The Strength Training Rule That Doesn’t Change With Age
For many women, midlife comes with a confusing and often contradictory message about fitness. On one hand, there’s a growing push to “protect your hormones” by backing off intensity. On the other hand, a newer narrative suggests the opposite: that perimenopause means you must lift heavier, train harder, and apply more stimulus just to see results.
Both extremes miss the point.
On the mindbodygreen podcast, Shannon Ritchey, P.T., DPT, offered a more grounded perspective. As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, personal trainer, and founder of Evlo Fitness, Ritchey shared why women in perimenopause and beyond don’t need an entirely new training rulebook. They need a better understanding of how muscle growth actually works.
The fundamentals of strength training don’t suddenly change with age. What needs to change is how we apply them.
The myth that midlife requires “more” to get results
One of the most common beliefs Ritchey sees is that hormonal changes during perimenopause make muscle harder to build, so women must compensate by lifting heavier, training longer, or pushing closer to their limits at all times.
While it’s true that estrogen fluctuations can affect recovery, connective tissue, and stress tolerance, they don’t eliminate your ability to gain muscle. From a physiological standpoint, hypertrophy is driven by mechanical tension and effort. That mechanism remains intact whether you’re in your twenties or your forties.
Muscle grows when it’s challenged close to its capacity. That doesn’t automatically mean lifting the heaviest weight possible. It means approaching muscular failure, the point where completing another repetition with good form would be difficult or impossible.
You can reach that point with heavier loads and fewer reps, or with lighter loads and more reps. Both create an effective stimulus when done intentionally.
How hormonal changes affect recovery, not strength potential
Where perimenopause does matter is recovery. Hormonal shifts can influence how quickly the body bounces back, how well sleep supports adaptation, and how sensitive joints or connective tissue may feel under repeated stress.
That’s why Ritchey emphasizes flexibility, not escalation. Training close to failure can look different from person to person and season to season. Some women feel great lifting heavier for lower reps. Others feel stronger and more consistent using moderate or lighter weights for higher reps. Both approaches work, as long as the muscle is sufficiently challenged.
This understanding removes a major barrier. Women don’t need to force themselves into a style of lifting that feels intimidating, painful, or unsustainable just because they’re told midlife requires it. When training feels accessible, consistency improves. And consistency is what actually preserves muscle as we age.
Training principles that work at every age
Ritchey encourages women to anchor their routines around principles that don’t change with age: progressive challenge, adequate recovery, and sustainable effort.
That means choosing resistance that feels challenging by the end of a set, resting enough between sessions to allow muscles to adapt, and avoiding the trap of equating soreness or exhaustion with effectiveness. Muscle is built during recovery, not during constant intensity.
This approach also helps shift the focus from short-term outcomes to long-term resilience. Strength training supports bone density, joint stability, metabolic health, and confidence, benefits that become increasingly important as women age.
How to apply this to your own workouts
For women in perimenopause, the goal isn’t to overhaul everything or chase maximal intensity. It’s to remove unnecessary pressure.
Aim to strength train two to four times per week. Choose weights or resistance that make the final reps feel challenging, regardless of whether that’s six reps or 30. Adjust volume and frequency based on energy, sleep, and joint feedback, not rigid rules.
Support your training with adequate protein and calories to allow muscles to repair and grow. And let go of the idea that you need to train harder simply because of your age. Training smarter is far more effective.
The takeaway
Midlife strength training isn’t about chasing intensity for its own sake. It’s about creating a foundation that supports how you want to feel now and in the decades ahead.
And when women realize they don’t need a radically different body to get strong, only a smarter approach, consistency becomes easier, and results follow.
