You're Already Lifting — So Why Isn't It Working?

What if it's not the diet or the workout routine? What if it's something else entirely? Look, spoiler alert, I am an exercise and sports psychology guru. And that, between the ears, has been so much more important to me ever since the late '80s when I realized I was gonna have no hope of helping people with things below the shoulders if we don't get between the ears. So I'm hosting a masterclass this month called What If It's Not the Diet and the Exercise? The Missing Link to All Fitness Programs That You've Ever Done. If you are listening to this and you've tried it all, you're doing it all, this may be the missing link for you. And in this, I will give you the spoiler alert. Yeah, the diet matters. What your dietary habits are matter. And? Your exercise matters, and both most often need a change when you hit menopause. Midlife and beyond, the gut changes and the metabolism does change, but they are generally the easy part. We can learn. You're intelligent. But what's harder is mindset. I'm going to tap into that in this masterclass. You can go to flipping50.com/missinglink. No spaces between missing link and watch for free. And hopefully you'll have some sort of a breakthrough while you're on. So welcome back. In this episode, it could be a standalone, it could be the first one you listen to, but you may wanna listen to this entire series. If you do, this is episode 2 in a 4-part series. So in episode 1 of this series, I talked about What a beginner, somebody who's starting or restarting, because let's agree, we can all have that kind of a moment where we need to restart or reset, maybe because what we're doing isn't working. And it's always good to go back to those foundations. But in episode 1, I talked about what does a beginner do? What does a beginner want to focus on? Where could a beginner make mistakes? This episode is for those of you who are not new. But you're working hard, but not necessarily changing. And/or it's for you out there. I see you that are proactive and you just want to make sure you're covering all of your bases. This one's for you. 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. Okay, so here we go. And I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag. I really am loving this series and the, the framework that it's given me again to go back. This is really in part what we do with our HALO method at Flipping 50, whether our team is doing it, our coach, the first person that you talk to when you join the membership, or our community coach who's in there every day working with you, or it's our Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialists, and we're teaching them, here's the framework. And last but not least, we're now supporting physicians so that those who want to give a better exercise prescription are not just using guidelines, position statements, but they're actually doing that customized kind of exercise prescription for their patients in the short amount of time that they have. So it's giving me the opportunity to see there's gold in this, and why would I not share it with you directly? Because you and I need to be our number one advocate for our own health in order to get the people who are serving us Whether it's your trainers, your coaches, your physicians, your PA, your NP, we need to get them on board. And I think gone are the days where we just relinquish our power and say, make all those decisions. And, you know, I'm just gonna let you do with me what you want to. I think we all know we need to bring it home and we need to manage it here. So, if you are doing all the things, but you're not getting all the results, Or you're feeling like your strength training has stalled. First of all, by you doing nothing, I may change that with a couple of things that I'll say today. And maybe you're finding your muscle isn't changing or body composition isn't budging in the way that you'd like it to. You're not a beginner anymore. Your training needs to evolve. That's going to be a mainstay of this. But I also want to say this to you. If you're not gaining muscle, and yet I want to point out, if you're not losing muscle, you, my friend, are still winning the game. And here's what I want to remind you of, because it's there every day. It's on my timeline, at least. So if you're paying attention to women over 40 in menopause, strength training, resistance training, longevity, strength, power, This is coming into your timeline. You've heard it once, and I'll just remind you. On average, those who do not strength train every decade—it's starting at age thirty, so between thirty and forty, between forty and fifty—we lose between three and eight percent of our muscle mass a year because we have to work a lot harder to hold on to it. We're not talking about you know gaining. We're talking about maintaining. So, my friend, if you're looking at your— like, my muscle hasn't changed, my muscle hasn't changed— every once in a while I remind our community members, your muscle hasn't changed. You haven't lost 3 to 8% in this decade. That's a very good thing. That's still a win. And I think maybe the confusion Is someone dangled the carrot out there and they suddenly changed their body composition. They look so much different maybe than they did a decade ago. They weren't lifting weights. They weren't doing anything. They'll show their fat, their before picture. And then you know what happens too. Please