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Sam Pitcairn
Why "Toning" Is a Waste of Time: The Essential Guide to Strength Training After Menopause
Training
If I walk into another commercial gym and see a woman over 50 holding 2.5lb pink dumbbells performing endless tricep kickbacks in an attempt to "tone" her arms, I am going to vomit.
Let’s be clear: "Toning" is a marketing term invented to sell useless workout DVDs to women terrified of weights. In physiology, there is muscle gain, and there is fat loss. That’s it. You cannot "tone" a muscle anymore than you can "tone" your liver with a green machine juice.
For the post-menopausal woman, this adherence to low-weight, high-rep garbage isn't just ineffective; it is dangerous.
When menopause hits, the hormonal protective shield drops. Estrogen, which has protected your bone density and muscle mass for decades, leaves the building. The result is a rapid acceleration of aging, frailty, and metabolic dysfunction.
You cannot cardio your way out of this. You must lift. And you must lift heavy.
I don't deal in opinions; I deal in physiology. Here is the hard truth about what happens post-menopause if you do not intervene with significant resistance.
Estrogen is essential for bone remodeling. When it drops, bone resorption (breakdown) outpaces bone formation.
Most doctors' solution is to prescribe calcium and walking. This is laughably inadequate.
I learned this from the source. My Exercise Physiology professor was Dr. Anne Loucks. If you don't know the name, she is the foremost expert in the world on the Female Athlete Triad and bone health. She conducted groundbreaking research on bone density, even working with NASA to solve the problem of bone loss in microgravity.
Dr. Loucks knew more about human bone physiology than almost anyone on the planet. And she made one thing perfectly clear: There is no magic pill.
If there was a pharmaceutical way to significantly increase bone density without side effects, she would have known it. She taught us that there is only one way to force bone to grow: Mechanical Loading.
Bone is piezoelectric—it only gets stronger when it is bent or compressed under significant load. Walking is not a significant load. "Toning" is not a significant load.
The Research: The landmark LIFTMOR study (2017) took postmenopausal women with low bone mass and had them perform heavy deadlifts, squats, and overhead presses. The results were irrefutable: High-intensity resistance training significantly improved bone mineral density in the lumbar spine and femoral neck, whereas the low-intensity "control group" continued to lose bone.
If you want to avoid a hip fracture that ends your independence, you need to put a barbell on your back.
Even worse than bone loss is muscle loss. After age 30, you lose 3-8% of your muscle mass per decade. After menopause, this accelerates. This condition is called Sarcopenia.
Muscle is your primary metabolic organ. It is where you dispose of blood sugar. When you lose muscle, you become insulin resistant, you gain visceral fat, and you become frail.
Frailty is death. The inability to get off the toilet without assistance is the beginning of the end. The only drug that reverses sarcopenia is progressive overload.
Let me put your mind at ease: You do not have the hormonal profile to get "bulky."
Getting jacked is incredibly difficult for 25-year-old men full of testosterone eating 4,000 calories a day. It is physiologically impossible for a 55-year-old woman to accidentally wake up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger because she squatted for 6 reps.
When women lift heavy, they don't get bulky. They get dense. They get strong. Their posture improves because their posterior chain can actually support their spine.
Stop the Zumba. Stop the pilates. If you are post-menopausal, you need to send a loud signal to your body that it needs to keep its armor.
We need compound movements that load the spine and hips to stimulate bone growth, done with controlled tempos to maximize intramuscular tension.
Here is a sample A-series from a Structural Balance phase designed for a post-menopausal client in Pittsburgh looking to regain her health.
Perform this superset twice a week. Focus on perfect tension, not just moving weight.
A1. Barbell Back Squat (High Bar, Heels Elevated)
A2. 30-Degree Incline Dumbbell Press (Neutral Grip)
Aging is inevitable. Decay is optional.
If you continue to treat your body like it's fragile, it will become fragile. The medical establishment in this country is reactive, waiting for you to break a hip so they can operate.
I am proactive. I want to build you so strong you don't break in the first place.
If you are a woman in East Liberty, Shadyside, or the South Hills who is done with the "toning" nonsense and ready for real, science-backed strength training, book an assessment. We will treat you like an athlete, because life is an athletic event.
After you submit this form we will be in contact within 24 hrs to set up an appointment to come into our East Liberty location for a performance assessment.
