Weight Training for Women Over 40 (What to Do, Step by Step) with JJ Virgin

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I'm JJ Virgin PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author.

Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness.

Hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity.

And love of science to keep asking.

Questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full full out at 100. Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time, and that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with.

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I've been lifting weights for decades now. I started when I was 16, literally. But I approach weight training differently now than I did in my 20s. Now I'm in my 60s and honestly I've never been stronger. And by the way, you can be too, even if you're starting now. So I'm going to share what you can do step by step to get started with a routine that's going to help you build muscle, burn fat, and most importantly, look, feel and perform better than you ever have after 40. So here's where I want you to start. You got to know your starting point, right? So first up, body composition. We've got to stop thinking about the scale. It's not what you weigh, it's what that weight is made up of. And so what you're going to want to do is ideally go get something called a DEXA body scan and but the very minimal, do a bioimpedance scan. You can do these at home, they're inexpensive and I'll put the info on different brands of them in the show notes. But you're going to want to be able to do this on a regular basis so that you can see what's going on under the hood. Right? You want to be able to look at not just your weight, but what that weight's made up of, how much of your body is fat free mass versus fat mass and then with that fat mass, where is it? You might think you know, but what you really want to know is the stuff that you can't pinch called your visceral adipose tissue. One of the ways that we do that is by looking at a waist measurement, a waist to hip and a waist to height measurement. That's how we can track that easily. And then you're also going to want to look at in your fat free mass, how much of that is skeletal muscle mass and how much is bone. Now all of these equations that you're going to get, whether it's a DEXA or bioimpedance are going to be predictions and you're really looking for the trends over time because we want to make sure that we know where you're starting from so we can know your big goals. But we can also know if you are improving. The other thing you're going to want to find out is how strong you are. And one of the easy ways to get an overall gauge for your strength is something called a grip strength test. Now, if you've noticed that you can't unscrew the jars like you used to, that's a sign that your overall strength is going down. There's something called a hand grip dynamometer that you can get inexpensively. Again, we'll do a link link to the on the show notes for this that can give you the estimate and then also tell you where you are.

As related to other people in your age group.

And you want to be at the top, right? One of the other easy ways to do this is just to look at how many push ups you can do in good form. Next up, your activity level. And this is really important because while we're going to get into a really great resistance training routine, we also want to make sure that you're actually moving more all throughout the day. And one of the ways that I like to track this, you could use an, an apple watch, a Garmin, a Fitbit, a Whoop. The way that I track my activity all throughout the day is with an aura ring. So doesn't matter which one, just it's.

Got to be the same one, right?

And that you're tracking every day so that you can see how you're doing. For now, just pay attention to it to see what your average daily step, your average daily activity level is. And if you're going for long periods of time without moving. All right, knowing all of this, the next thing that we're going to do is set your goals. And you're going to set your goals based on what you've discovered. Did you just discover that you have a lot of visceral adipose tissue and that's a priority to get that as close to zero as possible? Or maybe you're looking, you're going, I'm normal weight, but I've got low muscle mass relative to my weight. So I've got a high overall body fat, low muscle mass and I really need to put on some muscle. Or maybe you go, I just, I can't unscrew any of the jars in the house. My strength is low, I can't even do a pushup. And so strength's a priority. So really look and go, what would I love? What do I want to see changing in my body so that I look, feel and perform better? Next step, this is really that starting point. It's why I want you to look at your activity level first, is because your next step, once you know what your average activity level is every day, how many steps you're getting in every day, is to get that up to be, have your minimum, your floor, be 8,000 steps a day. So no matter what. And I will tell you that I have a no matter what with 8,000 steps a day.

Literally.

