63: Stop Doing More Cardio - The Smarter Way Women Over 40 Build Strength and Confidence with Debra Atkinson

I am so excited to honestly have one of my friends and colleagues that I've known for close to a decade now on the podcast today. And y' all are going to love her. It's Deborah Atkinson, who is a 41 year fitness expert, best selling author and hormone centric fitness coach who has helped over 275,000 women thrive through their second half. She hosts the Flipping 50 podcast and created the first Menopause exclusive fitness membership and professional certification. You all are going to love this conversation. Let's dig in. Welcome to Modern Thyroid and Wellness, the podcast that explores the intricate dance between health, wellness and thyroid, unraveling the threads that weave our vitality together. I'm your host, McCall McPherson, and I'm sorry, so thrilled to guide you on this journey to optimal wellness. All right. I'm so excited to have this conversation and to bring your voice and wisdom and knowledge to my community. So thank you so much for being here today, Deborah.

Well, thank you for having me. Always good to see you.

Such a pleasure. I was just introing and saying how, gosh, I think I met you close to ten years ago now.

I think so.

It's been a while. I know. I'd love for you to introduce a little bit to our listeners. So your niche, your expertise, your thing is fitness plus menopause, which is so huge needed. This kind of targeted, specific approach is so necessary because so much in our physiology changes as we approach menopause postmenopausally, et cetera. How did this become your thing? Tell us about your journey.

Purely accidentally, if you want to know the truth. So I had been in fitness for about 30 years, taught in kinesiology at Iowa State University. And that was probably the, the stimulus for the change that I went through, which is, you know, taking my business entirely from, you know, teaching at a university to being like personal training director, group fitness director in private clubs and. And I had to just stop and say, wait a minute. I had the blessing of and loved teaching at a university, by the way. I didn't leave because I didn't like it, but I left probably because I thought I can put my foot on the accelerator more. Outside of academics, there's fewer politics, there's fewer. You gotta wait and get everybody's approval before you can make a change. And being in your own business, you can at least make a decision in the morning and implement by afternoon. And I appreciated that. But I realized we were losing all of the really good students that I'd seen come through. I had seen them in their 200 level courses and got to see them do internships in the last one. So often I was asked to write a letter of recommendation, but they would come back a year and a half or two years later and ask for another one. Not because they were getting a promotion or moving on to something better. They believed they needed to get a real job because they had to market and sell. And this was not about fitness anymore. And we didn't teach them. We didn't teach them how to market and sell. And you know, getting a certification doesn't teach them how to run a business. And really, even working for a fitness center or someone else, they are running their own business, micromanaging, how do I get clients and how do I keep them? So I quit in order to teach them how do I market and sell without being sleazy. And every listener out there wants the good trainers to know how to do that so that you find them and not the ones who are good at marketing, but really not helping. So we all want that. And all of a sudden I quit everything to do it. I literally said, this is my give back to the fitness industry. We need to do this. Nobody's doing it in a way that resonates with them. And I quit. And immediately I was like, I have to actually be doing it myself. I have to demonstrate this works. Or I'm talking out of one side of my mouth and saying, do this marketing and do that sales. I'm not doing it, but you should do that. So I knew I had to choose a niche, a demographic to work with to start my own business that I could say, here's what I'm doing, here's how it's going to. Here's how I'm reaching people, here's how they're finding me. And, you know, I'd been training for 30 years and I was probably at 22, I was an old soul. So I had older siblings. I was the surprise. And I had older parents. My mom had remarried someone 10 years older than her. My parents were my friend's grandparents. Ages, you know, so I got all this culture really young and often would get older clients. And I felt comfortable with them and they with me. So I was doing research, working with boomers for 30 years, not knowing it was that research, but it was them that I realized were the most noisy. And this was 2012 and 13 who were like my doctor says, just welcome to menopause. What do you expect? This is just part of the deal. And they weren't being heard, but they also were like I'm not having this. This is not okay. And they were being the boomer that we know and love, like, oh no, we're not going to do this. That's not the way we're playing. And so I dedicated my business to them and that business took off. So flipping 50 was ready for somebody hears me, this is great. And that's really how I wound up doing it. We're now full circle because we are training trainers how to do, do that and use our framework because they don't get that in a four year degree either. We don't teach them a word about menopause and they don't get it as they study for a certification either. So we still have to teach them that as well.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's so needed in every aspect of health and wellness and I think it's neglected across the board now. I think we're having a moment, like a hormone moment, right? Yes, thankfully. Right. But I mean, I don't think that's going to change. Medical school training, PA school training and yeah. So I think it's incredible to forge.

