Workout Changes I’ve Made at 59 | Women Over 40

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What are you waiting for? Good night. I am in the boat with you, rowing. I'm 59, and I am a lot closer to 60 than I am to that 59th birthday. Actually, by the time you're listening to this, it'll be maybe 3 months and a little bit of change. But if you're listening to it later, maybe I have turned the page and we have lit all the candles. Who knows? But number one, I want to let you know I'm not scared of that number. It's actually kind of surreal, and it feels like 5 minutes ago it was 50. This decade for me has just flown, and honestly, it's been one of the hardest and the best in my life. I've had so much personal growth that comes from usually some personal pain, right? And those growing pains are the reason I'm here and talking to you and looking forward to a future that I love. So I don't shy away from it. If you're in the middle, keep going through it. You have got this. So literally, this episode is me sharing the changes that I've made. So I'm 59, and you can imagine that This is going to be it as soon as we hit January, the 40th year for me in fitness as a declaring this is my profession, already teaching fitness classes, already taking, already training to know the physiology, the kinesiology, all of the pieces that are really important. And it wasn't until decades later, honestly, that I really dove into hormones. Very, very little, even in grad school. About hormones as they relate. So here they are. This is how I am tuning into aging better. The basic workout changes I've made at 59: prioritizing strength time versus cardio time. The difference between the way I prioritize strength really is the deeper dive, though. I've known since I began training for marathons, and even more so since I began doing triathlon. And honestly, this is really a decade thing. So I'm just realizing I started training for marathons when I was 30 and started doing triathlon when I was 40. And maybe that was coincidence, maybe it wasn't, but strength was the key. And I knew that key to success, even in those endurance events and in successfully avoiding injury. So I never sacrificed that, even when, you know, I was in peak weeks. And I remember, um, a good friend, good colleague, respected colleague, even saying to me, aren't you in like a, you know, final stages or taper stages? And seeing me strength training, and she was really questioning that. And she's had— she had some experience in endurance, uh, participation, or her husband did. And I said yes, but she was really making me second-guess, and I, I wasn't having it. I wasn't biting, I wasn't doubting, but I was like, this is so interesting that we have this very, very different opinion. But what's different now for me is that the first place I put my energy is strength training. It's not an extra for complementing the activity or for supplementing an activity like triathlon might have been It's all about the runs and the swims and the bikes and that I get those in and then the strength training fits in around that. And that's not how I do it now. My activity is built around optimizing my readiness for workouts, for strength training workouts, and my recovery for strength training workouts. Planning exercise matters so much more now than it ever did before. And I will share with you, if you're brand new to this and you're thinking, bone density is important, body composition is important, but don't I need to burn fat by doing cardio or doing HIIT? And the answer to that is no. You need more muscle for that to even be effective, if it will help you later. But you may find when you start the strength training, you increase your lean muscle tissue, you change your body composition, and the way your body uses the food you eat so you don't need what you think you might. Just prioritize it and know you can always do that later. You can always make yourself exhausted and overtired later if you still want to. I promise you, you won't. When your clothes start feeling better, when you start feeling more energetic, when you have more energy, less depression, and less anxiety, it feels good. Okay, so I'm gonna put a link to a planning program I have. It's a quickie guide, but it also comes with a short masterclass. You can go with— through them hand in hand and look at what are your highest priorities. For a lot of us, they will be bone density and maintaining lean muscle mass, or getting it, for either optimizing body composition or staying strong. Some of you are too small, too frail, and if you are small and very thin at 50 or 60, that doesn't look good for you at 80 or 90 if you're planning to go all the way to the finish line. So in terms of readiness for workouts, getting ready for strength training, I'm not going to go for a 3 or more hour hike the day before a key weight workout. Why? Because you really need some recovery from that too, even though it's a maybe lower intensity thing. You don't necessarily want to be recovering and doing something hard the next day. Time or duration is also how we get intensity. That's important. So those of you who think, well, zone 2, zone 2 is fine, you know, you do zone 2 for 4 or 5 hours, it's no longer a low-intensity workout. That was the mic drop for today. If you do zone 2 for 4 or 5 hours, it's no longer a low-intensity day, your body is still going to create more cortisol for you. That's going to require that you are better hydrated, you are better fueled. You're still topping