do tell me that you know that an influencer who is doing that goes to find the worst, the absolute worst lighting picture. That they could find, and then they post it next to the absolute best. So let's agree, even if it's a real photo— this is me, this is then— that, you know, there is a bit of it that you've got to say, okay, well, um, tongue-in-cheek, because they made it look as bad as it ever could look, and then they used the the best lighting, put on a little mascara and lipstick and shading, and got a tan so we could see their contour much better. So let's just agree, number one, somebody is probably falsely representing just a little bit. And maybe I would too if I were in that situation, I don't know. But I think you've been led to believe that if you're not gaining muscle, something is wrong. But here's the reminder: if you're not losing muscle, you've already won. Now it's very hard. The longer or the further you are, the how does that go? The further north of forty you are, the harder it will be to gain lean muscle mass. We're losing some of that muscle protein synthesis, which means muscle protein build up versus muscle protein breakdown, which is the opposite. The Antichrist, if you will, of strength and muscle and positive aging and tone definition, better body comp. So we have to really work hard for it. More protein. And I would challenge some of you and and even myself: If we really want to gain muscle, are we really doing everything we could and should? Because I think many of us are when we go to make decisions about. Protein and eating and choosing our meals, we're still erring on the side of fewer calories, eating less, maybe skipping that meal, maybe just grabbing a little snack. And, you know, that's not really how bigger competitors or bodybuilders get muscle. They eat in a surplus most of the time. And I'm not saying that you have to do that. It is possible. There are studies out there showing You can be in a caloric deficit with high protein as long as you're resistance training. And you probably got to have some other stars aligned for you. Getting good sleep, you're not in a huge amount of stress, you're well hydrated, probably you're supplementing a little bit. You probably can gain lean muscle mass in that situation, but it's always going to be a little bit easier if you're in a caloric surplus. And then you may want to do that and focus on lean muscle mass and building, and then focus on cutting back on the fat. That's the opposite that the diet or even the fitness industry has taught you over the years. It was always burn those calories, burn that fat, lose the weight, and then we'll tone the muscle after. But the problem was in that you're losing muscle. So metabolically, you're less well off, meaning you have worse metabolism. When you lose weight, just period—the X's and the O's—even if you get healthier because you needed to lose weight, your metabolism does go down. Somebody who weighs 200 pounds has a higher metabolic rate than somebody who's 150 pounds. Period. End of story. No contest. You can't argue that fact. It's literally fact. However, if you add more lean muscle or you maintain the lean muscle that you had at 200 and you're losing fat, you're going to be less. Pour off, and potentially you will move more spontaneously during the day. All day round the clock, you're burning more calories and probably having fewer cravings, and you're gonna have a better battle outcome because every muscle in your brain, every signal in your brain is going to tell the rest of your body you should eat more, you're hungry, eat more, eat more, you're starving. When we lose weight, that is going on. We have to kind of reckon with that. So sometimes when I have people doing a weight loss program, or that's their goal—I don't do weight loss programs, by the way, so I just misrepresented—but so many women come to me and that's what they want. And I tell them we're not a weight loss program. It will happen if you get healthier and you increase your lean muscle mass and your strength and the quality of that muscle. Your metabolism will be better. You'll be more active. You'll sleep better, you'll probably lose weight if you need to, and will reduce inflammation. And that's also a part of what's going on. It's probably not all fat. However, what happens is we panic and we think, oh, I want to accelerate my losses, I want to accelerate the tone, but we do it at a cost. And then unfortunately, your body comes with the receipts, it comes with a debt. It's like, hey, Pay up, and that is your sluggish metabolism. So I know that was a side rail. Let's get back in track here, and let's talk about this. If you are more advanced, you are plateauing, you're stalling. What I want you to do is realize that you've got five priorities. They're different than those five that I gave to beginners last week or. The last in the series of this. Number 1 is intensity does matter. Now, this is different than for a beginner. For a beginner, you know, you have never been to first base. Well, holding hands is pretty sweet, right? And it's not that it loses its sweetness later after that either, but intensity does matter here. When you first were rewiring your brain and the signal to the muscle, you could get by with not actually going all the way to fatigue. And lightweight was okay because you were just trying to teach your brain that pattern so that you have really good form and technique and you