Women over 40: Tone up with these four easy tips

Successful aging starts with resistance training!

Women over 40 need to do resistance training more often and do more repetitions.

Research has shown that women over 40 benefits from higher volume resistance training programs than lower volume, high-intensity programs (Burrup, 2018). When the resistance training habits of 109 women over 40 were examined, the results showed that for each day per week of resistance training, body fat was reduced by 1.3 percentage points and muscle mass was increased by 656 grams. The results of this study indicate that the more days women devote to resistance training, the lower their body fat and the higher their fat-free mass tend to be even when the differences in age, energy, and protein consumption were accounted for.  

Tip #1: Do resistance training 3 - 4 days per week, every other day.

Tip #2: Choose BIG exercises like squats, leg presses, lunges, hip abduction, shoulder presses and rows.

Tip #3: Do one set of 36 repetitions of each exercise resting between each repetition.

Tip #4: Don't forget triceps. Do triceps extensions every other day if possible. The triceps lose tone faster than any muscle in your body!

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Reference

Burrup R, Tucker LA, LE Cheminant JD, Bailey BW. (2018). Resistance training and body composition in middle-age women. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 58 (1-2): 82-91.

Author Biography

Amy Ashmore, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in Kinesiology from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a physical therapy continuing education provider located in Las Vegas, NV.