into or tapping into things that will cause you to be depleted. So I definitely didn't do a strength workout for 3 days following, say, my Grand Canyon rim to river to rim hike. That's about an 18-mile hike. The last 9 miles coming up Unlike a mountain are up, up, right? I mean, you go hiking in the mountains, at least you're rewarded because you get to come down. I know eccentrically that can be bothersome to knees too, but generally, you know, coming down a hike, it's a slope and you've got zigzag, so it's not so bad. But, you know, try up for 9 miles, you know, in the heat when you're already, you know, 6 hours into it. It's a little much. There's always fuel, protein in my system, and sometimes there's a little caffeine right before a workout to optimize fat use during the workout. Caffeine has always been an ergogenic aid. That means it's going to boost your performance level. And caffeine is legal. There are other things that are not, but you can do this. Now you have to know your own sensitivity to caffeine, whether this will work for you or not. Okay, so that's readiness. You know, I'm really going to think about what happens the day before my strength training workout. If I do a 3-hour hike on Sunday and I look forward to that, I love it, and I, I plan for it because I want to do that. However, I'm not going to do a strength training, a hard strength training workout on Monday because I'm not going to, number one, benefit from it. It's going to drill me further into a need for more and more recovery. So why would I waste my time and energy doing something that I'm not going to get results from? There's movement that I can do, I might and probably would benefit from doing, uh, functional weight training, meaning yoga, you know, doing a session where I'm using body weight upper and lower and transitioning and rotating and extending. That's going to facilitate my recovery and also not impede my readiness for my next workout. So I'm smarter planning. Okay, so let's talk about recovery. I'm consciously taking more rest between hard workouts. So alluded to that before, but hard being there's multiple sets of low rep ranges and the purpose is true muscle fatigue. I, I want to reach almost failure, like I can't lift this one anymore. Occasionally for me, say I'm doing a chest press, what happens is on my last set, those last couple of reps, I'm picking up the weight and I often use unilateral work. I like to do right and left independently because it's a little bit more functional, encourages a little bit more core bracing. But when you think about the transfer of that to activities of daily life, I mean, when are we holding your arms up equally, pushing forward or pulling for that matter? Often pulling more so, but pushing, we're just not, you know, we're moving one arm at a time, closing the door, closing a car door, picking something up, and we've got our other arm wrapped around something. So I exercise that way, and I love to do that with clients as well. Sometimes time doesn't always permit that, but I will— sometimes I'm using, say, my right arm and I'm beginning to really fatigue, I will put my left hand on that weight and just one or two fingers. Sometimes it's a placebo to know those fingers are there, so I'm gonna spot myself by doing that if it gets to the point where I don't think I can get that lifted up. So that's how heavy it is. So I'm making sure that it's causing micro-tearing. Exercise does that no matter what, but it's really going to do it. It's going to cause a little bit more stress to joints. So there is no guilt over waiting at least 72 hours. That optimizes my fitness level. It doesn't decrease it. When you rest adequately, that is where, during rest and recovery, fitness occurs. If you're skipping rest You're going hard every day, you're doing something every day, and you never are resting or feeling rested. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You are just making yourself more tired, more broken down, and you're potentially creating more oxidation. That's not what we're after. So think about this. How do you feel? Do you exercise all the time? And are you someone who would say, yes, I'm tired all the time. Fix it. You're causing it. Okay. All right. So if I miss a workout, I'm otherwise active. It's not because I'm sitting on the couch, maybe because I'm moving or I'm going to move someone else, or we are, you know, doing something engaging and active and we're, we're going on some different hikes or we're, we're traveling or we're doing something you want to remember and reward yourself for. You know, look, it's not like I'm sitting around and eating cookies lying on the couch. You want to accept that this is a delay that is warranted. It's positive, it's not negative. Okay, so more age-related post-menopause workout changes that I've made at 59. So again, I hit menopause at about 56, although the pandemic did a job. I mean, some of us had breakthrough, right? So it's like, what the What is going on here? And, you know, in switching some estrogen that I was taking to a different brand, that also shook things up for me. I mean, in a really negative way. So, um, but overall still would say, you know, according to nature— although I don't know what the pandemic was, was that nature? I don't know. So look at these changes. So I make sure that workout 1 and 2— and I'm doing twice weekly total body workouts, and occasionally, yes, I'll do a functional workout like, again, yoga, bodyweight, or I'm using really light