Strength Training for Women Over 45: A Gentle Starter Guide

Vicki Phillips
Feb 22
5 min read

Updated: Feb 23

Midlife woman performing gentle strength exercise.

How I Got Started

I didn’t start strength training because I wanted to “tone up.”

I started because I couldn’t walk properly anymore.

Climbing stairs had been impossible for me for several years. Walking even short distances was incredibly painful. I’d been told this was just part of living with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Osteoarthritis and that it was time to consider mobilising with a wheelchair.

But I wasn’t ready to accept that this was the direction my body was heading. I grew up with a father who was completely wheelchair-bound. So I take using a wheelchair very seriously and I appreciate what a privilege it is to walk. And this meant that I wasn’t willing to drift toward that without trying something.

The problem was, most forms of exercise weren’t available to me.

Aerobics wasn’t possible.

Long walks weren’t possible.

Dancing wasn’t possible.

Even Yoga wasn’t possible.

Strength training was something I was very familiar with from training in my 20s and 30s. And strength training was one of the only things I could actually modify and control.

So I started there.

The Reality of Midlife Bodies (Without Drama)

I realised pretty quickly that the things that worked for me in my 20s and 30s were not going to work for me in my late 40s.

My approach to weight training in my younger years was basically to just go as hard as possible. Heavy weights, pushing through fatigue, pushing through discomfort, maximal effort for maximum gain. Caffeine and EDM were my training pillars.

However when I applied these training principles to my late 40s body, it pushed back hard with intense fatigue, pain, injury and flaring of my chronic disease symptoms.

What I learnt through research is that midlife bodies have a slower recovery, more joint sensitivity and greater energy fluctuations. And this is perfectly normal and healthy.

I feel like in midlife our bodies are less tolerant because they know how much wisdom we have. In youth our bodies are more robust because they know they have to be. They know we are we are going to make dumb choices and they need to buffer us from that. But by midlife we have some smarts and our bodies expect collaboration.

So, I found myself putting together a different kind of program for myself. Rather than pushing, I manoeuvred around. Rather than cajoling, I negotiated. Rather than operating at extremes, I looked for a middle ground.

And what developed was a program that not only supported the health of my muscles, joints and bones, but the health of my mind and nervous system too.

The Biggest Misconception About Strength Training for Women Over 45

I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about strength training for midlife women is that you have to train to failure to get results.

Training to failure is something that is backed by science and used widely in both competitive body building and sports weight training. However, training to failure lacks evidence when applied to women in midlife.

It was definitely a concept that I applied to my training in my 20s and 30s. But in my 40s I found that it didn’t work as well. A big issue I found from training to failure was the increased incidence of injury and strain. These injuries were minor but they consistently set me back from my goals.

A second issue, and equally important, was the negative effect that it had on my nervous system. Training to failure had my stress levels skyrocketing and negated a lot of the good benefits of exercise for me. I constantly had that tired and wired feeling.

So I developed a scale and committed myself to only working to a certain threshold. And what I found was that I got much better results from working at a level where I was only moderately challenged.

What I’d Focus On First (If I Was Starting Today)

There are three things I think are really important when you are first starting out.

One of them is learning to do the exercise properly. Seems obvious but this can actually be a lot harder than it sounds. There are a lot of exercises that are carried out in harmful ways just because that incorrect information has been so widely shared, especially now with the internet. Additionally, sometime different trainers will have conflicting views and you will find that they are both backed by exercise science.

For me, this is where I learnt to trust my own body. Being someone who is easily injured, I was able to tell pretty quickly what techniques were helpful and harmful. I find that, generally, trainers with a physiotherapy, pilates or sport science background are the most knowledgeable.

The second thing that I would focus on is treating rest days with the respect that they deserve.

Not everyone realises that muscles grow afterwards, in response to your workout. So if you don’t give them a proper rest period, they never get the chance to fully respond.

As you progress you can choose to train more often and train different muscles on different days. But in the early days it is best to train two to three days each week, and keep the other days for light cardio, yoga or other activities that are fun and light.

Rest days are really important and need to be taken seriously to get good results

And the final thing that I would focus on is tracking your progress.

The thing with progress is that it happens so gradually that it is very easy for us to forget where we started. Then we start to take our progress for granted and forget to give gratitude for how far we’ve come. It can be really helpful to track your set number, repetition number and weight for each exercise.

However I say this with one caveat - track lightly if you encounter either of these below problems.

Track lightly (and by lightly I mean only once a month or less) if it feels too analytical or clinical to track every workout. If it means you are living in your head and not in your body when you work out, it might not be a good idea for you.

Another reason to track lightly is if you know you are going to feel bad about the days when you don’t increase or even have to decrease your weights. Because that is normal and will happen. If you’re the sort of person who needs to be constantly improving, it might be better to focus on cultivating empathy and body awareness and letting go of external figures.

What Strength Gave Me That I Didn’t Expect

The truth is, this whole lifestyle change has been an amazing journey for me.

Releasing the weight became a metaphor for releasing all the pain. Releasing all the disappointment, the frustration and pretty much everything that no longer serves me.

And strength training became a metaphor for building myself back into the best version of myself. The woman that I always felt that I was in my heart. Someone with compassion and creativity. Someone that is deeply intuitive and connected to a higher power.

My strength training sessions became a way for me to heal and to learn how to listen to my body and learn to work with it and to keep showing up for it with love.