What 40+ Studies Reveal About Rep-Range for Muscle, Strength, and Bone After 50

If you've been told you must lift heavy to build muscle, or you must do high reps for endurance, or you're stuck wondering, am I lifting enough at my age? Or you're asking the opposite, am I lifting too much at my age? This episode intends to clear it all up. I'm breaking down study protocols, not gym drama, and not a personal preference. Look, you don't need the perfect rep range in menopause. You need the right effort. You need the right frequency and a plan that your joints and your schedule can rinse and repeat. Hey friend, welcome back or welcome for the first time if this is a first time you're tuning in. We are clearing up today one of the most persistent myths in menopause fitness, in fitness period, if you wanna know the truth. The rep range rulebook. For decades, the repetition continuum has told us, in fact, I was taught 4 and a half decades ago and taught subsequently at the university level, heavy is true strength, moderate is for hypertrophy, that is growing the size and potentially the number of muscle fibers, and light weights is for endurance. The problem is the research says it's not that simple, or maybe better said is it's more simple than it ever has been. It's not that limiting, especially when you train close to failure or what we want to call muscle fatigue. And we should clarify that. So it's very different than just feeling tired when you walk out the door. In fact, you don't have to feel that wiped out in order to have done yourself a lot of good. And that may be where women in midlife are making a mistake, thinking that, you know, having to mop yourself up off the floor after a workout is what it takes to get results. It actually doesn't, and it might be sending it backward. So especially when you're recovering, your joints matter— hello, menopause— this is an especially important topic. Today I'm going to do something that we are planning to do much more of in not just 2026, but going forward. I'm gonna walk you through the studies and what they actually did step by step, and then we'll translate that into what it means for women who are approaching 50 and/or on the other side of it should do for muscle strength and bone density. But I'm gonna give the Cliff Notes right now. Spoiler alert, here it is. How well is that working for you? Whatever it is you're doing, you should be asking yourself that. How well is that working for you? Now, there's a lot to unpack when you're looking at, "Hmm, maybe I'm not getting fitness results." You do have to very honestly, with a lens, look at not just the exercise you're doing, but the time between that you're resting and recovering. And are you truly resting and recovering? Is your stress level a little bit too high, not allowing you to do that? And/or is nutrition leave a little to be desired. You know, you've got to look at all pieces of the puzzle in order to know, because recovery does get more important as we age if we want to be in the fitness condition that most of us want to be in. So what I want to state right here, hypertrophy is not married to one rep range. There is not one-size-fits-all that you must do this is not going to be true. And I'm finally hearing echoes of, I'm so glad you've said this because here's what I found works for me. And it is counter to what everybody, quote unquote, everybody on social media, meaning influencers, is telling us to do. So the biggest thing, if I can tell you to do something here, what I'm suggesting you do is listen to what works And yet if you're listening right now and you're not doing something and wondering where to start, everybody should start with light. And that'll give you the opportunity to try it on. How well does light continue to work for you moving forward? And as you increase the amount of weight you're lifting, which is an inverse relationship to the number of repetitions you're doing, the higher the reps, the lighter the weight, the fewer the reps, the heavier the weight. But as you move through that and earn the right to lift heavy, you'll find out, hmm, you know what? I start knocking on the wall of more frequent injuries, more frequent aches and pains, and you know you can back off of it before that takes you over. So the big finding here, across a wide range of repetitions, this has always stood true, roughly about 5 or 6 to 30 repetitions, Whole muscle hypertrophy is often similar when sets are taken close to failure. Ah, right? Now, that's not always said out loud in a public room where people have strong opinions of it. Must be heavy. Heavy is better. That's what real people do. I almost said real men, but we don't wanna be that anyway. But I'm gonna say that again. Across the entire wide range of loads anywhere from about 5 or 6 to 30 repetitions. Whole muscle hypertrophy is really very similar when the sets are taken close to failure. That means if you choose to do 28 or 30 repetitions and yet you're getting to, I really can't do, I don't think I can do, you know, even more than 2 more. I, I'm really fatigued. You're going to get some results from those high reps. And likewise, if you're only doing 7, you, you better not be just putting it down and really you could do 10 more. That won't work either. It has to get