I’ve been a personal trainer since 2014. In my 11 years (and counting) coaching women to lose weight and get healthy, things have a changed a bit. When I first started in this space, you had to arm wrestle women into the weights area. There were constant protests about getting “too bulky” or looking “like a man”. These days, thanks to influencers, social media and the growth of the fitness industry, weight training is more well understood by women as a tool they can use to help them get in better shape.
Now, there may understandably still be some hesitation to step into the weights area as a woman over 40. After all, you spent your whole life avoiding weight training, because cardio is the best for staying slim, right?
Wrong. Unfortunately, if you’ve been under the impression that a slim, shapely body is only achieved through treadmills and cross trainers, you’ve been misled. While cardio training has its place (for fitness and supplementing weight training), if you only exercise this way you will kill your metabolism and actually make it harder to lose weight in the long run. This is because endless cardio burns through muscle, and muscle is your most metabolically active tissue. Put simply, the less muscle mass you have, the less calories you will burn.
The reason for this is fairly straightforward. Muscles are responsible for movement. They have a very important job within the body. As such, they require constant fuelling with blood, and oxygen, and nutrients. This means the body has to put some effort in to fulfil these needs, which has a certain calorie cost. The bigger and denser your muscles are, the harder your body has to work to supply the bigger and denser muscle fibres with blood, oxygen and nutrients to sustain them. Not only this, but the more often those muscles are worked during strength training, the more blood flow they’ll need during each session, meaning the body has to work even harder to sustain those muscles.
All of this has an energetic demand. The more blood required by the muscles, the more calories have to be burned off by the body to supply it. That’s why ladies over 40 that regularly weight train can lose weight much easier (without starving themselves) than the ladies that don’t weight train. They’re giving themselves an almost unfair advantage before they’ve even started.
This extra stress on the cardiovascular system also makes it more efficient. The more experienced at weight training you become, the more efficient your heart is at pumping blood to the right area. This creates a stronger and more robust heart and cardiovascular system, lowering your risk for heart disease or cardiovascular issues in the future.
Compound this with the other advantages that weight training brings, like bone density, better mobility in later life (less falls, less broken bones, more independence) and a better hormonal profile, and it’s clear that weight training is the number one choice for ladies over 40 wanting to lose weight and get healthy.
If you’re unsure how to start, we’d love to help. At DC Personal Training, we have a ladies only over 40s only private health & fitness group that focuses on strength training and living healthier lives. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you. Just hit the link below and register your interest on the next page:
Thanks for reading, and here’s to your health and wellbeing
Andy