Resistance Training If You’re a Beginner vs If You’re Experienced

If you are a beginner, if you are— no matter what stage of menopause you're in, this is for you, especially if you've been told to lift heavy but you don't know what heavy means and you're a little fearful of lifting heavy and getting hurt. This episode is for you. If you're afraid of getting hurt, you're wondering whether machines or dumbbells are better, don't copy what experienced lifters are doing, Your body needs something different, and it's all in this episode. 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. Hey, welcome or welcome back for those of you who are here all the time and consistently and loyal. I love it. However, those of you who are here consistently and loyal and potentially in programs already, and you're wanting the complimentary content that supports what it is that you're doing, or you want that tidbit that'll help explain to you why you might not be getting results or how you get them better and keep them coming. This is for beginners. So that doesn't mean there won't be something here for those of us who've been doing it for a little bit longer. Always good to hear the information again, I think. And there's always a point in our lives where you have had to or will have to take a step back, be a little bit less active, maybe because you've chosen some kind of service, some kind of a process or surgery, or something's going on, and so you're gonna have to step away. How do you re-enter? This might be a great one to listen to for that reason, or a great one to share. Let you know that this is the first of a 4-part series. Many of you know If you've attended a masterclass and you've really done a deeper dive with me, we use something called the HALO method, and that was actually coined not until about a year ago, but I've been using it for decades and didn't realize it. So I've given it a name because as I started to teach it to other people, I finally figured out this— there has to be like a predictable way to organize this in a somebody just learning it, mind. And when you're a teacher and you teach it with an organized mind, it certainly helps. So it's for everyone, including our coaches, our personal trainers, the menopause fitness specialists that we're teaching, and practitioners that we're helping. How do you quickly support a patient in your office with kind of a ready-made format that doesn't treat individuals as if they are a collective, but helps you identify what does make them unique and individual within a framework. What can we quickly do so that we can say these are the highest priorities? And then, oh, you know what? We're gonna eliminate that though right now for you based on what else is going on. This is a collective way to do just that. And I like to think of it right now as a framework that we will use more and more AI to do. However, I'm, I don't want to put all my eggs in the AI basket because I have found it unpredictable. We're building and we're trying to get it to be something you could easily use, but I haven't been satisfied when we put it to the test that those answers are coming up 100% right on target with what I as a human would say. And until it gets that good, I'm not going to do it. So we're on our way, but what you don't know, these shorter segments will be great review of what you— where you've been, what might predict anything that might be coming up. And we are like right on target with going through each one of these so that you can say, oh, that's me. So here's what's coming. Today's for the beginner, then there's more experienced lifters. So we're talking about strength training here. We're going to talk about perimenopause and really looking at the difference between that from your premenopause and what may be coming down the road. And we'll look at postmenopause as well. So those four— beginner, more experienced, perimenopause, and postmenopause. And then of course we have to look at that other lens because you are either a beginner or more experienced and you're either in peri or postmenopause. And you would look at these two Okay, I learned this and now I've also got this. I've got to put these together and say, what is the best thing for me to do and focus on right now? Hope that's helpful. Here we go. We're diving right into this. Your first goal, if you are a beginner, is not muscle. And I would say to anybody experienced, if you're a beginner doing some new activity, new muscle patterns. It's a new movement. You're doing a new exercise. Your first goal is also not muscle, it is skill. So the first adaptation is neural, meaning your brain connecting to the muscle. The brain is learning to recruit the muscle. It's like sending a stronger Wi-Fi signal, and that means the signal gets stronger, the contraction is stronger. More muscle fibers. You know, the whole neighborhood is getting that message, not just one. It's a party line. So the brain learns better to recruit muscle, does it stronger, more effectively. I compare it to a Wi-Fi signal. It's like between your brain and your muscles, that's what's happening. And you don't build a house before you wire it, right, with the electrical. And that's really what's going on here too. There are 5 beginner priorities. So I've alluded to one, don't rush into going heavy because it doesn't actually rush that Wi-Fi signal getting stronger. But number one, learn the movement before you load it is what you should learn. And the movements you really want to know are a squat, a push like a chest press, a push-up would be the equivalent, a pull some kind of a row, a pull-up would be a great one. Hinging, and hinging is probably more mimicking of a deadlift in terms of activity, although some would argue a squat is somewhat of a hinge. A carry, so we can carry just