movements, unilateral all the way through, one leg, one arm, and patterning my body, working on neural concentrations. That's the brain signaling muscles for agility and reaction skills, better movement, better gait patterns. That's very different than lifting heavy, doing traditional exercises, and positioning that between two heavy workouts. For those of you that feel like I have to do three times a week, you know, do it that way. It's a much smarter way to do it in your 50s, 60s, and beyond. So I'm very conscious that in my workout one and workout two, it's not exactly the same weight load. I might do the same sequence of exercise, and often in our Flipping 50 programs, someone is doing one workout. But remember the difference between that— you're doing one workout and you're doing it twice during that week, and then you'll move on, and the next week you'll get a different workout. That actually gets very beneficial. The first time you're getting used to it, you're learning it, you're going through the pattern, you're picking up weights, you have to experiment a little. What weight do I need to fatigue? You have a good idea, but maybe not a great idea. And then the second workout, you know how that went. Can I do it again? Can I challenge myself more? Because I didn't quite reach fatigue on that. That, that's a change. Or you could say, I'm gonna purposefully really focus on technique in this first one, getting used to the sequence, knowing what's coming. Second one, I'm really gonna go for it because now I prepped, I know how I respond. I will change not only the weight load, but I will sometimes change the sequence of my exercise. So I might have been doing a tri-set— that's 3 exercises done 3 times through— and instead of doing exercise A, B, and C as I did maybe on Monday, on Thursday I might be doing exercise B, A, and then C. So the order and sequence of exercises changes the emphasis. Whatever you do first is going to be freshest, even though you might be doing ABC, ABC, ABC, and by the time you get to the second set of A or the third set of A, you've had all those exercises first. But it doesn't matter. There is still something about when it's first in the sequence and you know you're in your last lap, you're going to do better, freshest. That last one, I will say there's usually in the last set, maybe in the second half of that set, there can be that little, oh, I still got more left. And that would probably tell you you probably weren't working quite heavy enough at the beginning, right? So generally in strength training, you won't get that second wind. You'll be like, oh no, I'm, I'm done, I'm really done. And you know, it might be when you're running, when you finally hit the finish line, it's like, oh yes, you do have that surge because you were holding a little bit more in the tank. But you're so elated and something else takes over and kicks in to get you to the finish line. When you're doing strength training, generally it doesn't occur like that. So two things so far that I don't do the same workout— one and two are different in terms of weight load that I'll use and the sequence of exercises that I'll use, even though they may be the same. Let's face it, traditional exercises that boost metabolism, bone density, are very similar. You're going to repeat the same high-quality exercises over and over, but you can mix them up. You don't have to do them all each week. The type of workout in tune with my recovery status. So this is really important. This is where, say you go for that really long hike, and, and for you this may be something else. Maybe it's not hiking, maybe it's biking or, or otherwise. If I'm not quite recovered, I don't just do the workout. That was planned. Einstein, right? But some of us do. We're just like, well, that's on the list, that's, that's what I have to do. But we're treating it like a quota instead of reacting and responding to the body. That is, how are you feeling? Don't forget that very important question. Science has ignored it. I'm also taking creatine monohydrate. Near my workout. So I generally will try and do that, uh, prior if I can, but it really depends on how much am I eating and how soon in advance, um, I can eat. So if I'm taking a quick shake and I'm just having some protein, a little bit of protein before I go work out, generally I won't have the creatine then. I will have it after when I'm having a full-out smoothie. So I've got the protein powder, the smoothie, some healthy fats, and a little bit of fruit, and the whole thing. So I've got all the things in it, so it's much more like a meal. I'll take it in that. The biggest key is take it at a point where you'll remember it. So if that's first thing in the morning, you know, with something stirred into your— you know, I, I do coconut or I do almond yogurt, you know, stir it into that as you're having it. That might be an option, but do it on a regular basis. So let me describe this again. If I can't work out as early as I'd like to, right? You know, my workload might dictate that a workout has to happen a little bit later in the morning. And I've probably been up long enough, I have to have a good solid meal before I go work out. So it'll happen in that robust smoothie about 2 hours before. So even if it's a liquid meal, I make mine a little thicker. It's more like a bowl than a smoothie. But if it's got high protein, it's got fat, it's got all the things in it, your body still needs to break that down. So we don't want a lot of fiber and fat in the gut. We