What’s the Best Exercise for Someone With Hypothyroidism?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Dr. Emily Kaibard recommends strength training with kettlebells, heavy loads, and long rest periods for people with hypothyroidism. This approach avoids tendon overuse and supports thyroid hormone turnover better than typical high-rep cardio.
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What's the best exercise for someone with hypothyroidism? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times Best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert, expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Carol ten from Instagram asks, what's the best exercise for someone with Hypothyroidism? Hey, it's JJ here and I have thyroid exercise expert Dr. Emily Kaibard here to answer this question. She's a New York City chiropractor, strength enthusiast and a mama to Elvis and Baby Brooklyn. And she helps women who are struggling with Hashimoto's learn how to work out without burning out. With using her own program, Thyroid strong and making lifestyle changes, she has put her Hashimoto's into remission and Fun Fact. Emily used to work for Bear Management in Yellowstone National Park. I'm kind of skin scared to even know what that means. Emily. She'll be right back with the answer, so stay with me.
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100% strength training. I personally like kettlebells. They are my default because they are very forgiving when you are first learning form. So, for example, if you take a deadlift, right, and you're learning a deadlift with a barbell, it's really hard to navigate form. Like, where do my feet go? Where does my back go? Is my tush high up in the air? Do I drop it down further? Now I kind of look like I'm doing a squat. And especially with a bar, you have to try and get the bar around your knees as you stand up. For people who do work out consistently, you know, they talk about like, shaving the legs with the bar. So there's a lot of form that has to get dialed in. With kettlebells, you can work the form, it's a little more forgiving. It's easier to pull the weight around your knees because you pull it, for example, like if you're doing a deadlift in between the legs. So I love kettlebells. Heavier than you think, right? So if you're gonna do a deadlift, I'm gonna say bare minimum starting weight is 24 kilos or 50 pounds heavier than you think. Low reps. Okay? So for us women who might be used to doing 30 to 50 reps with a 3 pound weight, that can lead to overuse, right? Can lead to tendinitis, muscle strain. Especially when we have hypothyroidism because we have slower tendon turnover. Our tendons take longer to regenerate. So if we do high reps, lots of volume, it can irritate the tendons. So I like low reps, but you still need progressive overload. You still need to challenge the muscles so you have to go a little heavier. So heavier than you think. Low reps, nice long rest breaks. And for those of us a long rest break like 90 seconds 2 minutes will feel really foreign, especially if we've only gone to spin class or Zumba class or a HIIT class where the rest break does not happen until the class is over 4550 minutes later. So the best exercise going back to that essential seven strength training to also help with the turnover of our thyroid hormones. So kettlebells are near and dear to my heart.
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