you close to that muscular fatigue. All of the science, by the way, is in this. I, and I know you want it. Some of you prove it to me, girls. It's here. We'll hand you the PMIDs. That doesn't mean every rep range is equally convenient, equally joint friendly or equally motivating for each one of us. It does mean hypertrophy. Remember, that is the gaining muscle size, muscle mass. And I know that for some of you listening, we're still kind of trying to make friends with that whole idea that we want mass, because that has just been a four-letter word. Like, why would we want that, right? We want— we wanted notoriously to shrink historically. We wanted to be smaller. But the truth is, is if the muscle is bigger, the fat is smaller. And if the muscle is bigger, it is dictating what shape the fat takes in. The fat lies on top, and it's that subcutaneous, just under the skin fat that we need for a layer of cushioning internally. But also we need a little layer of insulation. I don't know about you, it's not too cold here, but it's colder than I'm used to. So it's interesting. We need all of it. It doesn't mean hypertrophy— or it does, I'm sorry, it means hypertrophy is much more flexible than we were taught. We can get it in a variety of ways. There's a study protocol, you can picture this, where one leg does this and the other leg does that. So, I mean, none of us would really want to volunteer for this just in case it went badly because it'd be kind of weird. But it might say, okay, you're going to go into the gym and we're going to have you do things on your left leg that are reaching fatigue in about 6 reps. And on your right leg, we're going to have you do sets that reach fatigue in about 28 reps. Okay? Okay, great. And we continue that protocol for a while. One of the most famous early papers did that with young men. So by Mitchell, and their group. Young men for 10 weeks did strength training for 3 times a week. Within the subjects, there were different training protocols on each leg. Right now, most of us, again, we don't want to do that in case it goes bad. That would just be weird. So there were groups like this: 30% of 1 rep max. They did 3 sets of that. That's a light load, 3, and really high reps. And I got to tell you, 30% is very, very light. Generally, if we were prescribing exercise to, say, an older adult who's just getting started, even then we would probably only err on the conservative side of between 40 and 60% of a one-rep max. That's still a very comfortable rep range, light, comfortable weight. Then there was 80% of a one-rep max, and they just did one set So very heavy load, very low volume. And then there was that 80% rep range. And, you know, that's the equate of about maybe, uh, 10 to 12 reps, heavy load, but higher volume, right? 3 sets versus 1. The outcome of that study: muscle growth occurred across conditions, and load alone didn't dictate hypertrophy. Wow. Okay. So that was really interesting. And yes, that was men. It was young men. But I think if we could take that and extrapolate it out for women in midlife, because young men have great amounts of testosterone, and what we're going to see in them and how they responded is basically amplified versions of whatever might happen for us. So I think in this case, you know, we can say, okay, yep, they weren't exactly like us in hormone profile. However, that might be the point. So the translation here is if you can't lift super heavy right now, joints, your confidence, you're a little scared of getting hurt, equipment isn't available, you've got only so much in a very small corner in your house, you know, or you've already got a lot of fatigue in general, chronic fatigue, you're tired all the time. You can still build muscle with moderate to lighter loads when you train with real effort, coming close to that muscular fatigue. But here's the nuance. Moderate repetitions, like 8 to 12 repetitions, generally we call that moderate. Sometimes in studies, researchers define it differently and they might say 10 to 15, but I think you get the idea. That overlap there, 10 to 12, that's really sweet. And then we just allow plus or minus 2 or 3 in either direction. That's our sweet spot. They're usually more time efficient to do that. If you're doing 28 to 30 reps, it's got to take a little more time because we're not going faster just because we're doing more, or we shouldn't be. We need to control it. And going heavy may not be as time efficient either because when we go really heavy, we, we have to be a little bit more careful picking them up, putting them down requires some thought so that your elbows, your wrist, or your shoulders are not doing too much of the work in the wrong position. Extremely high repetitions can fail, and the reason is this— it may not be what you expect. People quit from like discomfort or boredom before they actually get to true effort where they're reaching muscular fatigue, and they are rushing. They're using momentum. So if you're doing extremely high reps and you're like, oh, I just want I'm going to be done, you know, and not really paying attention to, did I reach muscle fatigue or not? The other thing that I would suggest here, and this was young athletic men, so it's probably not an issue for them, but for you, listener, if you have or