want that cleared out. So it takes 2, 2.5 hours. So I go 2 for a liquid meal like that. If I'm being— if I'm able to pull away from tasks and I can work out with just a little bit of fuel prior. You know, I might have anywhere between 10 and 15 or 20 grams of protein prior, simple shake, meaning I'll have some either P or paleo protein, have that mixed up, maybe some hemp hearts in there just to mix up protein sources and liquid, and have that within, you know, 30 or fewer minutes even as I'm on the way to the gym. That'll work. And then it's that post-workout smoothie bowl after a workout or a regular meal. Maybe you're having you're having a wrap or a salad or whatever leftovers, you know, maybe what you're having within an hour to hour and a half afterward if you were really fed before. If you weren't, you just got minimal in before the workout, then sooner, almost right away afterward, to replenish. Because in an overnight fast particularly, you're in a breakdown, you know, and exercise is a breakdown. And so 2 strikes is not good. You just don't want 3. So get that high protein back in as quickly as possible to begin the recovery. So if you have creatine questions, we'll link to an episode that I've done on creatine. And it is, uh, yes, do it every day. This is not only on the days when you strength train. It's great for the brain as well as muscle and bone. And in older adults, there are more and more studies emerging showing positive results, uh, a a podcast that I've done, not quite out yet but will be soon, probably by the time you're listening, maybe, with Cynthia Thurlow, um, commented on the dose. So if you're taking it for muscle or bone, you may want to take it based on size. If you're 120 or less, you may only need about 3 grams. If you're 120 or over, you probably want at least 5 grams daily. That's what I take. I weigh about 130 I've been saying for too long I'd like to be back just down a few more pounds. And this isn't a weight on a scale that I want, it's just a feeling that I haven't had for a while. And, um, so, so think about your own weight in that way as well. But if you want the creatine and you're taking it for mood and brain function, you actually may want more, like 8 to 10 grams. So you may want to listen to that podcast. There in the past has been some concern over, you know, gut and nauseousness and response and reaction. So you wouldn't start with that high dose. You'd want to work your way up and get your body used to it, or find out how do you respond to it. But these are things to think about. This is just one of those things that I am now doing on a regular basis. I avoid halting my body's inflammatory response to exercise. So I don't overdo inflammatory foods or activity directly after workouts, meaning I'm not gonna go jump in an ice bath right after a workout to stop the inflammation. I'm not going to have some of the shakes and smoothies that I might have been 7 or 8 years ago with lots of antioxidants in them, like cacao and avocado and consciously or having high omega-3 items, if you let that inflammatory system inside of your body kick in, you're boosting your resilience in your immune system. So you don't want to prevent some of those good changes from occurring. They'll increase your resilience. Immunity is so, so important to us right now, and your ability to kind of self-regulate. So if you're doing sauna or ice baths or ingesting those omega-3 supplements, or, you know, having Salmon quite frequently, you might want to wait on some of those until later in the day. Give your body like 5 or 6 hours to do it later. So ability-related workout changes that I've made at 59— I eliminated the high rep range and low weight workouts almost exclusively. There are fewer workouts with 15 to 20 or definitely 25 repetitions unless they are that recovery week workout Or they are a recovery workout between two heavy workouts because I'm really struggling with movement, feeling stiff or achy, like after that really long hike. While they show up, you know, say, um, I say there's a YouTube video for plateaus and arm definition, and we can put that right in the show notes so you can see it. But that's, you know, an anomaly. Again, that's not something because it works to get you off a plateau that now you've adopted and you should be doing every time. And that's a real tough lesson. And I've noticed because comments on those videos, everyone will say, "You didn't say how often to do that." Well, I didn't say how often because it's just a plateau buster. You're going to throw it in as an anomaly to get off the plateau. That doesn't mean you're going to do it again and again and again and again because that's where we get into trouble. We tend to think, at least in America, if a little is good, more is better. So if this is the answer, I'm going to do it all the time. That's not what we're after. So you want to, you know, work that might support sports performance or gait improvement, higher reps often reserved for a single set or a drop set or monster set for recovery week to reduce stress overall and yet provide neural patterning. That is that, again, brain-to-muscle connection. I often do 5 to 8 repetitions during the first 3 weeks of, say, a month, a 4-week cycle, and recovery happens week 4. Most strength and conditioning coaches like myself observe this periodization carefully for programming. It's how they and the athletes or clients that we serve stay injury-free while at peak performance. The majority of us don't have a sport