won't get hurt later. And you're laying down the foundation for solid— I'm going to be able to progress much faster at a certain point, but right now it's not that point. Now you're in it, but you do have to have some intensity. This is where the American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM, Where the guidelines have changed a little bit. We need to go heavy enough to challenge the muscle. And this is not necessarily new for somebody who's advanced. It didn't matter as much if you were a beginner, but it needs to be heavy enough to change the muscle. But it does not have to be heavy. It needs to be effort. Effort. Effort. Now, if we said true strength, it has to be about 80% or higher in terms of weight to get you true strength. That's probably— you've got to be 10 or fewer repetitions, and some would maybe argue 8. That's changed actually a little bit over the years, in the last 20 years. Used to be 80% was 10 reps. Now it's like a more slippery slope. And I keep looking at that thinking. Huh, like how exactly did that change? But it has. So the textbooks are reading different these days. You need to come closer to muscle fatigue. So in terms of beginners, we said if you have 5 or 6 reps in reserve, you could do 5 or 6 more, you can stop. You're good. You're going to see progress. Not so true if you have some experience. You have to get closer to muscle fatigue. So one or two repetitions is about all you can have left that you could get those up. So if you feel if you're somebody who feels more vulnerable and you just I don't want to get hurt and you're really leaning on that, okay, I gotcha. You can stop a couple short personally, you know, and some of us maybe maybe we need a degree of that. I'm vulnerable to get hurt feeling because we're probably the ones that push the envelope a little too often. I know you, you know me, we could probably work out together, but it probably would not be a good idea for us to do that because you'd egg me on, I'd egg you on, and there we would be saying, oh, why did we do that? But truly, you can. I like to Really reached that last one where I'm I'm not going to be able to lift that. I'm not going to be able to get that up or pull that down more than one or two repetitions. Okay, I'm done. So it's you're more vulnerable in doing that if you were doing say a chest press with a bar or dumbbells, right? Because it's going up and over your head, your chest. When you're doing something like a lat pulldown or a row, you're less vulnerable. You could you could drop it as long as you're not dropping it on your toes. Or in a lat pulldown, you're just not going to get it down, period. Or if you're trying to do, say, a pull-up, you're just not going to get yourself lifted. That's— so there's less risk. But realize that's really where you need to go. You need to get within 1 or 2, and it's effort. So true strength, yes, 10 or fewer repetitions. However, you can go to effort Intensity comes from effort. So I want you to understand this is about reaching muscular fatigue within 1 or 2, whether you're doing a really light weight and you're doing 20 reps, or you're doing a heavier weight, you're doing 12 reps, or you're doing a really heavy weight and you're doing 5. I want you to get to a, that's it, I can't do anymore. Now, it's easier to do with certain muscle groups. I think it's harder to do with others. So, for instance, in a squat, if you are at home, probably a little bit more challenging for you to pick up dumbbells that you can actually hold in your upper body and fatigue your lower body. I find that to be true. I'll wear a weighted vest to come a little bit closer, and I have to slow it down. And I have to add power, which may seem like I just contraindicated myself, but you want power pushing up against the resistance. So it's quick, but on the way down, I go really slowly in that eccentric contraction because time under tension. And then I might hold it at the bottom 1, 2, or 3 seconds. Let me just tell you, that makes a difference. That can make a grown woman cry. Okay, and we're tough, right? So realize this is about effort, and that is the important piece. Any load of weight still works whether you are advanced or not. But I do want you, if you're listening, to hear this: you do want to a little more frequently—not always—but a little more frequently use. The heaviest weight that you're safely comfortable with—not when you feel vulnerable with, not when you feel achy, sore, can't sleep, can't sit down with—but one that you are like, "Yeah, I'm toast," and that was great. I I know I worked hard, but I've got still more energy, and I feel like I'm making strength gains. So. It does matter that each and every set that you do, you're reaching muscular fatigue, right? So let's say you're set to do 3 sets. You're not thinking, oh, I know by the end of the third one I'll reach fatigue. No, huh? 3 different times you need to reach muscular fatigue. And so it's true if you're doing 4 sets or 5 sets as well. Now, if you plan, I'm doing 3 main sets, and to make sure I'm safe, warmed up, I'm going to do a warm-up set with a lighter weight. You don't necessarily have to reach fatigue in that first one. Now, what I will sometimes do in my chest press sets with dumbbells, for instance, is I'll choose a weight I know that is lighter for me, and I will do A fly, a chest fly. That's rotation around the shoulder. There's no flexion in the elbow. It's a long