like we do all day. So I remember, I don't have to do this anymore and I'm kind of happy about it, but you know, it'd be really interesting to have to do it one day and go do it. Salt pellets for your soft water system are 40 pounds and I would buy 2 at a time and I hate making trips. Does anybody else like that? Like I love exercise, but I don't wanna be doing it when I'm like going back and forth. I'd rather do the heavy load and take them both at the same time. And that's really hard, but that is an example of carrying. So 40 pounds on one side, 40 on the other, and I'm walking to the car from the door at Menards. Okay, great. That actually is a pretty close test, but that is an example of what we mean by a carry. You can do it one-sided. We call it a farmer's carry when they're on both sides. You can do a suitcase carry and just have it on one side, and that would be where you go back and forth making trips. You wanna master these movement patterns first, meaning you wanna practice them almost like you'd be practicing yoga. We don't, weight our yoga practice. And I take that back because I'm sure somebody somewhere thought that was a good idea. I personally don't. I think we're looking at the objective as being mobility and flexibility, fluidity of movement. Yeah, we're not looking to weight yoga. However, I digress. Let's get back on track. So you want to do some practice of just doing the move And you will find, I believe, and I think this is a great one to take your shoes off. I use Peluvis. I, they're new to me the last few months. I think I started in May. I was doing a 10-day stint babysitting for my grandson and I wore them most days and I honestly was shocked how much I liked them, enjoyed them. It just felt kind of my whole body from downstairs up rewiring. My posture is better. So wearing something like a 5-toe shoe or going barefoot while you're learning these moves is a great idea, even when you introduce lightweight. But that is the first priority. Learn movement, learn it really well before you add load. Number 2, you want to keep plenty in reserve when you're a beginner. Here's what that means. We have a term in sports conditioning, strength conditioning called reps in reserve. R-I-R. And it means there's this many left in my bank. I could probably squeeze out 5 more repetitions if you really said you have to do 5 more. I could do that. That means you have 5 in reserve. And as a beginner, you can have 5 or 6 still in the tank because going back to our first priority is learning the skill, the neuromuscular signaling that rewiring is the highest priority. You're not in a hurry to get to muscle fatigue yet. At some point, we will want you to do that, but now you're going to make gains no matter what— gains in strength, muscle endurance. You're going to strengthen the muscle connection to the bone, and that is with ligaments and tendons. And you'll do all this safely, so just leave 5 or 6 in the bank. And you can tell this. So if you're listening and you're a beginner and saying, how would I know? You will sense it. And I, I often use this. So if you are been here and you've heard me say this, I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I think it's one of the best ways. We have all had to move, like move apartments, move homes, move houses, move, move into or out of dorm rooms. And whether it's you or somebody else, And you know when you're carrying something heavy, or maybe you're on the other end of the table, the desk, the chair, the couch, you know when it's like, oh yeah, yeah, give me a minute. I'm gonna, I need to put it down. I need to regroup. Like it's, it's slipping. I'm, I just feel like I'm gonna lose it. You know, you didn't drop it. You sense that. And weight training is really very much like that. You intuitively will sense Okay. And it doesn't take long before you're doing that. And I mean, like, you do your first workout today, maybe you'll feel a little green. I don't, don't quite know if I got there. The next one, you'll be better at it. By next week, you will, you will know. That's just the way it goes. So trust that you do know the answer, even if you think you don't. You're not trying necessarily to reach muscular failure. Not yet. You're practicing, you're wiring the pattern, getting that down really well. Confidence over exhaustion. It's really what we're after. 3, the third thing out of 5 that are really your keys right now, you wanna start with higher reps. 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 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. Regardless of your end goals, you may come in and say, I need to work on my bone density. Just found out I had a DEXA scan. I'm shocked, right? And maybe if you're like me, insulted. Are you kidding? Like, indignant. Like, "How? I'm a professional," is what I've said to myself, if nobody else. But you can reverse that loss, by the way. And I did. You can. But we all, as beginners, start with higher reps. So a higher rep range— and here's the overall range as a strength and conditioning coach— between 6 and 30 repetitions, we can make progress. But that's a big wide range, and I think we want to short cut it a little bit, we want to bring it in. That's too few to start with for sure, but it's also too many that we're not going to make much progress. And let's face it, you and I have a bit of a short attention span. We expect Amazon to be there in 2 to 4 hours or overnight, right? So, uh, in fact, I relocated to the Midwest just within the last 9 months One of the hardest and worst things was having to wait for Amazon to deliver packages longer than I was used to. So what's important for you to know is that all beginners need to start with a higher rep range. That means that inversely the relationship is higher rep range means