are prone to, and many of us will with time, be prone to arthritis, either osteoarthritis, and that's the wear and tear over time because we've lived a good life, we've had a lot of fun, Or it's rheumatoid arthritis where you've, you've got some autoimmune disease. It's been there, might've happened since you were young. That higher rep range is actually causing wear and tear on the joint. And we kind of want to stay back, maybe not mid-range, that 10 to 12 might be a little bit too heavy for you, but just slightly above that. And yet not at the higher rep range. That is my recommendation for somebody who's got arthritis. They may not start there. We start lighter, but we would definitely not try to get them to the highest rep range. There's also evidence that there might be a lower threshold where hypertrophy can diminish when loads are really low. And I mentioned this 30% of a 1-rep max, that is already pretty low. 20%, it's probably, you're never going to get to true muscle fatigue, you're probably not doing enough stimulus to really cause any change. So I think we've got it. We do have to reach this specific— your body needs to know there's overload going on here. So think about that. Strength is more specific than muscle. So if you were thinking, I'm really after strength, because I've heard so much in the last couple years thanks to— I think first it was Dr. Peter Attia in his book. And, you know, if you're really thinking long-term, long game, and longevity for yourself, you realize how important strength is, that it, it plus VO2 max, your volume of oxygen carrying capacity, are the two most indicative components of fitness related to your longevity and/or mortality, depending on which way you look at it. So here's where We get tripped up. Strength is more specific than muscle. And if, for instance, you're thinking, "I really want to focus on muscle because I know that's key to improving my body composition," or what everybody I'm hearing, their word of the year is recomposition, and I love it, right? We're not so much, "I want to lose fat," or, "I want to lose weight," which was 1980s, but we've transitioned And do I want to recomposition? I want to increase my lean muscle mass as well as decrease my fat percent happening simultaneously. How I'm doing it is very different, I think, than where we were a decade ago and certainly two decades ago. So we're getting wiser collectively. And what you need to consider is strength tends to favor heavier loads. So if truly that is your goal, you do want to earn your way there. If you're just getting started, you're going to focus on higher rep ranges because it's safer for the ligaments and the joints, which— the ligaments, tendons, and joints, which we call collectively connective tissue. You have to prepare them. There is not as much circulation going on, so not as much blood flow. That means not as much oxygen, and so they need kind of a longer, slower ramp up or takeoff, they also need more recovery time in between. Your muscle might recover just really fine, but the rest of you is what we have to think about. So especially when strength— the strength test matches the training, this is really important in the literature. So I think this is common sense, but it bears repeating because I read it several times in the literature. That's what we call specificity. So If we want to test how strong is your lower body, we should be testing squats or leg press. And then if we're trying to get those better, we should be training squats or leg press. Okay? Are we on the same page? I think it makes sense, but that's sometimes not what happens. So across the board, we need to see this. So when the test is neutral, the strength gap narrows. So the, the test might be something other than what the training protocol gave, and that's where everything gets thrown off. It's like, well, why would we do that if we wanted to get better at something? However, I can give you an example where this is probably going to confuse you, so I apologize in advance, but a grip test. I've demonstrated grip tests, squeezing a dynamometer, and yet we don't want to walk around squeezing tennis balls in order to increase our grip strength. That's not the idea. The reason we're doing grip strength is really because that score correlates with your overall body strength, total body strength. So we're talking the large muscles in your chest, in your back, in your push, your pull, in your squats or leg press or lunges or deadlifts or whatever you're doing, the total body strength that you have is reflected in that grip strength. So that's where, huh, you might be saying, wait, what did you just say though? But it is true. If you want lower body strength, which is the, plus VO2 max, most correlated with your longevity, you certainly better be doing some squats. Better be doing squats or lunges or deadlifts or leg press and/or holding a sit, a sit squat, static squat on your Power Plate against resistance, or doing some uphill hiking, maybe with a weighted vest on. Those things that will actually truly strengthen your lower body need to happen. 