lever. There's a little more risk with that if I were to go heavy, but I don't. And I pre-fatigue those muscles, and then I pick up my heavier ones. But what that does is gives me a moment to check in with how do I feel today, and what else have I done, you know, overall, just fatigue, but also Was I lifting boxes this last week and weekend? I have been picking up things, and Amazon made a lot of stops at my house. We're hosting a retreat here, and I've been putting together equipment. And you know, I looked at Moses, and he was no, I'm not helping. So it was just me, the only human. And you know, I could have called somebody, but I'm not that person. I'm like, no, I want this down. Now, like not on somebody else's time. So I'm more likely to slide it in, push it here, pull there, put it down. So lifting weights, you know, I have to check in, and you do too. To just spend the day gardening, to spend the day, you know, holding a toddler or kindergartner for that reason, for that, you know, matter, you've got to Consider maybe today I need to just take my temperature before I actually pick those weights up. So realize effort, effort is what matters, not the weight. This episode of Flipping 50 with Debra Atkinson is brought to you by Alloy Health. Are you dealing with menopause alone? It's not just you. Almost 50% of women wait 3 or more years before seeking relief from menopause symptoms. That's years of hot flashes, awful sleep, brain fog, and mood swings. And some don't know where to start. Some asked their doctor and got dismissed. Menopause happens. The suffering does not have to. I got lucky. I, from the end of perimenopause journey to the first of my postmenopause, was living in Boulder and Scottsdale with an abundance of menopause experts available. But that is not the norm. That wasn't the case for my clients, customers in our programs, and possibly for you podcast listeners who I've heard from. I've heard way too many stories being unable to find menopause support or having to wait 6 months to see someone if they did. With Alloy, things are different. Care can start in hours, not weeks. 95% of Alloy HRT customers feel symptom relief within the first 2 weeks. Treatment comes in the form that works for you: patch, pill, spray, or gel, personalized to your symptoms, your history, and your routine. It's a really simple 3-step process to get started. First, you'll fill out an online intake. Get a prescription with your personal Menopause-specialized physician, and then get HRT delivered to your door without the hassle of a pharmacy. Join the 95% of women who tried Alloy and saw relief in the first two weeks. Head to myalloy.com and use code FLIPPING50. Your menopause-specialized doctor will tailor your treatment to your exact needs. Plus, you get unlimited messaging with your doctor. Head to myalloy.com. And use code FLIPPING50 to get $20 off. Now, volume also matters more for you. When you were a beginner, 1 or 2 sets when you started, very slowly over time increasing sets. Now volume matters a little more. Now for almost everyone, 3 sets is kind of golden rule. Do at least 3 sets. I like to Use a trick pony and occasionally throw in four or five. When I committed to, you know, like all right darn it, I had a wake-up call and I was like, are you kidding? I'm a professional. I have osteopenia, and you know there are a lot of reasons why. But still mentally, my little ego was kind of going down. I'm a professional. That can't be happening to me. And so I'm committed to. All right, I'm gonna change. So I didn't yet have whole body vibration, but I thought I can go maybe a little bit heavier—not too much, actually—but I committed to five sets of five in major muscle groups. So my forearm wrist was the the one that was hardest to add weight to. So I was doing five sets of five repetitions. Pretty heavy. So most days of the month when I was resistance training, 2 times heavy, like every week, that was kind of my mantra. And then I would throw in some lighter weight here and there. Like many of you know, in the programs we run, on 4th week we do a recovery week. That is smart. It's so smart. It's— I'm in my 44th year of lifting consistently I have never been hurt because of weightlifting, ever. Now, I've been hurt because I've been thrown off a horse. I've been hurt because I was a little shaken up, maybe in a light car accident. Nothing major. And, you know, able to get back to it really quickly because quality muscle heals faster. So important things to remember, but you need volume. When you have more experience, so two sets probably not enough unless you're in recovery week and you're doing them maybe unilaterally, more one-legged, one-armed thing where you're incorporating balance. That's okay, that's cool, and you should do it. It's important, but one hard set won't maximize muscle. Think weekly volume. So in terms of total sets. What we want generally, and this is generally, so this is not necessarily true for those of you, us, that are postmenopausal. We want about 6 to 8 sets per muscle group per week. So if you think that 2 workouts per week, you're doing 3 and/or 4 sets each workout, you're getting 6, 7, or 8 sets per muscle group. So you're covered. For postmenopausal women, that number has to be a little bit higher. Most of the studies say we can gain strength, not a problem, but body composition becomes harder. We don't gain as much muscle. We don't see as much change in the muscle