I was at a conference where we were sitting all day long. And even though I was in the back trying to stand up as much as possible, move around, I got back to the hotel after dinner and I'd had 4,000 steps. And that just, I made a commitment, always 8,000 steps. So I told my husband I was going to take the stairs to the 17th floor. I figured that would do it. Nope, didn't do it. Gave me about a thousand steps. Completely unfair. So then he was nice enough to go out for a walk with me, but I made sure I got it. And that's what I'd say is get your steps up. It may take you a month to get to 8 to 12,000 steps a day. Doesn't matter. This is a marathon. But then make sure that 8,000 is your floor. And, and really you want it to be more in the 10, 12, 15,000 steps a day. Once you've got that foundation now, you're going to crank up the volume and you're going to add some intensity with something called a rucking vest. Now, if you think about it, we've been rucking a rucking vest is a weighted heavy vest since we were little kids, because when we were little kids, we had to throw books in our backpack to go to school. That's what rucking is. And by the way, if you don't want to buy a wrecking vest, throw something in a backpack and use that. You're going to want to start with about ten pounds in your wrecking vest, but you're going to bring it up. Like my wrecking vest now is up to £25. So this is super cool because it's an easy way to add intensity into your steps. The other thing I'd love to see you do once you've got that foundation down is if you're out walking, see if you can add in some little high intensity intervals into your walk. So you're walking and then maybe you sprint a block, you're walking, you run up a flight of stairs. So you start to add in some high intensity interval training into the mix as well. One of the reasons this is so important is we know that this intensity, specifically this high intensity interval training, can help burn off that visceral adipose tissue. Okay. Now that we've got that foundation, we are going to build in resistance training. And if you're listening to this going, you know, I've, I've done cardio my whole life. I've done yoga, I've done pilates. Is it too late? It is never too late to start this. I was in a doctoral program where he had 80 and 90 year olds starting resistance trainings. Never too late. And now's the best time. Here's the big thing I want you to think about when you're doing resistance training. We are not doing resistance training to get better at resistance training. We are doing resistance training to get better at life. And so the movements I'm going to recommend to you are movements that mimic activities of daily living. And I prefer, if possible to do free weights, dumbbells, bands, cables rather than machines, because in life we're not bolted to the floor. Now, having said that, you can build muscle with machines too. And if you have any types of restrictions or injuries, and that's what you need to do, it's fantastic. Do what you can do. I have you focus on four body parts, but I'm really going to emphasize three of them. And when you're doing these four body parts, we're going to look at moving in a bunch of different patterns. Now, when you first start to resistance train, the first thing that's happening is your muscles and nerves are learning to talk to each other. And what's interesting is you'll start to notice within the first month of strength training, you're not going to, you know, wake up one morning and go, oh my gosh, look at my biceps. So I want to manage expectations. Not happening. What you are going to notice is that you're getting a lot stronger very quickly. And that is because of your nerves and muscles learning to talk to each other. What happens after that is your collagen, your connective tissue starts to get stronger and then your muscles start to get stronger. If you are new, starting out one to two pounds of muscle a month would be amazing for you to put on. If you've been working out for a long period of time, it may be a half a pound to a pound of muscle a month. Putting on muscle is sort of like watching grass grow. You're going to notice more in terms of your strength development, so pay attention to that. It's really motivating too Now I like to incorporate full ranges of motion as much as possible and also some balance, you know, so I'm pulling in balance and flexibility and core work. And I like to move in all the different planes, meaning that I like to move front to back, side to side, twisting all the different planes that I'd be moving in in life, right? And so when I talk about four different body parts, I talk about upper body pushing. And upper body pushing are things like a push up. Now this is in a frontal plane, right? This is horizontal and an overhead press vertical. So I like to do two different planes if I'm going to do an upper body pulling exercise and a push ups overhead presses, upper body pushing, that's chest, that's shoulders, that's triceps. By the way, I don't, I rarely do arm isolation movements. I'm doing these complex movements because I get my arms when I do it. So if you're sitting here thinking, I want to have great arms push ups, overhead presses are fantastic. And for upper body pulling, for your biceps and your lats and your shoulders, I love bent over rows and upright rows. So again, here's one plane. Here's my horizontal, here's my vertical, okay? And then for my hips and thighs, I like to do some kind of a hinge. And so that might be a squat or a step up. But again, you'll see these are very functional exercises. Like think about a squat. When do you have to get up out of a deep sofa? A chair off the toilet? What about an overhead press? Are you putting things overhead? Are you putting luggage in the overhead rack? What about a bent over row? What do you have to pick up? So all of these things are super duper functional. And that's one of the key things that I want to make sure that you're doing. Remember, you're training to get better at life and you're training in a very controlled environment. So that when you get out into the wild and you need that strength, you can call on it. Now, when you're doing an exercise program, there's a couple different terms that you need to know. There's the exercise itself. I'll give you the example of the push up. So the exercise is the push up. How many times you do the push up, those are called your repetitions. And then in between sets, so you have an exercise, let's say you do 10 repetitions, that is called a set. And then in between sets, you have a rest break. When you're first starting out, you want to go really light what you're really teaching your body again is getting those nerves and muscles to communicate. And you also want to see how you feel, feel. And so I like you to