Welcome to Back to My 5 Day Crash Course for Women - Fitness in Midlife and Beyond!
We’re halfway through your Midlife Fitness Program!
We’re building muscle today! Yesterday, we talked about the importance of maintaining our dietary protein to build and maintain muscle. Today, we’re talking about the importance of resistance training. One of the biggest mistakes that women make is to focus only on cardio and not include strength training when we’re trying to reduce abdominal weight gain associated with midlife.
If we want to keep our muscle mass, we have to use our muscles! Remember our muscles help to keep us strong, our bones strong and they also help us maintain our weight.
We build muscle by giving our muscle a challenge and also by giving our body the body blocks for them in the form of proteins. We handled the protein yesterday. Today, we’re working on the challenge.
Our body doesn’t waste time building a muscle we don’t use. This is why it’s so important to give them a challenge. This is also why building muscle helps to build our bone mass. When our body knows that a muscle is being used, it works to keep the bone that the muscle is attached to strong.
One concept to remember is progressive overload. This is where we continue to challenge our muscles by increasing the load on them. We can increase the load in different ways. We can increase the weight, increase our repetitions or change the speed. You don’t necessarily have to use dumbbells either. You can also use your body weight or any other weight. Basically, we want to make sure we are continually challenging our muscles.
If you want to know one of my secrets, I love doing at home barre classes. But, I go rogue when they’re using tiny weights. I grab heavier weights and do less reps so that I give my muscles more of a challenge and have a more productive class. Don’t tell my barre teacher!
Today’s Challenge:
Try doing these 3 strength training exercises today! Aim to 10 to 12 reps. Or, maybe try doing them for 30 seconds at a time? If the weight is pretty easy on the first set, try slowing down the pace or increasing the weight on the second set.
Remember to keep your core engaged throughout all of the movements. If you feel it in your back, come out of it and reset your core. If you still feel it in your back, stop. You can work up to it. At the end, consider closing it out with a Wall Push-up or a Modified Push-Up on the mat. As always, warm up a bit before you start this routine.
Have fun! Let me know if you have any questions!
I’ll see you tomorrow!
Laurie
Need a review? Check out previous days here.
Day 1 - Reducing the Midsection with SIT