5 Tips To Building Strong Bones During Menopause: The Importance of Strength Training

00:00Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask for you to do is if you could leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else. All of the things that I talked about today will be the reason why things are different for you later in life.

00:35What is going on, my friends? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. Or if this is your first time listening to the show, welcome to the show. With Nikki Stott, co-founder of Warrior Babe. And on this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, tactics that while we lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I'm your host, Nikki Stott. And welcome, you guys, to episode number 65, where I'm going to talk to my ladies that are going or about to experience or even past menopause.

01:11This stuff is very, very beneficial that I'm going to dive into today. And this is going to be all about, you know, I've talked about controlling your body fat through menopause. I've talked about stories of women going through menopause. But with this podcast today, I want to emphasize an importance on building strong bones during menopause and even post-menopause. So you guys know the whole gamut of what happens during menopause. In short, all of the things get wacky with your hormones inside of a woman's body.

01:48They shift, they change, some levels decrease. Estrogen being one of the things which is very important to your bone health, right? And if you have all these hormones shifting, something that happens is the bone density declines as you're going about these hormonal changes. And with that, a huge risk of osteoporosis is so common in women, you know, that are going through this and then later years in life.

02:23So like pre-menopause, perimenopause and going through it and just, you know, strength training post-menopause is just so important. So building strong bones during menopause and just overemphasizing the importance of strength training within this podcast. But I want to talk about, you know, the reasons why. You guys know I have a background in nursing. I spent nine years in the healthcare before I transitioned into fitness and making this my full-time career. But I spent like upwards of four and a half years in a nursing home and taking care of elderly patients that needed, they were in assisted living or a skilled nursing unit.

03:09So they needed assistance. They needed to be either fully bathed or fully dressed or they needed to, they needed assistance with helping them do that. It wasn't independent living. Independent living is completely different. And I spent four and a half years working in an emergency room where, man, like majority, and I talked about this in previous podcasts, but majority of women that came in were fractures, falls, breaking bones, and they were in their older years of life. And, you know, you can just look at someone and be able to look at how they are living their life on a daily basis.

03:40And back in the day of these women that are like, you know, 70 and 80 years old, strength training wasn't prominent. It was like all of the things about how to, you know, be skinny and lose weight and the next diet that was giving the next best weight loss or the, you know, supplements that would give you weight loss and X, Y, and Z. And it's now becoming more apparent that strength training is so important. But I've seen it firsthand. And that's where, like, you know, me sharing those experiences of seeing frail individuals and being able to tie back and looking back into the probably early lives where they weren't as active with strength training or they didn't strength train in.

04:20They didn't incorporate this type of activity on a daily basis to ensure that their future years were prime with their body or at least, you know, still healthy in a sense where they could keep up with their grandkids. They could do more when they're inside. Now, this is aside from, like, you know, maybe any type of chronic illness or diseases that may be passed along genetically. But you still have control of this aspect and you have control of making sure that your bones, your body are strong for your later years by you incorporating strength training.

04:57And it's like, it's not, it's not, you know, I'm all about you guys doing forms of exercise that you enjoy. And, but, not and, but, it's, this is, I'm honing on strength training. It's not like HIIT and running and boot camp and, you know, circuit training and these boutiques, you know, gyms like F45 and Orange Theory.

05:28That's, that's not like, sure, whatever. You wouldn't do that? Great. That's great. Incorporate that into your routine. But make sure that the primal focus of your entire exercise regime is strength training. For this reason, you guys, strength training is the only thing that is going to help you build strong bones. Okay. One of the, I shouldn't say the only thing. It's majority of the type of exercise is going to help you build strong bones.

05:59And so, I'm going to talk about all that today. I'm going to dive into five specific tips, right? And reasons why building strong bones during menopause is so important. And you're going to do that through the importance of focusing on strength training. So, we may get a little science here. Two of the things are going to be more related to your body and what happens during menopause. And, you know, the importance of creating these strong bones.

06:32And then we're going to move into something I've already talked to before. We're going to talk about like frequency and duration that you guys should be doing. I just gave away number four. And I'm going to share some things at the end that you guys can help incorporate into your everyday routine that will help you to just, you know, I'm all about you guys listening to this podcast. You get off this podcast and then you go and incorporate the things that you are listening to and learning and you take action on it. That's the only way that you're going to gain confidence in yourself that you can do these things.