That path and there's just so much in medical school, in PA school, in a trainer learning all of the basics. It's not their fault, it's not the university's fault. There's no time. There's not enough time. Yeah.

And then I think too, it's hard when medicine's view and even society's view for a long time was, well, this is just part of the normal aging process. Why would we do anything different? Different? This happens to everyone, you know, when obviously we know now that so many implications can be shifted and changed if we take the right approach moving through those years. I'm curious and I truly don't know, so I'd love your take. What, what does the scientific literature say about exercise, menopause, what happens to our body as we move through and into menopause?

Yeah, I just had the opportunity this fall a few times to present for a 4m their women's summit, which is so exciting because it was sold out. Seeing all these physicians get excited about what's possible. But the musculoskeletal system changes affected by menopause. What are those? When we're about 30, we can peak at our bone mass at 30. And so that's kind of when we think window closes and we start like you've deposited your bank money of bone. And then we start to deposit and withdraw, you know, 1 to 3% a year, depending on who you Are, are you lifting weights? Are you getting impact and are you eating high protein and sleeping and not stress? All the things that contribute to so much in health anyway. But then through menopause there's an acceleration like right before we hit menopause, that last stage of perimenopause, early stage of post menopause, you've had that, you hit 12 months, no period that first couple of years, even up to three, there's an accelerated window where we can lose up to 20% of our bone mass during that window alone. Now the good news is that's not all of you listeners. This is those who aren't lifting weights, who aren't paying attention to good nutrition, protein, who aren't getting good sleep, paying attention to our stress level, because those are all bone factors too. But then it evens out again. So we accelerate that loss for a bit, it slows down again and kind of remains there. Men and women kind of even out on our bone loss at about 7:70. But okay, so there's bone muscle is also a big one. And again, I always like to give this caveat. What I'm telling you is history. So what if we just decide not to participate? I mean, we can rewrite this right now. So I think it's really important that when you hear people say or see it in writing, we lose 3 to 8% of our muscle mass every decade in the past. Right. I mean, all we're talking about is historically, because our grandmothers didn't lift weights. Most of you are right. So we're already changing it, but we don't have those statistics yet. So it's not all doom and gloom. I think we're in a moment in time where it's never been a better time to be aging.

Right?