quality. So we're not necessarily, again, looking at skeletal muscle on the scale. That one may be harder to change, but remember, If we don't lose, we're still winning. And yet we want to see the quality of that muscle go up, increase by strength and/or by a change, corresponding change that happens in body composition goes down because we're stronger. The quality of that muscle gets better. So 3 sets, probably your minimum, and then add a 4th set occasionally. Don't have to do it every time. If you're exhausted, dealing with a lot of fatigue and just a period in your life, back down to 3. But otherwise, try tossing in a 4 and work your way up. Occasionally try 5, not necessarily for every exercise in your workout. You want to change one thing at a time. Say, okay, maybe for my chest and my triceps today, I'm going to do 5 sets. And maybe the next time I come back, I'll do that for my lower body, maybe my hamstring curls and my squats or my leg press. So think about it in that way. So approximately 10 or more challenging sets per muscle group per week for muscle hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is the growth of the muscle, and for postmenopausal women to see body composition change, we probably have to have that edge coming back to muscle protein synthesis goes down with age. And also for postmenopausal women, we're going to have a little more anabolic resistance, definitely because we're older, but also our estrogen is no longer trending down. It's down, period. Even if you're doing hormone replacement, you're probably better off than if you're not. It's true. It's potentially helping you more with symptoms However, not with the actual gaining of the muscle. So if you are getting better sleep, you're going to have better stable cortisol going up and down during the day when it should, and better testosterone and growth hormone release in deep cycles of sleep because you're actually getting deep cycles of sleep. But it's not directly related to oh taking that estrogen is going to help my muscle. It may have a little protection. On the muscle, definitely does on the bone. That's been proven, but it hasn't been proven in the same way on the muscles. So just know the truth. And yet I'll tell you this: I'm a big fan of placebo. So if you believe having that estrogen in you is helping you feel stronger, lift heavier, then potentially it is. I would not look a gift horse in the mouth. There's nothing wrong. It's not hurting you. A placebo doesn't hurt you. Okay. Just want you to know that if you're trying to quote science, there isn't any that'll really give you that. Okay. So number 1 and number 2, intensity matters. Get effort in there. You cannot be putting it down, the weights down and saying, okay, well, I did a set. That's probably not going to help you. And volume matters. Another set. And I want to make a point here in volume where we often get confused, or women do, maybe trainers as well. They think volume. Well, I'm going to add another day because that'll make it easier to get ten sets. You know, I think if you are already fatigued, you're already crunched for time. I call it crunchy, like my time is a little crunchy right now. I don't think that adding another day is actually going to help because you've got to remember we absolutely have to get the recovery, and that recovery need expands. As well. So we've got this one, one hand over here, I need a little more volume. On the other hand, I need more recovery. Same person, same goal, right? So you've got to think, maybe I can just extend that workout by 5 or 10 minutes and add another exercise and do 3 more sets of that for the same muscle group. Or I can add another set to an existing exercise that I'm doing. Those things can help and still keep the recovery that you need between sessions and allow you the energy to do the things that you want to do between. So if you love stand-up paddleboarding, you, you like to go to yoga or Zumba or get outdoors and ride your bike, you have the energy to do that. Okay, third thing is progressive overload. Now in the ASM guideline changes that changed in March of 2026, they made a point of saying progressive or progression doesn't matter quite as much. But I want to clarify, we still do need progressive overload. But what we're not doing is writing it down in our little journals, tracking 5% increase next week, 10% increase the next week. We're not doing it that way because Your body and your needs are very different. Number one, your week to week, your days, your tasks, your responsibilities, your ability to sleep—that's going to change. But you always have to get to overload. And when the ACSM guidelines said progression doesn't really matter, that's for beginners. And pretty much starting is just doing it consistently. What you're going to get the most gains from. And remember, it's about. Just do it. Pattern for the brain, good technique, know the form, know what you need to be doing. That's the most important part. So realize that that should still be first and foremost in your mind. But at every workout, you should be asking at this point, did I reach muscular fatigue? And am I picking up a heavier weight to reach fatigue? You can't ask that question every time. You're not gonna, from the workout Monday to the workout Thursday, necessarily increase your weight every time. But you may find that, okay, I could get another one, could get another repetition pretty easily. Or the