go through two exercises within each of those three areas. Notice I didn't do anything with core because truthfully, if you're doing a push up, right, you're using your core. If you're doing a squat right, you're using a core. So I'm using my core within these other exercises. So what I like to start you with is very easy sets and one or two sets per exercises start. And in fact, you might just even want to do one and do it, you know, two or three times that week. So this is super light. You're just, you're literally going through the motion. So you might just go through a squat over a chair just to see how you feel. And then the next day you're going to check in. You're going to check in and see if you're sort of a touch. If you're sore for more than two days, and most importantly, are you sore to a joint site that is generally a connective tissue warning sign, right? If you are sore to the touch, sore for more than 2, 2 days, sore to the joint site, you want to give yourself a little bit more recovery and back down a little bit and really make sure that your form is great. Use the mirror, check your form. Form is always going to be your limiter. Once you've got that underway, you're going to work in sets of 8 to 15 repetitions. Now, here's what's interesting that we know about building muscle. We used to believe that there was a very tight range to build muscle. Eight to 15 repetitions, like it was some kind of magic. Now we know that the range is much bigger, like 6 to 30 reps. But the reality is I want to be time efficient too. And so I find that working in that 8 to 15, maybe 8 to 12 rep range is just the easiest, most time efficient to do. And then you take about a minute or two rest in between sets. If you go, if you can go fifty reps, a hundred reps, that's much more endurance. And you're really not going to build muscle doing that. So you really want to think of 8 to 15 reps. And I always say if you can't get to 8, just lighten it a little bit. And if you can just easily keep going past 12 to 15, you need to increase the weight. There's this idea in resistance training called reps in reserve. And when you're doing an exercise, by the time you get to say that 12th one, you should feel like maybe you could eke out another one or two in good form, right? Those are called your reps in reserve. So that's how you get started. Just those really easy light ones. Once you've got that under your belt, you've been working on your form, then you can move into adding on some sets and adding in some weight. You're going to want to start with a full body warmup, of course, and then when you do each exercise, do a lighter warmup set and then do two medium sets. So let's say that you're going to do an overhead press and you're using say 10 pound dumbbells in each hand. Maybe you start with 5 pound dumbbells as your warm up set and then you do two sets of ten pound, right? Then once you've gotten through that, you can move into doing a warmup set and take it to harder sets and then you can add another set so that we're increasing the volume. One of the ways or the way that you build muscle is really what's called time under tension. It's the more that you do in that range, the stronger you're going to get, but also the more muscle you're going to build. And really this is much more, this type of training is most, is most focused on building muscle. You will get the strength, but this isn't where we're specifically focused on strength. But as you're first starting out, you're going to get, you're going to get more muscle and strength as well. Once you get all of this under your belt, you can start to focus more on strength and power. What you want to do is build up to 10 sets per area or more per week. So let's say we're doing upper body pushing and pulling. You want to do at least 10 sets in that area per area per week. For hypertrophy you want to take at least a day in between. So if I do my upper body pushing on Monday, I wouldn't do it again until Wednesday or maybe even Thursday, depending on how you feel. Again, sort of touch sore to the joint site sore for more than two days. You might need to get a little bit more recovery in things like hot saunas and foam rolling and Epsom salts baths and creatine, which can help you work out harder and recover better. Now once you've gotten say at least four months, but really more like six months under your belt, you're feeling A lot more confident. You've gotten a lot smaller, stronger, you're doing the, the warmup set and three hard sets of each of these, you're doing it two to three times a week. You can start to look at do I want to include in some strength and power exercises. Strength are things that we do much heavier, much lower rep ranges like 1 to 5. And power is when we move things really fast. But I'm not going to clog you, your brain up with that right now because right now you've got the next four to six months to really just work on getting yourself. So this is a solid routine. You're building muscle, you will get, you'll notice a lot of strength increase. And you're also not only monitoring your progress by looking at how strong you're getting, how many, how much weight you can increase. Can you add a set? Can you add more reps? Also, I want to make sure you're monitoring your body composition as well and make sure that as you're doing this, you're continuing to put on muscle. And what should happen is if you're trying to change your body composition, ideally you're, as you're putting on muscle, you're starting to lose a little bit of fat too, because muscle is going to make you more insulin sensitive. It's better for your metabolism, so it's going to make it easier for you to burn fat as fuel. Now, one more way that you can increase your volume. So we talked about different ways to do this, by adding another set, by adding more weight. And one other thing that you can do, and it's also going to help in that power side, is increase your speed. And it turns out that if you increase your volume, it can actually help increase your strength as well. All right, that is one piece of the puzzle. There's really three pieces here, of course. And what you want to think of too is that you've got to pay attention to fuel eating protein first, making sure you're getting the protein you need along with things like creatine and collagen. And then of course, recovering well so that you can build that muscle, because where you really build muscle is in the recovery. Be sure to join me next time.

For more tools, tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look, look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast@subscribetoj.com so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word Word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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