07:02They're going to be inspired and that, you know, you're going to develop the results that you want. Because if you just listen to this podcast and you do nothing afterwards, nothing's going to change. You're going to get the same type of results. If you listen to this podcast and you take action on the things that you are learning and you implement them, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, these are tactics, methods, strategies I've applied to the thousands of women that have been inside of our programs with Warrior Babe and have gained insane results and have optimized their body in a way that now will serve their future self in years to come.

07:37Okay, so let's dive into number one. So why strength training is crucial during menopause is because it increases bone density. So as I talked about at the beginning, menopause brings hormonal changes that lead to a decline in bone density and then an increased risk of osteoporosis. And I talked about all those, you know, I've seen so many falls, fractures, bones breaking, women having to be in wheelchairs or use walkers and X, Y, and Z. And just not being able to take care of themselves.

08:09So something that strength training does is it increases your bone density. It lowers the risk of you getting osteoporosis later in life. So weight, weightlifting, resistance exercise, strength training, all of these things create stress on the bones, which triggers a response to make them stronger and denser. So by you doing strength training exercises, you are challenging your bones with that type of resistance.

08:41And when you do that, you stimulate the production of new bone tissue. And this leads to increased bone mineral density. So aka, in layman terms, you are, this is how you are increasing, this is how you are making your bones stronger. And that's the whole premise of this podcast today, building strong bones. This, like I said, is so vital for reducing risk of fractures, reducing risk of falls, maintaining overall, reducing osteoporosis, X, Y, and Z, and maintaining your overall bone health during menopause.

09:20It's not, you guys, and I have talked about this before tons of times. It's not just the aesthetic appearance. Sure, like I know getting into fitness and going out about your fitness journey, you are wanting to lose weight. Okay, that's very surface level. But let's take it a bit deeper here. And I want you to focus on not just that, but you overall, especially if you're 45, 50, 55, and later, maybe your experience of later menopause.

09:53Because overall, you are increasing and helping your bone health here during menopause. So it's not just about aesthetics. It's about the internal aspect of your body and making sure that you're sure you're building muscle and you're helping with the aesthetics on the outside. But you're also building muscle and you're helping with the internal things that are happening within your body. Hey, hey, just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to the show. It means a lot. I hope you guys are enjoying it. And there's so much more to come with it. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons.

10:24And also, it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too. Thanks so much, guys. Let's get back to the show. Muscle-bone connection. So I've talked about before mind-muscle connection, muscle-mind connection. You know, making sure that you're creating that connection so that you can feel the muscles being worked. This one is different. This is muscle-bone connection. So strength training not only benefits, you know, the healthy, the bone health directly, but also indirectly through its impact on muscle strength.

11:03So when you engage with doing strength training exercises, doing strength training workouts, you stimulate the growth and development of muscle tissue. There is so much more going down than just, you know, body fat and building muscle. You are stimulating the growth and development of muscle tissue. And so here, by you doing that, this is helping you to protect the bones. Strong muscles around your bones helps you to protect your bones.

11:35And again, this is a huge reduction factor towards risk of falls and risk of fractures. So by you guys improving with improving muscle strength, right? You getting stronger, you building more muscle throughout. And this is the thing. Let me just combat the fact that you, people saying that you cannot build muscle past X age. If you guys want to be, just to have that story eliminated, have a limiting belief eliminated from your mind, go to YouTube or listen to two podcasts ago.

12:11It's the whole story of Cheryl, a warrior babe Cheryl, who absolutely crushed her fitness goals going and still working on them when she was 57 years old all the way through 60. So this is post-menopause. And on YouTube, you can watch the visuals and see the pictures of the overall transformation that happened here. Incredible results and so much muscle built. So I just want to just like eliminate that limiting belief because it's not true and it's not serving you.

12:45You can build muscle even with all of these things happening, these hormonal changes happening. And more importantly, like even if you experience this lag of not seeing the results that you want while you're going through menopause, this right here of you focusing on performance goals and you building muscle and you building strong bones is far more important than anything aesthetically because this is a small period of your life. Going through menopause is only a couple of years and in the grand scheme of things.

13:18So if you can focus on performance goals, getting stronger and building muscle through these couple of years that you're experiencing menopause, that is so drastically life-serving than just focusing aesthetically on losing body fat and making you lose weight. Okay, so it can happen.