way I finished that 15 reps felt very different now than it used to. It was almost, you know, too much. It was hard. But now It's actually getting easy, and if I'm honest with myself, maybe I need to increase my weight. So if you're there, when do we increase the weight? It's not an exact science, although it is exercise science. If I were picking up, say, ten pounds—this is just for example's sake—and I were doing fifteen repetitions, and at first that was really hard, and I made it, and now it's easy. And I get done with 15, and if I'm honest, I should increase my weight, right? I know I should. And to still say 15 is my number, even if you pick up a heavy weight and now you start fatiguing at 12, because let's face it, 10 pounds, sometimes if you're at a gym, your own in the basement, the next weight you have might be 15 pounds. That's a significant jump, 33%, right? So If you have the option to go to 12.5 pounds or 12, so depending, there are little attachment weights. Go to Amazon, you could find them. They're like magnets, and those would be okay. Now I'm at 12.5 pounds if you use those, or 12-pound dumbbells are fairly common. So that's a stopgap between 10 and 15. But you might find I do that And now I can only get to 12 or 13 reps. So did I do bad? No, that's okay. So you're— you want to get in the neighborhood, and you don't need to put that weight down and pick up the lighter one and do more until fatigue. You're okay. Just make a note out of it, and you can literally make a write-it-down note. I have been lifting for 44 years. I don't track, and I know some will say, oh, but you have to, you have to track. You have to track every morsel, every calorie you put in your mouth, and you have to write down your weight because there's no way you're going to remember it. And yet, I think that's only true if you're repeating the same exact workout, same exact exercises, same exact order. And I would say, don't ever do that. You don't want to do that. And so you can't compare when you lifted the chest press with 10 pounds and reached fatigue at 15 when it was the first thing in your workout versus when you moved it to later in your workout after you'd done some other exercises. You're going to be a little more fatigued, even if it, it was other exercises for other body parts. And that's just how it goes, and that is okay. I think it is optimal to switch. Yes, we want to come back and test how are you doing. Let's do a standard workout and let's see where was this. We do this and we see people do this when they are, say, repeating a program that they did. They— we have, we have 12 different, uh, 12-week programs. And, you know, somebody may have started with I started Stronger 3 and, you know, it's— I haven't done it for a year and a half. I'm going to do it again. And they'll find, oh my gosh, the weights I used to use that reached fatigue, I don't even come close anymore. That's testing, you know, and showing progressive overload works. So in every work you want to look at, did I improve something? But you want to be careful with that. But did you improve the way it felt? So you can ask more than just the weight. Did you improve or increase the weights or the control that you have? Better control, particularly if you're a beginner. But maybe if you're just entering into this stage of you have more than 3 months of consistent working out, you're somewhere between 4 and 12 months. And if you're over 12 months, you're You're much more experienced. You've learned a lot. So if I told you, go into the gym and I want you to pick up the weights that you will do, um, and reach fatigue within about 5 to 7 reps, what weight would that be? You would know if you've been lifting for over a year. You know yourself. We have reached a point of somewhat maintenance, right? We're not going to go up and up and up and up and up. We're gonna say, oh yeah, I'm not going heavier than that because my joints feel like they're under strain. That's probably undue strain at some point. That's just smart. Do you just feel the ease of completion with what you're doing now? Ask those kinds of questions. And you know, I want you to be cautious. I'm gonna suggest ask yourself that at every Workout. Did I overload? Yes. But then ask, is it you know am I reaching fifteen with a different feeling than I did last time? So all good things to ask. Don't expect that there's a linear up and up and up and up. There's not. Not not for a beginner. A beginner may just leap up like oh gosh, I way underestimated myself. Now I'm Here faster, somebody else may start and as a beginner go up a little slower because they feel vulnerable and don't want to get hurt. Have had a bad experience in the past. There's nothing wrong with either version. For you, as someone more advanced in experience, you want to look at the fact that I'm not going to change every single time, but I am going to reach fatigue every single time, and you're watching more. The outcomes. You want to look at your muscle mass, skeletal muscle mass in pounds or kilograms. Look at your body composition. Look at your energy level, how well you're sleeping. Are you maintaining and or gaining depending on where you are and want to be? So that's number three. So let's quick review intensity, meaning effort. Make the effort volume, not necessarily in days. But think in terms of, can I add another set or add another exercise for a same muscle group? Progressive overload. And number 