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. So another study. So by Cummings et al., meaning, and their group, trained individuals in this case for 9 weeks did twice weekly resistance training. Within the subject, each leg was different. So again, you and I would be asked to say, okay, right leg do this, left leg do this. There were 2 conditions. High load did 3 to 5 reps. So say on your right leg, you're going to reach fatigue in 3 to 5 repetitions, so it's really heavy. Or the low, low load leg on your left is going to be 20 to 25 repetitions. So both sets were taken to failure, like you've got to— can't do anymore. So the results showed very similar hypertrophy. The strength gains were where there was divergence. So the heavier load usually wins for strength outcomes. It's where you start to see that. So again, if your goal is true strength, you may first need to find out, can I, can my body, my skeletal system, and maybe my adrenals, can I tolerate that? You've got to work your way up to it. So for menopause fitness, if your goal is true strength, especially, you know, I want my lower body to be stronger I want to live longer and I want to live independently, you do need or want at least some heavier work to be included. And if you're just getting started and you're listing in January, this doesn't mean by February 1st. It takes weeks, like a couple or 3 months to gradually and progressively work up to the volume and to the weight and to the load that is your heavy, but you will also hit This is as heavy as I can safely go, after which maybe I feel vulnerable, my joints ache, I start experiencing problems. We have to find that place gradually. And if we do so gradually and don't jump in, we know we can back right off of it and not cause long-term problems. And now we found this is my safe place to play. So if your goal is muscle— and by the way, if you train for strength, you will get both— but if your goal is muscle or hypertrophy, you have more flexibility in the loads that you can use, especially if your joints are a little bit cranky. You can boost your metabolism here. For older adults, there is not one magic intensity. Now, this is always really interesting. Women over 50, and considerably over 50, over 60, over 70, and even over 80. We're not programming for 22-year-old gym bros, you know. But here's what's key is older adults study that looked at different intensity ranges when other variables were equated. So I want you to understand that we're looking at, okay, we want everybody to have kind of the same volume. So we're either going to do heavier weight or we're gonna do lighter weight, but we're gonna do about the same volume of work so we can compare what's the difference then. So this was previously untrained older adults. They were fresh, they were newbies, they didn't know what they were in for. For 18 weeks, training intensities ranged from 6 rep maximum, meaning they reached true fatigue, like they were done in 6 reps versus 15. More of a moderate range. What they found is strength gains were similar across the 6 to 15 repetition max when program variables were equated, especially over the full training period. So the translation is, in early phases for novice or returning lifters— and that means, you know what I mean, you took a sabbatical from your strength training and you're coming back and maybe needed to, life threw you a curveball— a wide range of loads works, which is great, great news when recovery or joints are a factor. So it supports a menopause-smart approach. You can start where you will train consistently injury-free. And really, that's the only way to train, right? If you get injured, you're not going to be training. You can progress without forcing maximal load early. There is no benefit. And you've heard me say this if you've been here for a minute. This has been a true and a static piece of the fitness industry for a very long time, but sometimes we ignore it because we want immediate gratification. I've been there, haven't you? We want to jump in and I want to see and feel those results right away, and I want to feel powerful. And so we sometimes jump really back into that thing we did when we were 22. And, you know, it doesn't help sometimes when you've got somebody who you know is watching you and you want them to be impressed, you know? And so you have to be a little bit careful with, is going to the gym the best environment for you to listen to yourself and your own needs? Because it's not always. There's a little bit of one-upping going on at the gym, but you will not benefit from rushing. What's responsible for early gains in strength, which is the neural component. It's like your brain rewiring and sending stronger signals to the muscle. So it's sending a weak first and then a stronger signal. It's like your Wi-Fi coming on, showing more bars. And there's also this— it's sending a signal to more muscle fibers. It's recruiting them better. So it's getting a lot of things to happen and there's no rushing that.. If you go with a heavier load, the work still has to happen and the foundation has to be laid. So there's no rushing to more progress. You could rush to an injury though. So take that slow. It takes a minimum of 6 to 8 weeks. That's always been true. As I'm doing in this last decade and a half, or almost, more and more research diving into women in midlife, over 40, menopause, premenopause, peri, and postmenopause post-menopause. I'm finding that there may be