Creating a training protocol for menopausal and postmenopausal women
Calling all women 40 and over.
I don’t need to tell you that belly fat is a problem that literally grows from this time onwards, I’m sure your clothes remind you everyday.
I’m a big advocate of loving your body and accepting it as it is (and how hard is that to do!), but I’m also a big advocate of improving your health and wellbeing, and that means taking an honest but not too harsh look at your body status quo.
This time of menopause, whenever it occurs, brings a flood of wonderful experiences. Hot flushes, depression, anxiety, intolerance, tiredness, night sweats loss of sex drive, mental confusion, mood swings… the list goes on …
….and on
…….and on.
You know already your hormones are taking a beating, they are up, mainly down, and suddenly you realise how much impact hormone levels have on your quality of life.
One of the things we notice is that belly fat comes on quickly and appears to really stick there and previous ways of getting rid of it don’t seem to work.
It’s not your imagination.
Ageing is unfortunately associated with increased belly fat (interestingly it corresponds with a decrease in the legs) in women (Ambikairajah et. al. 2019), a decrease in lean muscle, less fat oxidation during exercise and increase in intramuscular fat deposits (Abildgaard et. al. 2013, Isacco & Miles-Chan 2018, Kapoor et. al. 2017, Anahita 2018).
And all this is not necessarily triggered at menopause but menopause absolutely hastens this and thus the risk for chronic and metabolic diseases after menopause is greatly elevated.
It’s not nice, but if a doctor said they had a pill that would increase your energy, firm your body, lose you fat, make you feel more normal and will greatly reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia and metabolic diseases such as insulin resistance, diabetes, you would probably leap over their desk in your haste for a lifetime prescription.
Well, there kind of is.
…….. It’s exercise.
Study upon study upon study is now available that shows, beyond doubt, that exercise achieves all those things.
I know you know this already
You do don’t you?
Menopause is a great time to reevaluate life. You probably have a little more freedom with family now and it’s a perfect time to build your life and body up for this new era that could last another third to half of your life.
It’s all up to you.
What you do with yourself now will have direct repercussions on your lifestyle now and later.
The average woman 45 years onwards has a diet low in vegetables, low in protein, high in high glycemic foods and becomes less and less physical activie
Is that you?
Imagine that woman I described.
What will she look like in 20 years? 30 years? 40 years?
Imagine another woman, who regardless of what she has been doing, starts today living a life where her diet is 80% on point (so has plenty of room for fun foods) and is filled with daily movement and lifting heavy things.
What will she look like in 20 years? 30 years? 40 years? Hey, even 50 years? What could her life look like compared to the other woman?
Minimal medical care ….. more money and time for fun things
Not restricted by an immobile, tired body
Think of any woman you know over 80. Is she mobile? Why yes, why no?
Which one do you want to be?
……… Settled.
There are many factors to creating this wonderful postmenopausal life, and if you are postmenopausal, you are included in this too. We need to address diet, physical activity, mind/ stress.
Today we deal with physical activity.
Adding a regular exercise regime into your daily life will have a very positive effect on your body composition and thereby lowering your risk factors, PLUS adding immensely to your quality of life (Anahita 2018, Dugan et. al. 2010, Kapoor et. al. 2017).
Today we are going to go through a potentially ‘ultimate’ training protocol. Rashti et. al. (2019) went searching for the ultimate plan for postmenopausal women. They found that both moderate aerobic training combined with resistance training, and high intensity interval training with resistance training, compared with a control group, improved all body measurements. Out of both methods, the exercise regime that lost the most visceral fat and body fat was the interval combination group.
They are not alone finding this occurrence.
So let’s look at our plan.
We need 3 x a week of full body resistance training. The protocol used by Rashti et al. (2019) used 2-3 sets of 8-10 repetitions of each.
Try:
GYM:
Leg Press
Chest Press
Deadlift
Latpulldown
Bicep curls DB
Tricep extensions
HOME:
Squat
Pushup
Banded Row
Banded Deadlift
Bicep curls (Band or DB)
Tricep dips
Note muscle growth happens with training more to fatigue, so don’t be afraid with going heavier than normal at the gym or in the case of bodyweight training at home, doing your reps to fatigue will mean you will probably do more repetitions.