4, train close enough to failure. So I've really hit on this earlier because many of these overlap. You've got to get closer. You know, now you're going to lose— leave between, you know, 0 reps if you like to go that close and really— I can't get it up. I'm in the middle of the rep again. Or one or two still left in the tank or the bank, depending on how you like to say it. You can make a huge difference that way. Now, number five: recovery becomes a part of the training. Okay, so your recovery will matter far more when you're pushing far more with the volume, the intensity or effort, the progressive overload. It's all going to matter more, and you will need recovery more than you ever have before. So I want you to don't underestimate this one. Know that this has to happen. So let's do these again. These five effort matters intensity. So the effort is the intensity. Volume matters more sets, not necessarily more days or more exercises per muscle group. Progressive overload, meaning you're feeling and seeing that you're reaching that endpoint, closing to failure or closer to failure than you were when you were a newbie, unless it's a new exercise. And we all have to come back to doing it the same way we did. Start lighter, focus on form, rewire the brain until we can go heavier. And number 5, recovery becomes part of the training. Sleeping, the time between, the protein, the deal with stress and realize how important that is that you can't ignore it. And we can't necessarily say, oh, I can't do— I got— can't have stress, you know? Yeah, put that message out to the universe, see how that works for you. But, uh, when you have greater stress, change, manipulate your workout. So if you have to get through life, you have no choice, right? Getting through your days. Make it easy. Make the fitness support your life, not the other way around. Look at your calories, quality of your calories, your micronutrient density, and your recovery will determine your adaptation. So this is a really important distinction. You've got to have it and you will need it more as you get closer to being advanced. Here's an instance where this will drive it home. So when we talk recovery, we talk about recovery between sets of exercise. Some even talk about it between repetitions of exercise. That's really advanced. Between workouts, and we might say workout and life, and then between days of your workout, right? Even between weeks and months that you work hard, maybe you go a little lighter in others. But when you're doing rest between sets for the same muscle group, doesn't mean you can't be doing something else, by the way. Like if I'm doing a chest press and I want to do 5 sets, I'm going to rest between set 1 and set 2, but I'm also maybe between going to do a bent-over row and a balance exercise. Actually, that is almost always what I do Do. So what I do do. But, um, for more advanced individuals, somewhere between 2 and 4 or 1 and 3— the, the science doesn't always agree, but I would argue that between 1 and 3 minutes is probably ideal. Um, I would lean toward 2 to 3 minutes between sets for somebody more advanced. For a beginner, you rest about 60 seconds or even till you feel ready and you can go again. Probably going to be just fine. Remember, we're not going that heavy. We're not necessarily going completely to fatigue. So it's different when you're more advanced. We actually— the recovery expands, doesn't shrink. Likewise, there is something to be said for the more conditioned you are. The better conditioned you are, the sooner you'll be able to do another hard workout. And that is true. But as the workouts themselves get harder, get heavier, get higher intensity, meaning you're not, you're not sprinting at 6 miles an hour anymore, you're sprinting at 9 miles an hour, your body will need more recovery cuz there's been more tearing, microtearing of muscles. So it may be a bit counterintuitive. But it's inverse. The more fit you are, the more recovery you need. And wisely, most competitive elite athletes get this completely. They understand that, you know, recovery is number one. So they have personal chefs, you know, they take naps if they are getting paid to do this for their living. They have coaches in every area. They have a nutrition coach, they have a strength and conditioning coach, they have a sport-specific coach for the skill related to doing that thing, you know, and that's recovery. They have massage therapists, they have chiropractors, they have compression boots, right? Compression socks. There's all kinds of different things that you will find elites don't take it for granted. And maybe that's not your deal, but if you plan to be, you know, an aging centenarian who's in pretty good shape, you probably got to work on the recovery. As we age, the need for recovery expands, but so too does it as we become more fit. All right, the biggest plateau mistakes. If you are advanced, you're more experienced, this is— these are the lists, or this is the list of mistakes you may make. Doing the same weights over and over and Not paying attention. So if you're used to, you know, going to do your workout, putting your podcast earbuds in, distracting yourself, you might want to try maybe just some instrumental music this time or quiet and pay attention to how does it feel. Are you really reaching muscle fatigue? Because remember, it's okay not to get to 15. And only get to 12, or likewise, if you're shooting for 8 