more reason to extend that thought, that maybe laying that foundation should take 10 to 12 weeks. Take your time, because being injured is really the last thing that you want. It's— we don't want to be sick because bed rest is, which is what they tell you, is one of the worst places to be. We lose muscle, we lose strength, then we lose bone density. And if we get injured, we've caused it ourselves. Why would we do that? So important to realize you want to stay moving. So even if you're going a little slower, but you're keeping moving, it's wiser. Bone density has its own rules though. And I want to tell you this. So, and I, I, I say this and I also have to back out of this just a little bit. Now, Now, most programs will miss this. Bone isn't trained exactly the same way as muscle. It doesn't respond to exactly the same thing. And there's a network meta-analysis, which means a lot of studies were looked at in postmenopausal women, found something clinically useful. So Wang and his group stored for our internal science vault, and we'll, we'll come back to this one over and over again because is super important, found that moderate intensity resistance training done with greater frequency for improving lumbar spine and femoral neck— and by the way, those are two most commonly fractured areas. So your lower, your lumbar spine, and that kind of total hip or the femoral neck where, where they come together in that ball and socket joint. Even without giving you a million numbers, here's the translation that 3 times a week at about 10 to 15 repetitions seem to outperform some other protocols. Now, there was a caveat here, and that is that first starting lighter, reaching that 10 to 15 reps 3 times a week. So So frequency does matter for bone density. And yet collectively, what if you were able to go heavier and wanted to, could you? The answer is yes. You might, however, need to go lighter or less frequently, I'm sorry, because you need more recovery. Your muscle, your ligaments and tendons need a little bit more recovery if you're going heavier. So you've really got to look at, first of all, and one of the biggest challenges is looking at outcomes is hard with bone density. If you want to do that test annually, unless you have a very progressive doctor, you may not get that covered by insurance more than twice a year or two times. Um, let me say that again, every two years. Thank you. And so I would suggest to you this: if you can pay for that out of pocket the year in between, you're going to benefit from knowing how much did my program work for me and how much more do I actually need. You don't want to, at least I don't, I don't want to let 2 years go by without having adequate stimulus. Now I'm to the point where I'm going as heavy as I can, going as frequently as I can recover and feel good, and I'm doing high-impact. And so I could say I'm doing as much as I can with load and frequency and ground force. And so regardless of what that DEXA might tell me, the only difference is I will know the number exactly more frequently, but I'm not going to be able to do any more. I get on my Power Plate. So I did learn that lesson that potentially history, maybe it was what I ate or didn't eat in grad school. Maybe it was all those Diet Cokes and the caffeine and who knows. We can't outrun our past. However, we can do everything we can do now to reverse it. So while I was doing heavy, I was doing, uh, high-impact jump training. And moving a lot, all the right things. I needed that Power Plate, and for 9 months is all it took to reverse bone loss in 3 different sites. 2 of them became normal bone, one of them took a little bit longer because I wasn't actually doing weight bearing on my forearm on that Power Plate or whole body vibration. So your bone likes moderate load done consistently, and for some of you, that's really great news because you may think, I can't go heavy. Safely without risking injury or starting to experiencing that over and over. It, it doesn't need you wrecked. Bone doesn't need you wrecked in order to benefit. So if you're thinking, but wait, you know, Dr. Belinda Becht did that 5 exercises, 5 sets, 5 repetitions, and proved that that was the thing. Yes, it proved it was a possibility and that postmenopausal women with osteoporosis were— didn't need bubble wrap. They could do it safely without injury, but it didn't disprove that the other things don't also work. And I think we've forgotten that part in the conversation. So you've got to measure what's working for you, and you also need to know what doesn't. If I start getting into this, do I get myself into trouble and get myself hurt? That's far worse for you if you have to sit on the couch or sit out than doing moderate regularly. Bone needs enough strain and enough frequency. And if you can't lift heavy, increasing frequency, if your energy allows it, to, to 3 days a week, may be a good alternative. So the menopause-friendly bone rule, I would say here, 3 times a week, moderate intensity, and we're defining that in this study as 10 to 15 reps, repeatable sessions, meaning you can do it, it's okay, it feels good for you, beats the occasional heroic workouts. So here's the other menopause-specific truth: if you can't recover from high volume, it's just too much, throws you under