14:07developing and stimulating muscle tissue, which will help and support the bones that are beneath the muscle. And then increasing your bone density, just make sure that you are stimulating the production of new bone tissue. Okay, so you're building a strong body internally here during this time. Okay, and then as Cheryl stories, there's also stories of women going through menopause that have been able to accelerate and achieve amazing results. But even post-menopause is just so important.

14:37You've already built this foundation for yourself while going through menopause. Now post-menopause, it's easy to keep up with, it's easy to maintain. And like Cheryl, your results could be just traumatic or not traumatic, dramatic. Because during menopause, let me just throw in this bit here. Because of all these hormonal shifts that are happening, results may not happen as fast as you may experience beforehand, before and pre-menopause or even the years before pre-menopause.

15:08And as dramatic as you can experience post-menopause too as well. That's why it's so important here during this phase of life that you're going through is to not give up and to not throw in the towel, but to focus on other aspects of your journey like this. That can be just so profound when you are done going through these couple years of menopause. Okay, the third one now is something that I've talked about before. It's progressive overload and I've done so many podcasts on this in the past.

15:41And it's so important that you incorporate this into your routine. Because by you doing progressive overload, you're continuing to stimulate muscle growth. And the bones and the muscles are getting stronger as I've talked about in the last two points. But what I mean by progressive overload, I'm just going to do it in short because there's entire podcasts on this previously that you can go search through. The menu and the list and be able to click on and be able to listen to and get a whole podcast around progressive overload. But in short, this means that you're gradually increasing the intensity, the resistance, the difficulty of exercises over time.

16:19And so you do that by increasing the weight lifted, by performing more repetitions, by or challenging yourself with more advanced variations of exercises. And as I said, I've talked about this in its entirety in previous podcasts. But by you doing this, you're challenging your bones and your muscles to adapt and to grow stronger, which is so important on top of the other three. The other two things that I also spoke to as well. The fourth one here is let's talk about frequency and duration, because it's not like when you're going through this, you know, even pre, during and post, less is more.

16:55Let me just like, like, just like absorb that phrase. Less is more here. You don't need to be in the gym for three hours a day, seven days a week, strength training, and then doing, you know, X amount of time with cardio. That is overkill. That is overtraining. That is a recipe for actually not getting the results that you want. And if you continue doing that, you're going to be, you know, six to eight months later, wondering why you're not getting the results you want with all of your hard work that you're putting in.

17:34Hard work, seven days a week and doing three hours in the gym is stupid work. It's not, it's, it's not hard work. It's super work. You train smarter, you guys. And so with that, with, with frequency and duration, less is more for you guys here, you, for, for you going through this phase of life to maximize the benefits of strength training for bone health and for at least like four days, four sessions per week that you're in there just lifting weights.

18:09All right. Like no joke, just four. I mean, you can even argue three at some points because what this is allowed, this frequency allows you guys to have adequate recovery, which is so important and not spoke to, um, or just ignored because you feel like you have to keep up with the type of training and things that you've done in your earlier years, which is not the case. And when you focus on adequate recovery and making sure that you're allowing that time to happen, that is where your muscle gets built.

18:47I've said this time and time again, when you're inside of the gym, you're breaking down muscle. When you're, when you're recovering and the days and hours post that workout, you're building the muscle. So that this frequency of like four days a week max is allowing for adequate recovery. It's allowing still for you to be inside the gym and putting, you got to put the work in, but you only need like an hour inside of the gym max.

19:19Okay. With strength training, but you got to be making sure that that hour is worth. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, Warrior Babe is here for you. At Warrior Babe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more.

20:00Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results and results that last. Look, don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right, let's get back to the show. Your jam is making sure that you are challenging yourself and not just going through the motions.

20:35And I'll say this for another podcast. I think a lot of women need to understand that it's not about just like, oh, I'm showing up to the gym and I got to do this workout. And then you just go through the motions. You're not challenging yourself. It's like, no, you go into the gym and you make sure it's almost like the hardest aspect of your day. That's the way I like to look at it. The gym is like me time. It's go time. And I'm challenging myself outside of my comfort zone at every opportunity that I have within that workout.

21:09Okay, so that's number four is frequency and duration. You guys make sure that you hone in on that. Less is more. And that's so important. And then the last one I want you guys to walk away with is just like an idea of exercise selection for bone health. So there's certain exercises that are particularly effective for promoting bone health during menopause. You know, I spoke to the like speaking to weight like walking, jogging and all of that kind of stuff like stair climbing.