So we can lose between 3 and 8% if we were to do nothing and, or we're at bedridden or sedentary and not eating protein, not sleeping in stre rest again, all the things. And that really kind of holds true until we're about 60. We start to lose it faster and we lose our strength even faster. So it's about 1% every year, so 10% every decade. And again, not everybody's doing that. We know that 85 year olds pick up weights and they gain significant mass and strength both. It's really fun to be seeing what can happen if we choose it to happen. But the other things that are occurring are connective tissue. We don't talk about that. We talk so much about. Unless you're injured, you Talk about that if you're injured. But our ligaments and our tendons, our connective tissue, like collagen and cartilage, you know, wear and tear on the joints, we start feeling it more. We start thinking twice about our knees. You know, there is that moment. I remember we lost Robert Redford very recently. And I remember seeing a quote of him where he was saying, you know, at some point, we start getting careful. And I think that's sad. He said, you know, but it's so true. There is that moment where, gosh, I never thought about that before, and now I'm thinking twice about. It's slippery out. Maybe I shouldn't go for a walk. So there's always that little thing. But our connective tissue is less resilient when we lose estrogen. So as that loss goes down, some women don't feel it for a long time. And then all. All of a sudden, it's like they've hit a critical mass of loss and they'll start to feel aches and pains. That's called arthralgia. You know, it's kind of phantom. There's nothing wrong with a lot of women if they show up at the doctor's office. There's nothing structurally wrong. And yet they feel the aches and pains they feel. Movement doesn't feel great. So that can be an issue. And there's things we can do about that, too. And the last one I'll mention, and this is less structural, is there such a thing as exercise intolerance? And it occurs in a lot of heart patients. It is related to the endothelial lining. I think a lot of people had it with long haul Covid, but women have described this, and they described this to me before I knew about this. I think 2017, Ann Larotti found this and coined this term that it occurs in women in menopause as well, simply because of menopause. And women feel like they've got asthma for the first time ever, but they haven't earned it. They're conditioned. They've been regularly training, but suddenly they don't have the endurance that they did. And so they may be able to go only 15 or 20 minutes when they're used to going out the door for three miles, you know, and so it's something that you would almost treat it like asthma. We kind of try to bump our head on that ceiling without getting them so breathless they can't participate and try to raise it again.

Wow, how interesting. Yeah, I had no. I mean, how wonderful that it was finally even figured out and termed. Can you believe we're still living in a time where we're figuring out all of this in real time? Things that happen across the board to so many women. Fascinating. Can you talk with me a little bit and kind of compare and contrast what exercise looks like or should look like for women early on, 20s, 30s, perimenopause, menopause. Are there differentiators? I know you've been doing this for 40 plus years, so I think you've learned some things and moved plenty of people probably through the entirety of those processes. So yes, a little difference or even the differential between women and men.

Yeah, would love to. And if you don't mind, I'd love to even back up a couple of decades. Can we do that?

Absolutely.

