Why a Trainer May Not Get You Results in Menopause

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What are you waiting for? Good night. If you are working with a trainer and you're not getting results that you dearly want, and you're doing the work, you're following the instructions, it's not your fault. It's not your trainer's fault, but it may be because you're working with a trainer who does not know what they don't know about working with someone in midlife or menopause.

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Today.

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 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.

The question that I would ask, and I wish that every woman over 40 engaging a trainer currently or thinking about getting a trainer would ask, what is it that you would do differently for women versus men, or for me versus a young woman in her 20s, or a woman in her 40s versus her 60s? What would be the difference? And if you have a trainer who can look you straight in the eye and answer those questions without batting an eye, you've probably got a good trainer. But if you have somebody who has to think or ask you to repeat the question, asking for that time to think, I would suggest to you, maybe, just maybe, they don't quite know what you want them to know so that you feel you're in the hands of an expert. It wasn't until I created Flipping 50, in 2013. So we're talking right now, 11 years ago, and then finally created based on what we had done, developing a framework for working with women in midlife. And as I say framework, I want all of you to understand something, and that is this: there is no one-size-fits-all, but there is a blueprint. We use signs and symptoms and we use a matrix and we have a priority list of if this, then that, and if this, then that. And we are also not just able to say, okay, I'm going to go down this path. That's not necessarily the protocol. That if this, then that works every single day because women's hormones can fluctuate. A lot of things can change on a dime, especially for a woman in perimenopause. So as I say that, what we're doing is empowering coaches and trainers with the menopause fitness specialist to pivot on a dime and to make quality decisions based on science, and yet most based on the individual right in front of them right now. It wasn't until I created Flipping 50 and then the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist in 2018 that I knew of training that existed for trainers or health coaches of midlife women. I had to start looking around because everybody around me said, nobody's doing what you're doing. I belonged to work groups with functional doctors, functional health coaches, experts, and they were like, I'm so glad you're doing this. Nobody's doing this. So when I went to create something, you need to know there's demand for it. You know, I could create it. That doesn't mean somebody's going to want to buy it. Meaning a trainer or health coach. We knew women in midlife wanted it because that's— we were successful. We helped hundreds and thousands of women and we were having good results. And we knew that they weren't getting what they needed elsewhere. But when I started looking around, I realized that populating the landscape was very little. Until about halfway through our journey and toward this last 5 years, more things have cropped up. Menopause is becoming a buzzword. That's something to be careful and cautious about. We have more options, and yet usually when the continuum widens, so does the quality, and we just have to be careful. So it's a good thing because now we can choose more, maybe more budget-friendly as well as more luxurious things, but we're also looking at the quality of the education behind the experts offering anything. And that's an important look at, right? Some trainers and fitness enthusiasts themselves may venture to advise based on what they've read or experienced themselves, and that may not be enough to base decisions on what is essential to aging optimally— your muscle, your bone, and your brain health. Here are questions that I'd love for you to ask so that you can avoid getting a trainer that may not get you results. And by the way, I'm very sensitive to the fact that if I throw any trainer or health coach under the bus as a trainer or health coach, I throw myself under the bus. We don't get to have it one way or the other saying I'm great, they're not. It doesn't work that way. You know, if a lawyer badmouths other lawyers, I think that just takes the whole law industry down a notch, doesn't it? I mean, we have to play nice with others. We have to have respect for Okay, why, why is your education better than theirs? And you know, there are a lot of things right about the fitness industry, but there are a lot of things wrong about it. And I want you to realize one key thing: we're still in infancy. This really got going in the early '80s, maybe the late '70s, but it was about Jackie Sorensen's Hush All Over the World in about 1980 that fitness and quote-unquote aerobics— and then Jane Jane Fonda rolled it out. And by the way, nobody gets this right, but Jane Fonda did not roll out a program to take advantage of her celebrity and get rich on fitness. Do you know why she did it? She wanted to raise money politically, and she thought this is an easy win because this is catching on. She didn't do it out of a love or a passion for fitness. You know, I think now at 80 or 85, wherever she is, she probably has a sense of that was probably a good thing I did. And it was, you know, whether it's right or wrong, we can all criticize it, but she got me started. And, you know, we have learned since there were some of the things she did that were good, some of them not so good, but she started a lot of people moving who were not That's a good thing. What I want you to know is students going through a 4-year degree, even in exercise physiology or in kinesiology, whatever the department might be called, health and human performance, there is no time dedicated to menopause, midlife fitness. There's no time really dedicated to the difference between training males and females and a female cycle. How maybe week 1, week 2, week 3, or week 4 of a woman's cycle make maybe her training different than if you're working with a male who simply has a regular schedule, you know, every 24 hours. So realize that, you know, it's not because they're uneducated. It may be that they have a 4-year degree, but please don't assume that they got any information about menopause.

At all.