and you only get 6, right? Or whatever your number is, if you increase the weight, you're probably increasing the quality of your muscle and the power that you've got. Are you always comfortable during every set? If you're giving true effort, there are a few or a couple repetitions where you're not. Comfortable. Get comfortable with that. Too much cardio. And it's not the age-old, oh, if you do cardio, you're ruining your muscle mass. It's not that. But you may be doing so much cardio that you're not doing any good except for making yourself more tired. Why would you do that? You want to hold on to that energy For recovery, for movement, spontaneous movement in life. Never resting, and I mean total rest days here. I don't mean just between sets. Important, yes, but you'll know that if you're just between sets and you're hurrying and rushing through because your consecutive sets you'll get obviously weaker. Now you're going to have the fatigue, the cumulative. Fatigue, and we all will. But if you are resting adequately, you should be able to recharge and replenish the ATP that is behind that muscle contraction. But I'm talking about never resting between workouts. And you have to include life and the stressors that you're going through. So you may go through a period of time in your life where no matter how hard you're working in the gym or your gym, maybe you won't make gains because there's too much stress there. And that may be okay, again, if you're not slipping backward, right? Because you're juggling that stress and stress will sabotage the ability to recover. Undereating. So really pay attention to this one. If you're struggling to make gains, to be stronger, to change body composition, I want you to know that, you know, for 42 years of doing this, I know I've said this so many times, it's got to be a broken record for you, but women tend to undereat, not overeat, in my experience. Active women, and I'm not talking athletes, I've been in Boulder, I've trained athletes, they probably eat better but still undereat because they're doing so much activity that Guts shut down when you're doing all of that. But when you're, you know, in your sweet spot, you're doing activity for a better and a stronger life and future. You just have to be sure you're eating enough and you're not defaulting to 1980 metabolism rules that don't apply anymore. And the last is too little protein. So it's a part of undereating and total calories, but Too little protein, you know. And I'm gonna hit this, if you still think that eating high protein will destroy your kidneys, please go find it in the literature and bring it to our attention because it is nowhere, nowhere to be found except those who have existing renal issues, existing kidney issues. Now, there may be someone out there who will say, I did that and I got kidney issues. But if that's true, potentially you had existing kidney issues and may not have been aware of your health or discussed it with a physician. And I, I say discuss it with a physician in terms of your kidney health, not the high protein, because you've got to remember that physicians don't have much experience with nutrition. 2 hours or less in medical school. Only 12% required to do even that. Probably not the source for your nutrition information that you want to go to. Okay, I hope this has been helpful. Really quickly, one more time, these top 5. If you're training, you're experienced, but you're not getting the results that that experience warrants, number 1, make sure your effort is there. Volume matters. Think about another exercise or another set. Be sure that you're progressively overloading. You're looking at how can I increase my weight or increase the time I'm doing the weight. I'm doing something so that it is more than I was doing. Train close enough to failure. You only get to have about 1 or 2 still left in the bank, and recovery becomes a part of your training. Train for that too. All right, next week we're going to go into part 3 in this series, and that is really about why perimenopause changes the equation. So what happens in perimenopause compared to our premenopause? What can happen to your muscle, to your bone density? And because it happens to muscle, it also happens to metabolism, it happens to your future, it happens to your brain, what can happen? What do you want your focal point to be during perimenopause? What do you want to do if you're not doing? What do you want to be aware of? And what are the biggest mistakes women make during perimenopause? Particularly interesting because we don't always know we're in perimenopause. Anybody else? If you were asymptomatic, you may fly through it. Not doing some of these things, but hopefully fewer and fewer of us will fall in that category. And you, as a woman in midlife or beyond, who are an influencer to younger women, hopefully we will prevent them from making that mistake as well. I would love to hear from you if you're listening to this series and you find it helpful. Please let me know. I am always answering the DMs in Instagram myself, so I will see them for sure. And you can reach out to support, but those I don't see quite as directly. So try to reach me, post it in our Flipping 50 Insiders group on Facebook if you're not already in a program or in our community. And I'll see you on the flip side. 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 healthcare 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.