You know, the time we really want to start thinking about a woman's menopause or her older age is when she's a little girl. You know, right now I think we're living in a time where we do talk about children and childhood obesity and screen time. So getting kids back out, getting them playing, getting them jumping, getting them experiencing different sports, number one, so that they become lifetime advocates of it and I love it. And they find what they love and they become good at it. So that they want to continue when they're teens. Because at that teenage years it gets tricky. If you're not good at something, you probably don't want to participate because you're more self conscious. So we want to lay that foundation because they're bone building by give them a jump rope, give play hopscotch with them. You need it and they need it both. Right. And just experiencing different kinds of sports in all different ways so that they're working their muscles and their bone is great for brain development too. But that. And then when they reach mensis puberty, they're already really fired into the bone and getting control and coordination. So they're less likely to get injured if they're playing high school sports or they're active women. But if we start children being active, they're more likely to continue their entire lifetime being more active adults, which is what we want, especially in this time where screens are so prominent in our everyday everything. So in their 20s, for a lot of young women and girls, it's they're in college or just post college and sometimes they go off to college and we're no longer in high school sports. It's not organized. There's a select few that are collegiate athletes, but that's not everybody. So we can become Less active, you know, and that can be a critical time right there when we need that bone density to happen. We are more resilient. So our connective tissue, we're going to recover really quickly from workouts. You know, we can bounce back. If we do strength training, we can bounce back within 48 hours. 48 is the minimum between a strength training workout and another one or a really hard, high intensity interval training and another one because there's a little more damage. But at 20, you're fine. You're going to bounce back very quickly unless there's some underlying thing going on. So it's the time when most of us feel about our bodies, then sometimes we do later. So remembering, get them in the gym while they're confident. I love right now what I see when I go to the gym. We see the young women in the weight room. It's fantastic. Yeah. Alone together, but loving it. 30s to 40s, you know, think about what's happening in life. Sometimes that's family, starting family, early family and juggling work gets a little harder for them to exercise. But the things we should be focusing on, continuing to do that strength training, kind of preempting, you know, what will happen in my 40s is it'll be easier to gain weight if I start losing that estrogen. So if I'm active now, focused on building bone, keeping muscle or building it right now, my odds of having a smoother sale, at least through menopause, are greater. We still have that little bit of genetic component, but you can control the majority of it. 40s to 50s. So as you well know. So for most women, that's early perimenopause to late perimenopause. During that period of time, a woman could, who wasn't doing anything, lose 27% of her muscle mass because of all the things if she's struggling with hot flashes, nights, sweats and or insomnia, very hard to comply with exercise even if you want to and have the motivation to do it. And so it's not just she's not doing anything, she's sitting on the couch, it's she may want to but she actually can't and maybe more prone to injury if she does. So we are also busy. So that's if you've got a family and or you're focused on a career or you've got both things, it's a challenging time to fit it all in, which you need to make an effort to do it because losing that muscle at that point means we're probably Sabotaging. And what we hear from most people is weight loss resistant and you know, I've got belly fat, I can't get rid of this. And that's the evidence. We know they're probably insulin resistant. And so the exercise in the muscle is to combat that. 50s to 60s, a lot of women are either hitting their menopause, they're really hitting it there at early part or later part. And everybody's slightly different, but we definitely need to keep lifting weights. We need to introduce some high intensity interval training that perimenopause period. A lot of times we may want women to do HIIT if they feel good, but if they don't and they're already exhausted, I usually leave that out. We just want them moving during the day in a safe way and they're less resilient there anyway. So if they're also losing sleep, I don't love them doing agility work and rapid fire things. So in their 50s, though usually things start to smooth out. Depending on a woman's journey, we want to introduce some HIIT if we can. She's feeling good, keep the strength training, get the movement, regular movement every day. And the exercise is not meant to take over as a part time job. If the movement is a critical part of every day, we're getting her to walk, get steps in, somehow breaking up sedentary time. The strength training is a priority, but it's not a long time investment of time. And in fact the shorter probably the more high quality it is. So we're just after quality, not quantity. I like to say mvp, the minimum viable physical activity so that you can preserve the muscle, help the bone or reverse loss. If you've had some and still live life, you're supposed to have more energy than anybody in the room after 60. Generally that's postmenopause for most women. We can usually turn up the dial. We can do a little bit more volume and it's shown that a woman who's postmenopausal won't get the same result or benefit with adipose tissue from the same thing that a woman pre menopause or perimenopause will. So they may gain strength or muscle mass, but they're not going to get as much change in body composition optimization. They need a little bit more volume. That might mean they do their strength training and they do four sets instead of three. Or they do another muscle group during that workout and they stay just a little bit longer. Or do they do three sessions of hiit, not just two. So they can withstand more volume. They generally feel better. They've kind of stabilized. They're not on that roller coaster anymore. Sleep may or may not still be a problem. So it's always, how's a woman feel? As well as what stage is she in? But the last thing that we think about is age. So everybody, really, it's about capacity, not so much age as hormone stage and how you're feeling.

I'm curious, too, for. I mean, probably not so much of the listeners for your podcast, but maybe some of the listeners for mine, they might be in their 40s or their 50s or their 60s, and they haven't. Maybe they don't have the foundation of a lot of physical activity. It's so interesting because even my generation, we. Strength training was not the thing. Like, that was not what most people did. It wasn't a norm for me and my friends from high school to go work out and lift weights. Maybe we'd go hit the treadmill, maybe go to a yoga class, but we were not lifting heavy. Right. So I know personally, I went into my 30s without a lot of skills in this topic. Now I strength train very, very frequently, three times a week at least. But for people who haven't done this before, you have some tips and tricks on getting familiar, getting comfortable, how to build the foundation that they need to move forward successfully.