the bus, your bones don't get the consistent signal that they need. So there are different ways to look at your workout week for bone density, by the way. If you do 2 strength training sessions and you do high impact most days of the week, for you that might be enough. If you want to go a little bit heavier on load, you might do 2 lighter and 1 heavy weight training and then still allow yourself plenty of recovery time between. Or if you want to anchor with 2 heavier workouts and you like what that also does maybe to your metabolism, and your strength and your power for longevity purposes, you put a lighter workout, more moderate in between them. As long as you again check in, how am I recovering? How do I feel? You shouldn't be wrecked. So the summary that respects all of the science and you, it needs to respect you. Many rep ranges work if the effort is there. 8 to 12 is efficient time-wise and includes some heavier and some lighter weight if both are tolerated by you. For absolute strength, include heavier loads sometimes and keep it specific to your goal. Lower body strength, you got to be doing squats, right? So what do you want? And then do that. For bone, moderate intensity. 3 days a week, if you can recover, is a powerful target for post-menopause. Keep your sessions repeatable and not exhausted, right? So if you're just flat on your back and you have to rest on the couch afterward, we've missed the mark. If you can and you want to go heavy, Dr. Beck— Belinda Beck proved in the LIFT MORE study it is safe and it does work, but that doesn't disprove that other loads don't. So here's the approach. You want to use something called reps in reserve, or RIR. Beginner and restarting, resetting. So finish sets with at least— you're coming as close as 5 or 6 reps in reserve is all you have. I couldn't do a lot more than that, is what you're thinking. For intermediate, it's 3 to 4 reps in reserve. And for somebody more experienced, and/or I hesitate to use the word advanced, but I will, Just 2 reps in reserve. And by the way, if you enjoy getting to complete muscle fatigue or failure, you can do that. This is just for those of you who feel, I feel vulnerable and I don't want to push myself quite that hard. You're okay, but you do need to really ask yourself and be honest, am I getting to true muscle fatigue? You choose your load based on today's body, today's sleep, today's stress, hormones, not ego or a blind follow of a single protocol when many will work for you. So, and we want to keep your workouts realistic in time, time that they take. 2 to 3 sets per lift to start, and you may increase to keeping it at 3 minimum and then up to 4, maybe 5. Spine and hip are the priority. So for the spine, pushes and pulls, if you tolerate up and overhead. But in my opinion and my personal experience over 4, almost and a half decades working with people, shoulders become an issue. And it's not just menopausal, it's men as well. And this is over 40. So using a heavy enough weight to load the spine from the top generally will wreak more havoc with shoulder problems. So you've got to walk the fine line there. I don't do a lot of overhead work, and when I do, I pull the elbows in, I go one at a time, and it's light enough weight that we're probably not loading the spine quite as much as ideal. But in my opinion, that is better and safer if I want to keep someone moving for a longer period of time. And I mean over decades, not in a workout. So carries or loaded balance. Carries mean, you know, holding suitcase carry. You're holding one heavy weight in one arm and then doing it on the other side as well. Or you're carrying weights in each arm up to about 75% of your own body weight for about a minute. It's just to, can we reach that goal? And don't even come close to it if you're not there yet, but start gradually working. That's a carry. Or loaded balance, where we might have you stand on one leg and hold a heavy kettlebell, either in the same leg or the opposite leg. Doesn't really matter because both challenge your balance in different ways. Holding it on the same side actually is more difficult than putting it in the other hand. Might not have been intuitive, but that's for bone density and fall prevention and overall functional strength. Postmenopausal, you may find a bit more volume is necessary. So volume is tricky, and, and it's tricky because of our need for recovery doesn't go away. But volume can come from the total weight you lift, the number of sets and repetitions that you lift, but it can also come from frequency. So be careful of that. When postmenopausal, you may be able to add another day and be okay with it. Your hormones have stabilized a bit more. You're not on that roller coaster, so recovery may get easier. But I think we're also more prone, still vulnerable to— life's going to throw things at you and you're going to go through periods of greater stress when maybe you can't handle that that other day. You need a little more recovery time. So honor everything in your life that might be a stressor. If this episode relieved you and/or intrigued you, inspired another question or a follow-up, please come over to the show notes. You can reach out to us from the contact form or contact me behind the scenes, DM me on Instagram. I still answer