I love both of those. Um, lateral raises comes next. Um, dumbbells in a plank position, by the way, is what renegade rows is. And these are challenging exercises. So one thing I want you to keep in mind is I didn't put in any level Am I a complete beginner? Am I able to support my body weight, or am I experienced? So realize that it kind of spit this out and it didn't know much about me, so it didn't actually know if I could tolerate that or not. So interestingly enough, here there was no lower body in that one. It was intended to be an upper body workout. Truth. But by doing a split routine with upper and lower body, you don't get the metabolism boost. And I know we may think, okay, well, that's okay, 'cause one and one, if we do upper body one day, lower body another, one and one is two, but it's not quite the way it works. You didn't quite get your bicycle all the way up the hill with that upper body strength workout, 'cause the muscle groups you use are not as big as when you do lower body. Now with your lower body, you potentially did, But again, you didn't quite get all the way up and there's only so many joint actions that you can do. So the day 3, workout 3, lower body and core both included in this one. The warmup was light squats, which means body weight, I guess, but we can't really lighten up our own weight. Hip circles. Would you know what to do with hip circles? And side lunges. So very appropriate moves as long as you could do them all. So the main workout was glute bridges, lunges— you could do them stationary or walking— leg press if you're at the gym, or goblet squats at home, side leg raises with or without ankle weights, which is interesting, plank with a leg lift and Russian twists. So that's a core exercise. And then bird dog, meaning on all fours, generally one arm and the opposite leg go out at the same time. I'm sure you've done it. And then a cool down. So this one I think is a great, great workout. I also would still love to see just a little insertion of like a chest exercise and a back exercise. And yeah, have this be a lower body focus. The workout's 45 minutes long. I'm just wondering if we change something about it and we call the glute bridges our core exercise because it is, by the way, it's a great core exercise. And then we pull one of those out, putting a chest press in it, and looking at plank with a leg lift. Maybe we put a renegade row in there or, or some other way. But total body is going to give you the workout that is most time efficient and metabolism effective. So the research says 8 times the metabolism boost in a total body workout as in a split routine. So that's a huge example of 1 plus 1 doing lower body, upper body isn't 2. It doesn't quite have the bump that it could when we're referring to your muscle, but it does still tap you pretty hard on your endocrine system, your cortisol level or adrenals. So if you're suffering with fatigue all the time, or you're tired all the time, you might find that not only do you get better muscle and body composition benefit by going total body, but you also feel more rested and recovered between. And so you do life better. Just food for thought. So ChatGPT quote unquote says this: these workouts are designed to help women in menopause maintain lean muscle, improve bone health, boost metabolism, encourage the women to lift heavier weights as they feel stronger. While maintaining proper form. Always leave room for rest and recovery to support hormone balance, you know. And those were great instructions, actually. For menopause metabolism, a total body workout is generally better, and here's why. I asked ChatGPT this, and in my next episode, I'm going to talk specifically about total body and split routine and talk about why, even if you know that total body is better, you might struggle to give up your split routine. Had a recent conversation with a very intelligent woman who is right in that, that spot. What I'm doing isn't working. Could you help me? I sat down with her. I listened to what she was doing, heard her give me the evidence that what she's doing isn't working. I gave her my feedback and here's what I would do if I were working with you. And she said, really? I'm going to have to think about that because she didn't want to give up. She was attached to the schedule she was on, even though it's not working. I'll go into that a little bit more next time. But I want to talk to you about last, leaving you with the why total body. Number one, it's going to make your life easier. Okay, so I want you to realize your life is easier if your schedule gets off, gets disrupted. You're traveling, going to a conference, you got to jump on a plane, can't get the workout in. It's not a big deal. You can move it a day earlier or a day later because you've just got two to manipulate. If you miss a split routine, it really— you've got a lot of decisions to make. Do I move everything? Do I just drop that one off the side of the earth and move on to doing the others? And do I miss the stimulation then for the muscle groups that if it were an upper body or lower body day? So it's really challenging. But if you were going to do 3 workouts a week, this would be how I would suggest you do it. You would do a total body, you would do an upper body and a lower body and do those kind of back to back. With plenty of rest between them and the total body workout. So total body will boost your overall metabolism. It's much more time efficient. It aids hormone balance, and it gives you more recovery time between— not just between the muscle group stimulation, remember, it's between the overall stimulation for your cortisol and adrenals. And there's more frequent stimulus with total body workouts. You're stimulating your muscles more frequently. And I know that seems ironic. It's like, how are you doing that? Because you're doing each muscle group, and it, it really depends on what kind of a split routine you're doing. But many split routines will have you just doing one muscle group one time a week, and that's not enough, especially for women postmenopausal. We need a pretty high number of volume of sets in order to reach adequate stimulus. But I want those sets to be targeting all the major muscle groups, not a few of them and then a different few of them, but to hit all of them. Okay, so this one I hope was a little fun for you. If you are using ChatGPT, don't give ChatGPT your power. ChatGPT didn't go to school, doesn't have a background in you, but give it as much as possible and make sure that you're suggesting it's an expert and has information on you in order to do it. It's not my first choice for you, but if you need to do it, please do it right. I'd love to hear how you're using ChatGPT or any AI to help you with your fitness and health.

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