Absolutely. I'm actually teaching this to physicians right now, which is kind of a joy because you have so much authority and credibility. And so if we can give some of the tools. So you really know how do I help this patient when I'm talking to her? That's amazing. But this is the biggest piece is we're still looking. And I've been doing this 42 years. You've mentioned. So 44 years ago, when I was sitting in a classroom, the statistics are unfortunately the exact same as they were. Only 20% of women are actually doing the minimum amount of resistance exercise twice weekly that they should. Wow.

It hasn't changed.

No, no.

Wow.

And that's. We're talking for metabolic health. We're not talking y' all for fitness or extreme or performance. We're just to help you avoid weight gain, to help you optimize blood sugar levels, stabilize energy, lift your grandchildren or puppies or potting soil, you know, all those things. We need it. So I think what we have to do is be careful of our messages, you know, in outwardly. So to anybody listening, if we have intimidated you or let believe it has to be heavy, it doesn't. Lightweight gets progress. Moderate level weight gets progress. And heavyweight, absolutely no contest. It has been proven to help with bone density and be safe for postmenopausal women. But the studies that are showing that don't exclude light and moderate from also working. So we have to make that clear, because I think we're hearing lift heavy, and a woman says, but my knees don't let me. It's okay, let's stop before we're at a pain point. So all people need to start light. And that's higher repetition ranges. So between about 15 and 20 for me is a sweet spot. The real range as a strength and condition coach, between six and 30 repetitions. If we reach muscle fatigue doing any of that rep range, we have stimulated muscle mass and we will have a gain in strength. And higher repetitions generally lend to more muscle endurance. And true strength really does come from lifting the heaviest. But each of us will find a place where. This is my point, where I can do weights this heavy and lower, and this is my playground. And after that, I begin to feel vulnerable or achy and sore, and my joint talks to me. And we have to get there slowly, find that space. And no, this is safety for me. And then we can manipulate different ways by slowing down. So the first thing I think is realizing the weight that you can lift, you can still reach muscular fatigue. And that means temporarily, you're going to put it down, and in 30 seconds or a minute, you're going to be fine. By the way, you're not really tired all day. This is just a minute or two of muscle fatigue. It's not I'm tired kind of fatigue. So I think making that clear. And when we start, one to two sets is plenty. And you want to know, I'm going to do this twice weekly. We know that once generally is not really enough. That kind of you're starting over if you're doing it next week again, just one time. But we also find that the sweet spot is 2 versus 3 for a lot of older women, because when they do three, they feel more tired and they do couch compensation. So suddenly, spontaneous activity during the rest of the day is down. And that is not the desired effect. We're supposed to get good at life, not at the gym. Right. So the point is given, 80% of women are not doing it. If you are exercising regularly, you should be the most energetic woman walking into a room. You should feel good. And if you're not, your program is not fitting your need right now. So all we need to do is tweak it. Yeah.

And I love that you mentioned a program. I was literally talking to my sister in law last week about starting an exercise program and I'm like, you need to find someone to lead you with this. You need to look for a program like yours. People. I feel like if you're listening and you're just starting out on your fitness journey, it is intimidating, it feels somewhat unreachable, but it's not. If you have a program, if you have someone moving through this process with you to kind of guide you, give you tips, talk to you about correct form, it's such an incredible platform that will then serve you for the rest of your life. I very often think about, in my early 30s, I hired a personal trainer for, I don't know, six months. I don't need a personal trainer now. And I've been able to build off of that, but without that foundation, I don't know if I'd still be strength training. I think it would still be intimidating, you know, a decade later. So incredibly, incredibly powerful to have people around you to nurture you and support you and nudge you in the right direction if you're just starting out, for sure.