21:45I spoke to that beginning. It's majority of the strength training needs to be a majority of your exercises needs to be strength training. And then you have the walking, jogging and all that stuff. It still puts stress on the bones and stimulates bone remodeling. But you don't need a lot of it because the strength training is the most important aspect of your type of exercise regime to build strong bones. Okay, now there's specific exercises like it's not necessarily the weight machines are great.

22:21But I think a lot of women in this demographic of menopause and 50 and 60 years old likes to go to the weight machines because they seem safer. While I love that you're not getting the same type of resistance that you would be able to get by using free weights or even resistance bands or even like building up the confidence over time to get underneath of a free weight barbell. So there's so much of coordination, ab control, balance like that you will be able to develop when you're using free weights dumbbells and barbells too as well.

23:05Weight machines are great. You can incorporate a percentage of your training, you know, your training routine around weight machines. But I would just more encompass free weights barbells and even resistance bands are great too as well. And some of the exercises that I would and even like when when it comes to the barbell you guys for the first couple years of me really honing in on strength training. And getting more into the weight room and all that kind of stuff.

23:37I fell in love with the Smith machine. There's nothing wrong with the Smith machine. It's a great piece of equipment and you're able to hone in on your form and your balance pretty and core engagement pretty well by just using a Smith machine too as well. And then like I said, you could work up your confidence to get underneath of the barbell and use the barbell for exercises. But some things that are really great to make sure that you incorporate in terms of exercises into your training protocol is squats, lunges, deadlifts.

24:09Those are the main like compound exercises, deadlifts, chest press and shoulder presses too as well are really just great compound movements that incorporate and pull in a bunch of muscle groups to be able to push through that type of exercise. Okay, but overall to be able to create an environment that is stimulating this type of growth with new bone tissue and with an environment to stimulate and grow and develop muscle tissue.

24:45And all of that stuff that's going to encompass you building really strong bones, especially during this phase of life. And you guys know I talk about Warrior Babe. This is predominantly the women that we help inside of Warrior Babe is women that are pre, during or post menopause. And they have, and we really emphasize the importance of hormones and understanding what is going on internally, not just focusing on the surface level external results that people want, but helping people understand the internal aspects of their body so that they, and everyone's different, right?

25:18So everybody's experience of menopause is different. And so working with our coaches in the VIP program will be able to give you a customized plan and program that is in alignment with what you need during this phase of life. So if that interests you, definitely click the check out the links in the description below and check out the Warrior Babe VIP program. But overall, and these five things I talked about today, exercise selection for bone health, frequency and duration, progressive overload, most importantly, having you guys understand that muscle bone connection and increasing your bone density.

25:55Those two things, along with the other three, are just so vitally important for you during menopause and building strong bones during menopause. And the way that you're going to do this and do those two and do all five is with the importance of focusing on strength training. It plays a vital role in building and maintaining strong bones during menopause. So make sure that you choose and do these things. You target major muscle groups.

26:25You progressive overload your workouts. You prioritize safety, obviously. You focus on doing these things with strength training that will increase your bone mineral density. Improve muscle strength. But also just in the long term, help you to build a strong foundation within your body so that you have a lower risk of osteoporosis. And you reduce the risk of fractures, breaks, falls, because strength training helps the balance too as well.

26:57I know I pinpointed that in there, but I just want to bring that out so it's top of mind. But these things, all of the things that I talked about today, will be the reason why things are different for you later in life. Like, it's so much, and I've talked about this, like the two paths going down of menopause. Either you don't do these things, and later in life it could be you using a walker and just harder to get around. Or you do do these things, and you're the one that's at family gatherings, and you're running around with your grandkids, and you're keeping up with your grandkids.

27:32And you get to be actually involved in those memories rather than just being like a sideline watcher of those memories. Okay? So, I hope this podcast helped you guys. The five tips to building strong bones during menopause, the importance of strength training. And that wraps up for the podcast today. Of all my years of, like, being on video and doing podcasts, sometimes the close is the hardest thing to do. But I appreciate you guys listening so much to this podcast. And again, if you guys haven't, you know, rated it or reviewed it, that's the only way this thing grows.

28:05That's the only way we stop and, like, stay in top 20 for fitness podcasts. That this podcast gets reached to other women that need to hear these messages. So, if you could please just take a second when you're done listening to this episode today, go rate it, go review it. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace out. Hey, guys. Real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, lose body fat, build more muscle, feel more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches.

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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.