Hard facts about what strength training really means if you want to achieve goals

Both men and women lose muscle mass as they age.  This can start when we are in our 30s but will become more noticeable in our 40s and beyond.  

As women generally have less muscle to start with, this loss can have a more dramatic effect on our health, especially as the loss increases around the time of menopause which brings a whole host of other potential symptoms.   

Despite there being a number of effects (lower bone density and risk of osteoporosis being a serious one) what often bothers us the most is weight gain.  This can be exacerbated by lower muscle mass which leads to a decline in metabolism.  Part of metabolism is your need for energy/food.  So if your need for food declines, you could be eating the same but you would gain weight.

Maintaining your lean muscle will help to preserve your metabolism.  Protein is essential for building muscle and so ensuring that your diet contains adequate protein is crucial but you must be challenging those muscles with appropriate strength training.  Eating or drinking protein alone will not necessarily build muscle.  

The exercise messaging that we receive is not providing an adequate picture of what we need to do to maximise health benefits.  We are told to go for a daily brisk walk and this is definitely positive if you are starting from a point of leading a sedentary lifestyle, but it is insufficient to maintain muscle or to provide protection against osteoporosis in the longer term.  

Walking and other cardiovascular exercises (running, cycling, swimming) are excellent for, as the name suggests, cardiovascular health, but they will not help in protecting against osteoporosis, nor will they build muscle and in fact could cause muscle loss if done too much.  Cardiovascular exercise can also increase appetite creating a vicious cycle of exercise – eat – exercise to try to burn off what you ate – eat – exercise to try to burn off what you ate etc etc etc.

To maintain, and preferably build lost muscle, you need to be using weights that challenge you.  For safety, you cannot go straight to a heavy weight, you need to start at your level and progress incrementally, so initially, some body weight squats could be sufficient.  In time however, as those squats get easier, you will need to find a way to make them more challenging.  Adding weight, starting small and increasing progressively is definitely an option here but there are a few other steps in-between such as changing your tempo (speed).  Either way, you are likely to eventually need to incorporate resistance, or weights, in order to make an exercise more challenging.

When it comes to weights, in my experience, both men and women seem to suffer from a gender-based societal bias of what they consider suitable.  For example, if a woman sees a man lift a 10kg weight, she will make an assumption that, as a woman, she should lift less, and she will therefore place an imaginary limitation on what she chooses from the dumbbell rack.  

Similarly, a man will look at what a woman lifts and may try to select a weight that is what they imagine to be appropriately heavier.  Or he might look at another man and choose a weight that is an appropriate amount heavier/lighter, depending on how he sees himself by comparison.

I have watched couples training in the gym together and you see the guy setting up an exercise, being the one in control, setting the amounts, unloading for the female, because he wants to know that he is stronger.  Big mistake to train with your male partner if he has a delicate ego.  Find the guy who wants to see you achieve your best!

It is very important to note that muscle size does not equate to muscle strength.  You cannot know how strong a person is by how they look.  You also cannot know a person’s training age (how long they have been training with weights) based on how they look, nor can you know how fit a person is by how lean/heavy they are.

I am commonly told by women that they do not want to lift heavy weights as they are concerned that they will get bulky.  They will resist lifting anything heavier than about 6kg.  Just for a moment, I want you to consider how heavy your handbag is?  How heavy is your washing basket?  How heavy are your shopping bags?  How heavy are/were your children or your nieces/nephews?  Women are much stronger than they give themselves credit for and you shouldn’t limit your strength based on what another person is doing.

I would hazard a guess that anyone over the age of about 40 has an experience of weight training based on the initial emergence of lifting weights back in the Arnold Schwarzenegger era which was based on body building.  Body building is a very specific type of training with a very specific eating schedule that must be adhered to consistently in order to build muscle size.  It is understandable that people could have developed an impression that any kind of weight lifting would lead to these results but that is not the case.  For general population, without a very dedicated and specific schedule of eating and training, the muscle gains that will occur are much more acceptable.  There are plenty of both males and females lifting comparably heavy weights who are not “bulky”, particularly if they follow a functional strength training program rather than an isolated style which is quite specific to body building.

So how much weight should you lift?  That is very individual and should be dependant on a number of factors including your goals/intended repetition range, your current experience of weight training, whether you have any injuries or limitations of movement, how well you slept, whether you are properly hydrated, how well you have eaten and whether you are distracted or stressed.

Ladies, if appropriate, depending on the above factors, you want to be completing 2-4 sets of 8-12 repetitions in order to build up lost muscle.  8-12 repetitions is not a choice of number, you don’t just decide to lift a weight 8 times and when you’ve completed the 8th, you stop.  If you are capable of continuing, you need to consider whether you could continue to 10 or to 12 or beyond.  If it is beyond, the weight might not be appropriate for your goal and you should consider increasing it, bearing in mind the factors above.

Those of you who enjoy a weights based group exercise class such as Pump (where you could expect to complete 800-1000 reps in a full length class), consider taking some of those moves out onto the gym floor and doing them with the repetition range of 8-12 over 2-4 sets and building up to a heavier weight over time.  Classes are a great way to get exercise done but they rarely generate any muscular changes after the first few months of initial adaptation because the stimulus becomes ineffective.  How many people in your class have actually made positive lasting changes to their body shape?

It is really important that you take responsibility for your training and specifically for ensuring you are working at the appropriate intensity for your ability.  I have been coaching for 20 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I have been teaching a class, with multiple attendees, and at least one person asks me what weight they used last time. I’m not sure how they expect me to remember what each individual used for each exercise!  I don’t remember what weight I used last time so I keep a training diary and I would encourage you to do the same; it is the only way to keep track and to ensure that you are progressing appropriately.  If you work with a coach/trainer, don’t wait for them to ask if you are ready to increase your weight, take ownership and if you feel the movement is getting easier, request more.

I currently operate my own studio where I keep class numbers low so that I am able to provide proper guidance on correct form and technique.  I keep notes so that I know what weights to give each person for each exercise but I still have to check in with participants and get them to think about whether their weights are appropriate.  It is not natural to want to push ourselves, nor to exercise as it not something we have historically needed to do in order to stay healthy but in these overly convenient times, strength training replaces all the heavy lifting and chores that we would have performed in our daily lives before we invented plumbing, cars and supermarkets to name just a few.