We probably talked to them maybe one time in a semester for 20 minutes about osteoporosis, but during that 20 minutes, we also talked about diabetes, about prenatal and postpartum fitness, and COPD, you know. So in that 20 minutes, maybe 4 minutes got dedicated to osteoporosis and osteopenia. And I can guarantee you it's from a textbook that was written. Textbooks usually get written over the course of 2 years, takes 2 more to be published. By the time a textbook comes out, it's old. So realize what students are learning is not the newest science out there. They have to be somebody trying hard to get current knowledge, and there's just no time, no time. So it's a tough thing. It's a tough situation, but We can't judge a 4-year degree, oh, super qualified, or they've taken a certification exam. Certification exams, when we as subject matter experts write questions for certification exams or review existing questions in the pool that usually get rotated for every exam, they tell us in a meeting before we get started Remember that you're only trying to phrase a question that would qualify someone to enter the field with the minimum knowledge necessary, meaning don't make the questions too hard. Okay, so with that, let's go into this. These are questions that you could ask to avoid getting a trainer that may not get you the results that you want. And maybe to help elevate the awareness of a trainer that there's more knowledge out there. And if I really want to be an expert with midlife women, I can do that fairly easily and develop an expertise and a niche for a lot of women who are looking for help by getting better, getting smarter, getting specific. So number 1, what specific training have you had in training women in midlife? Or use the word menopausal. Question number 2: What's unique in the way that you train women in midlife, or use menopause, versus younger women, older women, or men? How do you define success of my program? Number 4 is: What kinds of things would you be asking me to do in our sessions or between our sessions? Number 5 is, what are the most important components of the work that we'll do together? And what I'm going to suggest that you want to hear from this is based on your goals and the things that you might be— I hate to use the word complaining because I'm sure you don't complain, but the situation that you have that is not ideal. If you were speaking about that, is that fair? What you'd be telling them when you went in that you would like to change, and that would be your definition of success. Ideally, and my guess is— and I don't know this to be fact for you, but for many of us, insulin resistance is a problem at midlife even though it never was before. That could for you mean belly fat. It may or may not. For a lot of women, it does. It re— there is some relocation whether you gain weight or not. And there also is maybe energetic ups and downs, unstable energy level throughout the day because of blood sugar levels fluctuating. That's not ideal, but you want an answer that reflects generally we wanna work on stabilization of blood sugar. We wanna work on muscle mass because we wanna support insulin control and decrease inflammation. You wanna hear them mention the words that muscle is an endocrine organ and here's how we can use it to your advantage. Those kinds of things ideally are gonna come out. If not, you know, second chance. Number 6, you might say this if you're comfortable. I've heard it said that guidelines and quotas for exercise, meaning how many times a week you should do cardio and for how many minutes, aren't necessarily the best way for women to design an exercise program. What are your thoughts on programming for me? And number 7, how do you measure success? And I asked in number 3 how you define success, but number 7 is how do you measure success? And again, on this one, my hope is this is low-hanging fruit for a right answer for a trainer. Actually, I'm hoping that they're going to say we're going to measure body composition. If we see weight change, we want that weight change to be from a decrease in fat and an increase in lean muscle mass. But we'll look at that regularly so that we can regularly pivot as needed.

Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly exactly what you wanna listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman. So go and listen right now.

So that's a start. And if you are a trainer or you're a coach who works with women in midlife, or you want to, if you happen to be a nurse or practitioner who wants, you know, something a little bit more on the side, you're a Pilates, you're a yoga instructor, you're a fitness instructor. Coaching is within your grasp as well. I've also had executive coaches, organizational coaches, meaning you organize my closets, and probably I need that, but who transversed into, I'm also going to do this because I'm working with women in midlife and they have the same complaints. I'm going to work this in. So there's a diverse number of backgrounds that could appeal. So if you're a trainer or coach who work with women in midlife, I highly recommend that you consider one of these three programs. And selfishly, I will throw myself into the mix, but Dr. Stacy Sims offers a course consumers and coaches can both take it to understand themselves and/or better understand working with clients. Girls Gone Strong offers a women's training course. And has for a long time. And now we're getting more specific also in menopause, Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist for building your entire business. So we go through how to monitor nutrition for exercise, exercise and strength training, and quote unquote cardio as we've known it, recovery from exercise, sleep, stress, pulling together the eclectic collection of hormones and creating a holistic program and identifying signs and symptoms and top priorities of where to start somebody. But we also are going into building the marketing and the sales strategies to build a business. You know, a lot of trainers and health coaches love education. They love learning more about their clients. But the challenge that most all of them have they'll get higher degrees, they'll get master's, even PhDs. And unless they plan on teaching in academics, that still doesn't pay the bills. You've gotta sell something. And so learning how to do that and how to scale it so it's not more hours all the time, it's not just exchanging an hour for a dollar, but it's how do I scale this? How do I reach more people, make a greater impact, and build a life that we love at the same time. And it's time that the fitness industry become more of literally a business industry with respect and integrity. And no trainer or health coach should have to make an excuse that, you know, I didn't do this to get rich, you know, because it is possible, just as possible as any other industry to work smart and to make a profit and a life that you love. And I think if you're out there and you're a woman who enjoys a coach or a trainer who has gotten you good results and helped you understand yourself to make better decisions, it's well worth it. It's an investment that changes your life for the better. And you don't necessarily have to work with somebody for the rest of your life. That's an option. A lot of people choose that, but you certainly don't have to in order to gain a lot of valuable knowledge that will change your life. I hope this has been helpful. If for you, you think of a trainer or a coach, whether it's a younger trainer or a midlife or older trainer who wants to segue into that second career, the one they really love, share this with them. And I thank you in advance for doing that. You can find the show notes at flipping50.com. /trainermaynotgetyourresultsinmenopause. And what are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.

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