Eight midlife strength training myths busted

i didn May 2023 Elizabeth Davis went viral. “Training for my summer body?” The barrister turned personal trainer posted on Instagram. “F*** no! I’m training for my old lady body. Solid bones, strong muscles, healthy heart, good balance, functional independence.”

Her point — that fitness is a game for life rather than a quick fix to get beach-body ready — is one she feels has been missed by an industry that often prioritizes beauty over women’s health. Retraining in her new career in her thirties, with two of her three children childless, she was struck by how little she knew about the effects of age.

Sarcopenia, for example, is the process by which men and women over 30 lose 3-8 percent of their muscle mass. Degenerative osteoporosis, which makes our bones fragile and easily broken, affects one in three women in 50 worldwide. I kept saying ‘Why doesn’t anyone tell you this?’ moments,” she writes in her new book, Training for your old lady body.

“I believed the fitness industry was missing a trick,” he says. Her mission now is to help women of all ages learn how to improve their strength, mobility and bone density and stay independent as they age – and push back against marketing-led gym myths about strength training. There’s something bad he wants us to see.

Toning is different from building muscle

The idea that heavier weights have “bulk” and lighter ones have “tone” is nonsense, Davis says. “There is only one: gain muscle, lose muscle or keep muscle.” For other useless conjunctions, see “Embodiment” and “Definition”.

You left it too late

“I hear that a lot,” Davis said with a sigh. “Are you still alive? Then it’s not too late for strength training. Your body can adapt to any age.” He recommends starting with squats at home, sitting on a chair and then standing up — 10 to 15 times. If you feel better, you can increase how many sets you do. if not? Try a high chair. Or pick three exercises – a squat, a glute pull and a push-up against the wall – and repeat them two or three times a week, trying a little more each time you can. “It’s not a six-week turnaround,” he says. “It’s asking, ‘What’s one small thing I can do today that will make me go a little further?’ »

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You will always enjoy

Davies says coaching isn’t always about happiness. “I love strength training but do I always enjoy it? No. It’s cold in the gym now and I’d rather eat a chair than be under a blanket. Yeah, find something you can do for a long time, but don’t believe you’ll always want to.” Instead she suggests learning to “auto-regulate”—listen to your body and judge how much you can actually do that day.

Training too often means you lack motivation

It’s more likely that you mean a “lack of clarity,” Davis says. “We go through life hoping that a moment will magically appear for us to go and move, but life is busy.” When a client tells Davis they want to do four weekly sessions, he asks: When exactly? Usually, they cannot answer. “If you can’t be specific, you’re overreaching. And overreaching is a recipe for feeling like a failure.” She recommends scheduling—literally sitting down with your diary and writing when you go to train. “It’s a useful reality check and training makes it more likely to happen.”

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Women and men should train separately

Davis says that despite all the “women’s” workouts that seem like watered-down versions of men’s training, “the principles of training for hypertrophy [building muscle]Strengthening or improving your aerobic capacity is the same whether you are male or female. “What makes the difference is what you can manage, he says, is your starting point, your equipment and what you have going on in your life outside the gym. “If I’m with a sick child, I’m stressed about work or arguing with things that affect my wife’s training.”

You need to do many different exercises

Davis says he sees people “trying random stuff over and over again. But with strength training we have to be intentional about it. Sticking with the same movements builds your confidence and tissue flexibility, which will make you less likely to get injured.”

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Synchronize your menstrual cycle with your training

It’s becoming more popular, Davis says—the recommendation might be that you should lift heavy weights in your follicular phase between menstruation and ovulation, but not in your luteal phase, the other half of the cycle leading up to menstruation. But what’s really important, he says, is to focus on how you really feel—your mood, your energy, your appetite. “Going into a session believing you’re going to be weak or that it’s going to be a slug based on where you think you are during your menstrual cycle is likely to just create another barrier to training.”

Never miss a meeting

Don’t panic, Davis says — consistency isn’t the same as perfection. “If you miss a meeting you don’t mess it up – that kind of thinking is stuck in the mindset of days and weeks, whereas I want people to think in terms of decades,” he says. “It’s like paying into a pension pot.”
Training for your old lady body by Elizabeth Davies (Lip £16.99) is out on Thursday. buying timesbookshop.co.uk