lighter weight. So if you're thinking when you progress you'll do more repetitions, you won't. You'll actually do less repetitions so that you're doing a heavier weight. So there's an inverse relationship again. So where I'd like to start people is between about 15 to 20 repetitions. Now, I have been lifting weights consistently for 42 years, 44 actually, myself, teaching for 40, do. And I still use a repetition range of 15 to 20 sometimes, not always. Sometimes I'm much heavier, and sometimes if I'm practicing a movement with a little bit of resistance, it might be a little bit more, generally not too much. But there's nothing wrong, by the way, if you're listening and you're more experienced or advanced and you do between 15 and 20, it's a smart thing to do. What you're doing when you start is just taking really good care of your joints, giving them the opportunity to get stronger, more resilient while you condition that neural connection. And don't rush an injury. We're gonna start with 1 or 2 sets. Now, I've been learning this since like 42 years, and when we first started, you almost nobody wants to go into the gym and just do 1 set. However, over 42 years, I've sometimes worked with people who are very reluctant to start, very afraid of being sore, and If that's you, just do one set. If you are somebody who has fibromyalgia, you're— it's been an extreme time since you've been very active at all, start with one set, one set of everything. And all we're really doing is proving to you that you're not going to be extraordinarily sore from doing that and that you're probably in better shape just from daily activities of living, potentially, than you realize or give yourself credit for. So it is okay. But in most cases, even a beginner can easily do 2 sets because remember, we're going to encourage you to do between 15 and 20 reps. But also, you can stop, you know, 5 or 6 reps from truly being at muscle fatigue. So you're picking up a weight that you might fatigue at 20 to 25 reps. Okay? Are you following me? And we're going to have you do 6 to 8 exercises. But I would also say this: for a beginner, I sometimes will say, "Let's start you with 3 exercises: a push, a pull, and a leg exercise." Almost always that's a squat because you and I, love them or not, squat to a chair, to a toilet, from the bed to standing multiple times a day. So getting good at that makes sense. More power. Those movements may not be comfortable right now, but they will get better as you get stronger. We then over the next couple of weeks expand. So the second time you come in, we might repeat those 3 exercises and then we'll do a 4th one and then we'll do a 5th. And by the The second meeting in your second week, we have 6 to 8 exercises. Now, some people, you're more active, you're more eager, we get started and we do all 6 to 8 of those right away the first time. It really depends on, is this totally new to you? Does it feel totally foreign to you? Are you more reluctant than you are excited about it? Or are you really ready? To get started and maybe even to feel a little bit of, huh, tomorrow I worked those muscles. I didn't, didn't know I had those muscles, right? If you are kind of looking forward to feeling like, I know I did something, I'm glad I did that, then we might start with the whole thing. There is no right or wrong to that. After about 6 to 8 weeks, and by the way, we're going to do that 2 days a week. Let me summarize that. About 15 to 20 repetitions. Remember, we're still leaving 5 or 6 reps in the bank. You're going to do 1 or 2 sets. You're going to do 6 to 8 exercises, and we're going to do that 2 days a week. Now you, if you're eager, might do that within the first week. Might take the end of 2 weeks before we're at that base. After 6 to 8 weeks, we're going to increase to more sets. So if you started with 1 and you were still doing that, I would be surprised, honestly, if you're listening to this. However, by 6 to 8 weeks, I want you pretty consistently doing 3 sets. We always know in the literature and the science, it's always been true, multiple sets gets better results than just a single set. So we want to do it 3 times. And as someone progresses or wants to push it just a little bit, I sometimes will have somebody do a 4th set or a 5th set. But then what we get into is takes a lot of time. So that may not come for a very long time and may not come ever for you if you have a busy life. So we're going to be by 6 to 8 weeks doing 2 or 3 sets. We have gradually increased the weight, but we've kept the repetition range the same. You, however, girlfriend, are stronger. So each time you come in, you're going to be like, that's actually pretty easy now. And you're going to say, I think I have to pick up a heavier weight. And that's amazing. You graduating, outgrowing the weights you have is wonderful. So eventually we're going to get you to lower repetitions, but that would happen at least after probably 8 to 10 weeks. We would start doing fewer repetitions. All that neural growth, stronger connection between the brain and the muscle. Happens over the first 8 weeks. And then you begin, if you feel good, you're not extraordinarily sore, your joints, your ligaments don't give us any reason to ask questions. If you have arthritis, we might continue a little slowly. If you don't, we can progress a little bit faster. All right. Number 4 for you is obsess over technique. Now we started with that, the skill. Absolutely. We started with, let's just get the pattern of this movement. But by the time you have this experience, you are feeling your body more. You have better self-awareness. Proprioception is the 50 Cent word for knowing where your body is in space. And so you have a better idea of where are you weight-bearing on your foot. Is the weight in your heel