in-season or off-season. And then again, you do. You're, you know, especially if you have a northern climate, things change. You're doing more golf or walking activity in summer months and maybe more indoor training and more sleeping and resting and fireside book reading during winter months. Possibly you're doing skiing or snowshoeing, maybe that's your season, and a greater focus on strength training in the off-season for you. So you kind of want to look at, you know, I know people people like to say, well, what am I going to do in the winter, you know? And sometimes that's your— that should be your strength season. It's— that's your time to, you know, focus on that. That doesn't mean that and— that and you have to add something else. Not necessarily, because if you're adding it, that may be why you're not making quite so much progress. The benefit of just walking and strength training in a concentrated way should not underestimated. If you're somebody who's really struggling to rest and recover, that is really what I would take a look at. Why is that? Why can't you be quiet and be happy? So changing it up, you know, having to do a workout with somebody else and follow their program, their sequence, their thinking can be a real challenge for somebody like me who's used to be being in control. Like, you know, I like to be the dealer of the cards. Like, here's what we're doing, this is the order that you're doing it. So it's often we that need it most. So know this, if this is you, it's like, no, I have a routine, this is how I usually do it. You probably need something that you don't usually do to bust out of your own limited mindset. And we only see things from the way we see it. So I hope you've seen those guys who seem to have been members of your, your gym forever, maybe, right? They're always there, they exercise all the time, but then you look at them and you're thinking, their bodies actually never change. They don't actually look any better because they're there every day. And maybe we have to say, well, they haven't slipped backwards, maybe that's a good thing. But I don't want to be one of those people who their bodies don't change over time in a positive way for the time and the energy that you're putting in. So whether it's, you know, writing myself a new program or swapping ideas with another fitness pro. Like recently, I did a workout on a Sunday with Helen Frisch, who's a fit pro, and Natalie Jill lives nearby. You know, just to get out of routine, you know, is a really good idea. So in the recap, the workout changes I've made: number 1, it is number 1 in my schedule. And number 2, I'm prioritizing that. And so I change it regularly. You know, if I'm doing 2 strength training workouts that are heavy during a week, they don't look exactly the same. The sequence of the exercises are different, or the weight load is different. Something has to change. And above all, I'm listening to my body, and I am making sure that I'm letting my body have some natural immune response, decreasing the inflammatory response with its own property, as opposed to putting things in right away and taking a lot of antioxidants that will get in the way of me doing what my body is capable of. And I think this is new for exercisers, so this may change not just the way we exercise but how we recover from exercise and therefore increase the benefits of it. I don't do any more of those just lots of repetitions. I, I can remember, gosh, this is early '90s maybe, um, there was a program that was lots of isolated movement. There was usually 100 of certain things. I'm not talking about Pilates in the 100, we're talking there was, you know, sets of 25, and we would do these little micro leg lifts, and then we would do the micro leg curls, and then we would do micro leg micro crunches, micro this, micro arm whatever. And it was an entire hour. But I also remember that about a year and a half, 2 years after that program had kind of just went through our community like wildflower fire because everybody thought, oh, I can do so little and get so much, they were all at their physical therapists. And physical therapists began to say, let me guess what you've been doing. And they knew the program so well because that was the common denominator between all these overuse exercises. So it doesn't take 100, it takes at about 25 to 28 repetitions. So where we begin to see wear and tear on the joint really take over. So if you're doing a lot of things, a lot of repetitions, and you swear by it, you also might want to look at any aches and pains that you might have because they could be related. Okay, there you have it, very personal. These are the workout changes I've made at 59. This is with 49 or 40— geez, 40 years of experience, and actually 42 for my own personal, but 40 as a profession. So you got some behind the scenes, you know, and this is how I care for myself, and I want to aid like a badass. Excuse my French. So if you do too, consider some of these changes, even though they may be opposed to what you have been thinking for so very long. If you're not feeling optimal, you're not getting optimal results, you can always go back to what wasn't working. So try a few of these. Love to know how you're thinking, how you're feeling, what's working for you and what's not. If any of these really feel like, oh gosh, that would be so hard for me to change. But I think they're fairly easy. So look forward to your comments, and you'll find the show notes at flipping50.com/workoutchangesivemadeat59.