The Anti-Mainstream Approach: Five Ways the Fitness Industry Fails Women in Mid-Life
Not on My Watch
As a fitness industry veteran, these five approaches to training women or women in mid-life are doing a disservice to women.
Treating Menopause as fragility.
Bodies in post-menopause “gain the same strength, build the same muscle mass, and lose the same fat from resistance training as premenopausal women.” PMID: 41963141
Narratives that take control away from women (cortisol, glucose, weight gain, etc.).
It’s not about the inputs (cortisol or glucose); it’s about how a body is conditioned to tolerate them. Boring
No significant weight gain is attributed to menopause transition. PMID: 22978257.
Changes in body composition are due to decreased physical activity, inadequate protein intake, and reduced muscle mass. PMID ______
Go Hard culture, optimization strategies, moralizing food, chronic over-correcting/coaching.
AKA Instagram.
Making exercise & nutrition complex for very little benefit in exchange.
AKA our cultural upbringing under capitalistic values.
Focusing on symptoms instead of guarding low capacity and over-pathologizing pain.
There are so many tools that can help you through periods of time that make you feel like it’s safer to not do anything Low capacity days, pain, or injuries are all likely to happen in your menopause experience.
Instead of waiting it out or taking a supplement, learn to use tools that can help you.
For pain or injury recovery, establish a ‘symptom ceiling’ and then train to work up to but not through that ceiling. For low-capacity days, or a Period that’s an intense teenage throwback, or other “no way I can walk into a gym” days, you could create a flexible, alternative schedule (for when it happens).
What’s Actually Happening
Physically:
Most of us are under-fueled and don’t have enough organic opportunities to move.
In women who are currently training, their bodies are likely under-recovered, over-volumed and under-intensitied.
Tight muscles are asking for movement & load, not more stretching.
You don't need motivation first; you need real + grounded experiences of competence & progress.
Culturally:
The approach that works best for anyone interested in building bone, muscle, and strength, (AKA toning up, getting fit, losing fat) is not the approach that your local gym markets to women.
I’ve noticed that even when we are offered the opportunity to get our hands on some weights in a “Strength Class,” nearly all are carried out as “gray zone” or muscular endurance classes — by minimizing rest time, requiring higher repetition schemes, and limiting access to equipment that appropriately loads the muscles. (Note: these classes still provide benefits, just not in the way they imply.
You know they can take up space and belong in a weight room; you were just never invited to learn the code/methods.