or the ball of your foot? You'll have a better sense for that. Your breathing inhal— inhaling and exhaling when you're actually doing the lift against gravity. You have a neutral spine. You know the difference between arching the back or rounding the back or being in a neutral between those two. You know your core position, you know what's happening. Are you pushing out through the belly? Are you bracing but not hollowing? And we'll talk more about that if we get to know each other better. You will feel the correct muscles working and you will Uh-oh, I feel my shoulders inching up to my ears. Muscles that shouldn't be working are working. You can get a hold of that. If you can't feel that quite yet, don't add more weight. So we begin with the movement, we get the strength working around the ligaments and the tendons, and we begin to add load later, but we never go away from technique. And we don't want to go too high in weight. Until we come back to technique and perfect it and tweak it again. The fifth thing is you're always going to focus on compound movements first. We really began that way, but now I want you to understand it. Compound movements mean you may come to me and you may say, Debra, I really want to work on my arms. And I'm going to say, I really don't want you to stand still or sit still and just flex at your elbows because that is isolating a small muscle group that really won't help you with your metabolic health, your metabolism buried in that same word. And what we want you to do is focus on squats and rows and presses and deadlift patterns where you're hinging at the hip, stepping up, which also means stepping down. They give the biggest return. So here's why. I want you to imagine you are doing a bicep curl. You think you're working on, I'm going to tone my muscles, I'm going to get definition, I look great sleeveless. If you hold on to a pen or a pencil, or you have something heavier like your phone, elbow in at your side, and you're going to flex and bring the, the palm up close to your shoulder and extend and then drop it down. Not drop. Lower it. There we go. That is an isolated movement. Nothing compound about it. It is a single joint, that's your elbow, and a single muscle, and that is your bicep. They have— there are two of them, so it's a single muscle group. But in fairness, there's not a lot going on. It's a fairly small muscle group. Let's compare that to a squat. When you sit down and stand up from a chair And what we're doing basically with weight training is adding a weight to that. You're going to hold weights in your hand. You're going to maybe wear a weighted vest and hold the weight in your hand. Now the muscles you're working are your glutes, your quadriceps on the top of your thigh, and your hamstrings on the back of your thigh. Those are 3 major muscle groups: the gluteus maximus, Just like it sounds, it's the biggest muscle in your body. We sit on it a lot, but it has a lot of potential. Quadriceps in the front of your thighs. We use them for standing up out of a chair. We use them for going upstairs. We use them for going downstairs. And you will know if you do a lot of downhill walking because you'll feel them tomorrow, I promise. And hamstrings we use to help flex the knee and extend at the hip. Hip. And sometimes we do that all at once while we're running or walking. If we do that against incline, we're doing it better. But imagine one exercise at one joint where I'm using just one muscle group versus I'm flexing in my hip, my ankle, and my knee, and all of the muscles that cross those joints also now have to be engaged. And quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes are all working, which one do you think is making your metabolism higher, is going to help you with more metabolically active tissue so you're burning calories at a greater level throughout the day? Exactly. If you said the latter, the squat. And so we focus on those exercises first. And by the way, those are also the ones that don't just incorporate more muscle. When we do that, we help ourselves to naturally burn more fat. So the idea that toned arms comes only from doing bicep curls or a tricep exercise is a little bit false because sometimes you will see people, including yourself, get toned arms from doing these compound exercises. Because they do incorporate your biceps or triceps as secondary helpers, but they help you to decrease your percent body fat so that we can see the pretty muscles that are there. Potentially in holding babies, groceries, picking up heavy soup stock pans or frying pans, just unloading the dishes, you're working your biceps and triceps probably a little bit more than you give yourself credit for, and you will see more of that muscle tone, if you help yourself with compound movements, decrease the percent body fat that you have naturally. All right, the biggest beginner mistakes that I would see is seeing soreness as a sign that I was working hard enough, almost going for soreness and thinking that if you were never sore, you didn't do enough. Not true. Soreness is actually almost genetic. So there's a little— you might, you might not, you might, you might not. If we went around in a circle full of people, it has nothing to do with how hard you worked or whether you, you worked hard compared to somebody else. Some people never get sore. Some people almost always get sore. Almost all of us will get sore if we do something brand new. The muscles have never really done that before. But many people, self-included, I don't get sore very often. But that's not to my credit because I'm fit. That's been true my entire life. So another mistake: adding weight too fast. And hopefully I've laid that foundation for you now so it's very clear. Number one, You cannot rush your fitness level. So tendons and