STRENGTH TRAINING: Muscle is Medicine & Nature's Spanx
Lift heavy. Age slowly.
Part of The Longevity Series for Women Over Forty
Disclaimer: The information in this protocol is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your GP or a qualified healthcare professional before beginning any new health practice, particularly if you have a pre-existing condition, joint issues, osteoporosis, or any other medical condition that may be affected by resistance training. The author accepts no liability for any injury, loss, or damage incurred as a result of following this protocol.
I remember the exact moment I picked up a proper weight for the first time. Not a pastel-coloured two-kilogram dumbbell I’d been waving about in HIIT classes. An actual, not-embarrassing weight. I was 41. I’d signed up for a 12-week body transformation programme called ‘Embody’ which involved three hour-long sessions a week with a trainer, mostly because something in my body was asking for more than yoga could give it and I had run out of excuses not to try it.
My hands felt clumsy around the barbell. My ego felt clumsy around the whole thing, the squat rack, the smell, the terrible music, the men in the mirror checking themselves out with the solemn concentration of people doing important work.
I felt entirely out of place. And then I lifted it.
And I thought: where has this been my entire adult life?
Not the gym, necessarily. Not the rack or the mirrors or the music but that feeling. The deeply, almost startlingly immediate feeling of doing something my body and my mind was built for like something it had been waiting to do, patiently for years.
Fast forward 18 months and life, as it does, had other plans. A baby arrived. Consistency went out the window the way it does when you are a solo mother and the logistics of your days leave very little room for anything that isn’t essential survival. Strength training slipped and years passed.
I came back to it properly at age 48. I did two sessions a week, sometimes three roughly two hours total, most weeks. it worked for me because I could make that time for it and what happened in my body over the four years since has changed not just my body, though it has changed my body but my metabolism, my sleep, my mood, my bones, my cognition, my presence in a room, and my relationship with my own physical capability in a way I had not anticipated and cannot adequately explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it.
I’m telling you this not to suggest that the gap didn’t matter because it did, but to tell you that you can come back. Later than you planned maybe and with less time than you’d like, and it still works. That your biology is that obliging.
This is the protocol I wish someone had handed me at 40, along with a frank conversation about what was actually happening in my body and why I needed to stop treating strength training as optional.
It is not optional. I want to say that plainly, at the start, before we get into the science: for women over 40, strength training is not optional.
What happens next is the part that changes everything - not just your body, but how you walk into a room, how you feel in your own skin, and how your brain, bones and hormones respond when you finally give them what they’ve been asking for.
The full 12-week programme is waiting for you.