And I will say this, and I, I hesitate to say this because as you know, somebody who's been in the industry for a while, if I, if I throw one of us under the bus, I throw us all under the bus. So that is not my goal or intention here. But there's a difference between trainers. So you do want to ask the right questions. You want to ask if you've helped women in menopause or you've helped, you know, specifically someone with joint issues, if that's you. So ask about when you hire a trainer, know that you should interview them as if you're hiring somebody to do a job, because essentially you are. And you know, ask them for proof or testimonials of success stories of women just like you. I think that's important. I often have trained and coached trainers live and done this in a university setting. And it's a unique trainer who's actually paying really close attention to the moving parts and those non moving parts. So we're looking for joints that are not locked. We're looking for a slight bend of the knees. The point of where's the pelvis in this position? And those little nuances are often the little things that can lead to injury. So it's just feel confident in who you're with. I mean, that's trust your gut. Trust your gut.

I couldn't agree more. And I love the concept of niches. Like, I think there is so much power in finding someone who hyper focuses on small groups of people and that's what they do all day, every day. That's what makes modern thyroid clinic so great. You know, not to toot my own horn, but it's like, hey, we only do this thing all day, every day and that allows us to get really good at it. Whereas if you have a trainer that has this hugely wide scope and isn't necessarily hyper invested into one group or subset of people, I don't think if you're in that subset of people, you're going to get the same care that you would if they went to someone like you who is hyper focused on serving this specific type of person. So I such a good, good point. Agree. Yeah, yeah. So we talked a little bit about bone changes that happen in menopause, ligament joint changes, muscle changes that happen in menopause. And you had kind of planted a little bit of a seed that, hey, like there are things that we can do about this. I was wondering what we can do to intervene on those kind of subsets. And any tips, tidbits, what you're seeing as outcomes and how they shift, Just take us through it.