and respond to almost I post all of those myself, so I get back to as many of you as I can who are responding to something and asking a question. So I would love to hear from you. If this cleared up one thing, what I hope is that it's you don't need to commit to a certain rep range as this is gold and everything else is crap, right? It should even the playing field a little bit more for you. You need a plan that respects your effort, your specificity, your recovery, and consistency. Your ability to do it consistently, see, consistently is really important. If you want help building your menopause muscle and bone, start a program that won't hurt or exhaust you. Be consistent with your sessions. The power isn't in one perfect workout, it's in repeating workouts that work for you. If you feel great with twice weekly sessions, and you're getting results, don't fix it if it's not broken. That's my motto, especially if you're otherwise active. The point is you should be. The exercise you do should not take you out of commission from activity in daily life. It should enhance it and make you want to do it more energetically and look forward to it more than ever. You can always do more, but you don't necessarily have to. If energy or time is an issue, start with to make it easy to do the right thing. Measure what works with at-home tests that you can do in minutes and see the charts comparing yourself to others. That is from our fitness scorecard, and I will put that in the show notes for you so you can grab it. I put in there the handy-dandy little charts that will allow you to compare yourself to someone else in your age group. I hesitated to do that at first. Because we should not be comparing ourselves to other people. We should ideally be comparing ourselves now to other— to our other self later and trying to train to improve. However, I think there is some value if you can take this and realize that most people who create norms, normative scales, are not in very good shape at all. You being above average is my expectation and hope for you, okay? We don't want you to be average. We want you to be in the excellent category. And realize I want you to keep reaching higher than that because if you're— if I'm preaching to the choir and you're already exercising, we should be the most energetic people walking into the room. 80% of women are not doing anything. They're not doing the twice-weekly minimum. Resistance training that impacts metabolic health. That is your ability not to get a disease. And so you, if it's not feeling fabulous, let's change it because it should, it should help you feel good. And it may be that what you're doing is a great combination, but just not for you right at this moment. And let's look at what do we need to unpack in order to make that so. So the biggest takeaways I hope you have from this episode is hypertrophy or muscle growth and mass, which helps metabolism, can be similar across anywhere from 5 to 30 repetitions when those sets are taken to close to failure. In young men, and I know you're not, light load of 30 reps and heavy load training both can produce hypertrophy. If it's true for a young man with a great amount of testosterone, we probably see that amplified. We may not get as dramatically different results because we don't have the amount of testosterone that a young athletic male does. However, I think we can say that, okay, that can help us understand that it is the to failure that really matters. And last, strength gains tend to favor heavier loads due to specificity, especially in trained individuals. If you're a newbie, a virgin to the strength training world, you're going to gain strength from everything. But if you're more experienced, sorry to say, ladies, you gotta probably push the limit on your own ability to do heavy. In novice older adults, so again, untrained Strength gains can be similar across a wide intensity range for them too, looking at 6 to 15 repetitions over time when program variables are equated. So it's just looking at, again, are you reaching muscular fatigue? For postmenopausal bone density, prioritize moderate-intensity resistance training 3 times a week with repeatable volume And for those of you who want to go heavier, you certainly can. And that also works. It is not a but, it's an and. This works too. I hope that was helpful. We've got some show notes for you. So all of that is here. We can give you the fitness scorecard that's free to access. We walk you through, here's how to do these tests at home. Some of them are so easy. You can do them in 10 minutes and say, "Oh, here I'm doing on that." And when somebody else walks in the door tonight, you can say, "Hey, do this test. Here's how I did. How about you?" If you want to look at one more thing, because we are talking about muscle, you may want to look at your glucose levels. How well is your muscle helping you manage your blood sugar levels? How well do you do on days you work out versus days you you don't, and you may get some insight from it. So because we're releasing this show early in the year, blood sugar, overcoming insulin resistance, they're all on our minds if we're going through midlife or beyond. So we'll put that in the show notes too. And what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today.