ligaments connect your muscle to the bone, and they are more delicate. They are less resilient because they don't get as much circulation as muscle does. So we want to be careful and be cautious, and there's an adaptation period. As you progress to a heavier weight, your body will adapt and get get better and stronger and supercompensate, but we don't want to continue to do that really quickly, too fast, too rapidly, or too frequently. So because you increased, be willing to coast a little bit and let your body adapt and say, this is not a big deal anymore. Copying advanced exercises— just because you see them do something and you think, I want to look like that, and then thinking, because they did it, they do it, they look that good, I want to do it. Not necessarily a great way to pick your exercise. Changing workouts every week would be another one. Honestly, there are some influencers, some trainers who might convince you, you need to keep surprising the muscle, got to be different all the time. The basics never get old. The basics never go away. The basics are going to be the foundation for your strength, your power, your bone density for the rest of your life. And I promise you, you only have so many joint actions your body can do. Creativity for creativity's sake gets a little out of hand. We've seen a lot of fusion classes. We're marrying yoga with Pilates and boot camp and jump rope, and, and it, it's a little nuts, but it doesn't all work. And I totally respect those of you who are listening who say, I need variety, I need variety, or I get bored. And that, if that's between the ears, I totally respect that you know that about yourself. And I hope you also know it may slow your results a little bit if you do more variety than is beneficial for you, because we can all only do so much exercise because we absolutely have to do recovery as well. And if you're thinking sweating equals progress, sweating is also unique to individuals. There are some heavy sweaters, and I don't mean it's winter and fall. I mean that you sweat a lot, significantly. And other times, people I know just don't even sweat. They're efforting. They're— it's just a difference in pores and output. And I will tell you, you can become a better sweater if you weren't. You may find that the greater fitness you have, the better at sweating and the earlier onset of sweat that you have. It honestly is a signal your heating and cooling system works better. Now, I was already an active runner when I started spending my summers— so after my freshman year in college, I had officially been a runner for one year, and I spent my summers in college in Louisiana kind of staying with my brother and sister-in-law and being kind of a live-in nanny and also teaching swimming lessons and lifeguarding. And if you've never been to Louisiana, let me just tell you, you walk out and it's like, I can't breathe, it's so humid. And then you get used to it and it's not all that bad. But I lived down there, and by the time I went home I sweat at an earlier point in every workout, and I have for the rest of my life. Honestly though, I'm— I mean, some women would be appalled to have to say that, but honestly, it's an asset. It is truly. When sweat evaporates from your skin, that is your cooling system. So in Louisiana, that didn't work very well, but by the way, because the water was— or the air was saturated with water and high humidity. So once you sweat, it just stayed there. It drained. Actually, you'd come back from a run and your socks would be wet because the water has dripped down your legs. It was ridiculous but true. I cannot make it up. But you can if you become more fit, and you do not have to move to Louisiana, by the way. But you can teach your body how to sweat, and it may— you may find that you do, and it is not something to be embarrassed about. It's actually the more fit you are, the more likely you would be to sweat at an earlier effort level or rate. So I just want to share that. However, sweating doesn't mean it was a good or, or wasn't a good workout, like getting sore. It's very individual. All right, so in our next episode, this is really the close for beginners, and I'm gonna do a quick summary. But in the next episode, I'm gonna go through if you're more advanced, what would be different. And what I would love is that mentally you tell me you went through this episode, you listened to it, and you kind of anticipate what I'm going to say to you. If you're more advanced. So those 5 things that I would want for you to focus on, the priorities if you're a beginner: learn movement before loading, then make sure that you are keeping 5 to 6 repetitions in reserve. You start with a higher rep range, you keep it there for about 6 weeks before you start to add more load. And then you really obsess over technique. And this is one I hope you never outgrow. Beginners, even if you're advanced, be a beginner at heart. How should it feel? Can you feel when it's off? Can you feel your body? And if not, maybe you want a variation of an exercise that you've been doing for so long. And last, do your compound movements first. Focus on multi-joint exercises. Focus on those because they have the greatest impact on your muscle metabolism and they impact your bone positively the most as well. So there you have it. Again, coming up in the next episode in this series, we may slip an interview episode in between, but the next one will be for those of you who are more advanced lifters. What I'd say to you if you are a midlife or older woman where you want to focus for the optimal longevity and for supporting yourself if you're dealing with hormonal symptoms related to menopause. The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified health care 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.