Yeah, well, and let me start with bone. Let's do that. Although muscle is such a critical part of that, you know, the stronger your muscle, the more muscle you've got, the more it is actually from each end of its origin insertion, pulling on your bone, and it makes it possible for you to do the things that will impact bone. But I think for a lot of listeners, potentially that's the first thing that gets your attention. You may have had this nagging voice, you know, you need to strength train. But as soon as you have a DEXA scan that shows you it's a little scare and it's like, okay, the rug may be taken out from under me and I thought I was going to spend my retirement like this and now I'm concerned. So I would first of all consider that a gift. You got a wake up call. The only thing different about yesterday and today is now, you know, it was already there. So we don't need to bubble wrap you. So just let's say that there's a lot of proof in those more recent studies that women with osteoporosis postmenopause can lift heavy and they can do high impact. We just don't do it today. Right. We build our way up to it. So again, you are more resilient than we've Ever thought before. So anybody listening who might be in their 50s or 60s, you know, what you learned in the 90s, you know, was that we do this very differently, that you have to be very cautious. And there are certain contraindicated moves. We don't think so black and white anymore. It's really how you do what you do unless you have a prior existing fracture. So just to make it clear, it is safe to exercise. Probably safer to exercise than not to. So there's four pillars for bone, and so number one, resistance training. And we talked about how you start. So everybody starts in that same way. One to two sets, 15 to 20 repetitions, and you're learning really good form. That's the most important part. There's something related to resistance training, exercise, motor learning, that in the first six to eight weeks, and I would venture to say there are some studies that say even up to 10 to 12, the reason for progress is the neural connection. It's just your wifi is going on stronger between your brain and the muscle, and we can't rush that. So if you pick up a heavier weight, thinking, well, I'm going to get fit faster, you really can't. But you may rush to an injury because your ligaments and your tendons, they need an adaptation period. So they're going to need a little more foreplay. You got to go slower with them. That's just a given. And the problem is we don't see it or feel it. We don't really see it until we have problems. So just go slow. You're going to make it. Focus on the coordination. Is that movement feel differently? Do I feel it in the right mind? Muscles are my heels down, My back is slightly arched and my knees are bent. So take your time, get good form, lay this foundation down for the rest of your life. You'll be grateful you did it this way. And we do that, and then we juggle. So if we start with a few exercises, I like to see a push, a pull, and a leg exercise. So that might be a chest press and a row and a squat. And we all sit down to a chair several times a day. So everybody squats. Even if you think you don't. That might be the first three exercises you are ever taught if you're just a beginner. And we're going to do, you know, one to two sets of 15 to 20 reps, we're going to gradually increase that to three sets. Then we're going to decrease the repetitions, go heavier with the weight. So we will work our Way up. The studies say that up to About a year, 48 weeks, moderate weight to fatigue is about 15 or 16 reps. In the research is what they deemed that you still get results with bone density. So either you're benefiting the bone, you might be reversing loss if you've had some. And after that point, you may plateau. Doesn't mean you're going to slide backward, but you may plateau unless you can go heavier or add other stimulus. So number one, resistance training. Number two is jump training for bones. So we've heard a lot more about this in the last couple of years. Jump training, or it's actually ground force reaction is what we're getting. So we're getting the impact of the bone actually coming down against a hard surface. For those who cannot, you've got joint replacement. You have prolapse incontinence. You have another reason why hip replacement. Your surgeon said, don't you screw my pretty workup. Right? And they said, don't jump ever again. You can stomp, you can do heel drops. So you raise to your toes. You drop yourself to the floor with your heels. That is just over the threshold of enough stimulus. Now it's on a continuum. So as we go up, the impact gets greater. Stomping is actually significantly along on the continuum, however, so maybe a surprise to find. You can stomp just on the ground. You could stomp your way upstairs, and you're getting some significant impact there to the bone. You can dance. So that also changes things because you're taking steps in different directions. Directional work is important. You can jump from side to side, just kind of over a line. You don't have to be going really high plyometric up and down. You can do that on your porch step as well, or the basement step. You can side step. That's actually a little more ground force. And then you can jump squat. You can stand on a chair and drop down. That's called a drop jump. And then explode again into a jump. And those are kind of from lowest to highest impact. Somewhere along the line, we all probably had a stopping point. I'm okay here. This starts to bother me. And that's again, we're just looking for, where's your playground? And if any of these categories are like, I can't do that. Okay, take it off the table. What can we do when we focus there? The other two things that seem to matter is getting at least 300 minutes of activity every week. So that could include your resistance training, your jump training, or going for walks. But it seems that the correlation is more active women are less likely to have osteoporosis or to have a fracture. So easy to understand, but it counts. So even if you're sitting at work, get up, try to walk down the hall, stand up, do a walking treadmill if you can. Do any little thing is going to help because you are still countering gravity and you're giving more pull of your muscle on the bones against it than if you're sitting or certainly lying. And the last one that's interesting is yoga. So Dr. Lauren Fishman came out with a study in about 2016. 12 yoga poses, 12 minutes a day. So he did each one of them for a minute, some of them. One was corpse pose, Bile that's lying on the ground, y'. All. He knew that that didn't really contribute to bone density. He said that was a reward. We just threw that one in there. And he is a sweet older man. I think he's probably on his way out, but they are currently underway because I interviewed him a couple years ago, and I said, I'm gonna play devil's advocate. Never in my life would I have thought that there's no real resistance, there's no ground force. Tell me how this is working. Because it showed they increased by 1% bone density every year for seven years. So after seven years, 7%. That's nothing to sneeze about. Given losses of bone, could be between 1 and 3%. That's a 4% difference. Very significant. And a lot of people would be thrilled to hear. You mean to tell me I stand in tree pose 30 seconds on the right and on the left and do a few more like that? And I've helped to myself. Yes. So it doesn't have to be sweaty, it doesn't have to be heavy or hard. But if I were a woman who could, I would do all four of those. I wouldn't choose one. Right. So put all your eggs in one basket. Not such a great idea. But, you know, his counter was, you are resisting gravity, you know, and you're doing it in a different way. So we have you, you know, leaning over, doing triangle pose. You're putting your spine in a different angle to gravitational forces than you otherwise would. And back to what we said earlier, the muscle pulling on the bone in those poses is creating tension, and yet if it's right and left, it's 30 seconds on each side. So again, low investment of energy, low investment of time, and yet pretty great reward. So. And I think most of us can agree we could probably use the stability and the mobility as well. So that's nothing to shy about. But that's wonderful news for anybody. The thing I'll throw in that it's not necessarily a pillar, but I think this is for somebody who can't do one of those or myself. I've done all of those. But I was even declared osteopenic in three places. And I thought, how rude. I do this for a living. This is embarrassing, you know, and you can out, you can't out exercise your history and could have been gut health. But I can think about grad school and an awful lot of Diet Coke, Awful lot of exercise, not a lot of great meals, you know. And so where was it that we fell short? All of us probably have something. So within a year, nine months in fact, of using whole body vibration. So I use a power plate, it's just a brand name, but I used that and found I reversed all three somewhat too completely. And one just needed to do more planking on my forearm. So then was able to reverse that. So there are exciting things to do for people who have joints that are compromised. You cannot do more. You don't actually have to go through the lifting. And there are significant benefits from just 10 minutes, five days a week, 15 minutes three times a week. So very again, low energy and time. The investment there is the tool or having access to it.