3 x week High intensity interval training.
Warmup gently for 5-10 minutes and then go all out. Breathing heavily. Feel you are giving it around a 9/10. This lasts 4 minutes. Take 4 minutes break. Easing down and feeling you are working around 5-6/10.
Repeat the 4 minute work load 3 more times with the rest in between. So 4 workloads in total.
Cooldown for 5-10 minutes.
This can be quite confronting if you are not used to it. Use heart rate as a guide if you can. Heart rate used in the study was 85-95% of max. This can be very uncomfortable so don’t worry if you can’t get there or maintain it long. The subjects were able to sustain their heart rate at that level during the 4 minute intense session for about 2 minutes. Do what you can and trust the body will adapt.
Heart rate max for a 50 year old is 173 bpm (age x 0.7; subtract answer from 208). 85% is about 147 bpm. Make your rest intervals around 65%, which is 112 bpm; for a 60 year old 166 bpm is max, 85% = 141 bpm and 65% = 108 bpm.
Resistance and interval training can be done on the same day or different days. Put them in when it works for you. Doing something nearly everyday is probably the optimal way to go if possible.
So that’s it.
Does that intrigue you? Inspire you? I hope so. Imagine if you changed nothing else about your diet and lifestyle but added the above in. What would you look like? What would you feel like?
It will change your outer appearance definitely, but your inner appearance that your soul cares about will be stronger and far more disease resistant. This is the kind of body that moves as we want it to through the day and doesn’t complain (sore muscles aside!).
I must add that regardless of what I have talked about today, the key will always be movement and consistency. There will be days you don’t want high intensity. In fact you may even feel right now that that is way too hard, but 30 minute walks is something you could do instead. Do that.
The universal rule that outweighs everything is:
Any exercise you like to do and you actually do, is the best one.
Pick exercise styles you like and do them.
Do them regularly, and voila, magic, you will achieve that healthy, strong body that will lessen greatly the inevitable breakdowns of ageing.
Much love, Vashti :-)
References:
Abildgaard, J, Pedersen, AT, Green, CJ, Harder-Lauridsen, NM, Solomon, TP, Thomsen, C, Juul, A, Pedersen, M, Pedersen, JT, Mortensen, OH, Pilegaard, H, Pedersen, BK & Lindegaard, B 2013, ‘Menopause is associated with decreased whole body fat oxidation during exercise’, American Journal Physiology Endocrinology Metabolism, 301, pp. E1227-E1236, viewed 12 July 2020.
Ambikairajah, A, Walsh, E, Tabatabaei-Jafari, H & Cherbuin, N 2019, ‘Fat mass changes during menopause: a metaanalysis’, American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Centre for research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing, Australian National University, Canberra, vol. 221, iss. 5, pp. 393-402, viewed 11 July 2020.
Anahita, S, Ramin, S, Setila, D & Rad Afagh, H 2018, ‘The effect of concurrent endurance and resistance training on cardio-respiratory capacity and cardiovascular risk markers among sedentary overweight or obese post-menopausal women’, vol. 6, iss. 4, pp. 123-129, viewed 14 July 2020.
Dugan SA, Everson-Rose SA, Karavolos K, Avery EF, Wesley DE & Powell LH 2010, ‘Physical activity and reduced intra-abdominal fat in midlife African-American and white women’, Obesity (Silver Spring). vol.18(6):1260-5, viewed 30 August 2020, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3139333/#!po=86.1111>.
Isacco, L & Miles-Chan, JL 2018, “Gender-specific considerations in physical activity, thermogenesis and fat oxidation: implications for obesity management’, Obesity reviews, World Obesity Federation, Suppl. 1, pp. 76-80, viewed 12 July 2020.
Kapoor, E, Collazo-Clavell, M & Faubion, S 2017, ‘Weight Gain in Women at Midlife: A Conise Review of the Pathophysiology and Strategies for Management’, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 92(10, pp. 1552-1558, viewed 12 July 2020
Rashti BA, Mehrabani J, Damirchi A & Babaei P 2019, ‘The influence of concurrent training intensity on serum irisin and abdominal fat in postmenopausal women’, Menopause Review, vol.18(3), pp. 166-173, viewed 30 August 2020, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970417/#!po=30.5556>.