I had no idea vibration plates could help mitigate risk for bone density issues. That's amazing.

It is amazing. And I think for those people who have such significant osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis or joint replacements. And joint replacements. Check with your surgeon to see if they even want you on that first. But we've all got compromise in one place or another. Yeah. So it's great to have an option. Wow. Yes.

Fascinating. I'm so curious when you think about like a week of people's life and an ideal or reasonably optimal exercise rhythm of like, how many days a week would you envision someone should strength train vs HIIT vs I'm so curious what that construct looks like in your opinion. And I imagine it's a little bit different for different hormonal seasons. But I'd love to know what you think.

Yeah. If I could just say to everybody roughly, you know, and then let's take you and your passions, you and your motivation. So the lovers and the haters. But I think the real basics would be twice weekly resistance training as your minimum and might be your maximum, you know, because the other thing we haven't talked about is recovery. And women suck at it. I mean really, right? We're goers and doers. And if you like exercise, this is for you. And I know you because I am you. It's hard for us to take off. We would prefer to do but twice weekly strength training. It allows the time for the recovery. Twice hit again if your energy allows you, if you should be doing that. And daily walking, I mean that's a staple. It's like brushing your teeth, not flossing your teeth, brushing your teeth because we do that. And then it's mobility most days. If you love yoga or you love Pilates, fantastic. That's like bonus. But mobility, preparing and or recovering from your walk or from your resistance training or your hiit so that your body's good and warm and you're ready to do it. I think the gate that keeps us open to doing resistance training for our bones and our muscles will be mobility. So as we age, we want to spend more time taking care of that mobility so we don't get those joint limiters that keep us from doing the things that we need for bone density and or from having fast reaction skills so that if we do slip and trip, we don't go down.

I totally agree. And I just, just there were seasons of my life where I focused so much on strength training that those aspects were compromised. And even as a young, reasonably young person, I could feel it, you know, in my mobility, in my like my coordination. So I think it's so important that people have an as valuable strength training is. We need this viewpoint of a more holistic regimen to truly create health and lifespan. Well, this was wonderful, like so incredibly insightful. I would love for you to tell our listeners a little bit about where they can find out more from you about your podcast, about your platform, tell people where they can track you down.

Absolutely. So flipping50.com is our home base. We're at flipping50 TV, flipping50TV. It's a long story on social that's at Facebook, Instagram and YouTube primarily. And you know, we've got all kinds of things, you know, in terms of put a toe in the water. If you need some feedback on how fit are you for longevity right now, we've got some freebies for you, but the podcast home and show notes is at the website and you can find flipping 50 anywhere. You listen to podcasts and we'd love to have you.

Well, thank you, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge so freely, for all of your work. For women because it's invaluable. And I just appreciate you being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.