#83: Are you Exercising or Training? Why It Matters in Midlife Fitness

Ever wonder why all those hours in group fitness classes, spinning, or yoga aren't delivering the toned, strong look you used to have?

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, we're diving deep into the crucial difference between exercising and training—and why it matters more than ever for women in perimenopause and menopause.

• Learn why losing muscle mass is a natural part of aging—and how to counter it with the right approach.
• Discover the importance of having a goal-oriented training plan to build muscle and improve your health, beyond just exercising.
• Get insights on tracking your workouts, applying progressive overload, and the basics of supporting your training with enough protein intake and rest.

It's time to move beyond just exercising and start training with purpose. If you're ready to build the body you want to live in as you age, this episode is for you!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Free Training Tracker to help you monitor your progress >>
• Learn to Lift Courses for guidance on starting weight training >>
• Monthly Membership for those who know how to lift >>

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to 40+ Fitness for Women
• 1:06 Personal Gym Experiences and Observations
• 4:32 The Difference Between Exercise and Training
• 8:10 Setting Goals and Creating a Training Plan
• 9:19 Supporting Your Training with Nutrition and Recovery
• 11:08 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

#83: Are you Exercising or Training?

Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. Which means that I help women in perimenopause and beyond build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we're talking a little bit about the difference between exercise and training.

 This topic probably pretty relevant now that we just had the summer Olympics going on. So you know, Olympians are people who train. They definitely train, they don't exercise, but even in my own life, so I go to a gym and I've been going to this gym for over 10 years.

I'm a platinum member and I spent so many years going to group fitness classes there. There's a lot of gym loyalty at my gym. There are people there who have been there as long as I have. Right. So a lot of familiar faces, but then since you go to different classes, you come at different times, all that, you may not see a particular person for months or even years.

And so it's an interesting place where you actually get to see how they change over time. And you know how it is. If you run into a friend that you haven't seen in a while, this happens to me all the time. When I go back from my college reunion, you know, you see somebody that you haven't seen in five years.

And so you see that there is a difference or not a difference from five years ago. And the same kind of phenomenon happens at the gym. You know, I'll see somebody that. I haven't seen in a long time. And usually, unfortunately, what I see is that that person looks less fit than they used to. This is happening more and more.

I think because the women that are there, they're a lot like my age. So, or a little bit younger. And I mean, I hit menopause early, but most people are hitting it around 50, a little bit past 50. But you know, these people who always looked so toned, so lean, they're always coming super sweaty out of some class, you know, they're there.

Uh, five days a week, some of them twice a day. And then you see them again after many months or even a year and you're like, what happened to that person? They used to look so fit and now they don't. And actually this happened to me yesterday as I ran into one of the instructors. Okay. This is a woman who has five children.

She's always looked amazing. She, you know, does the body pump classes and the spinning classes and everything. And in every class that she teaches, she is going all out, held bent for leather. She is in amazing, cardiovascular, condition. But when I saw her yesterday or the day before yesterday, I was like, Oh, middle age has is catching up on her because she doesn't weight train, right?

She does a ton, absolutely a ton of exercise, her cardiovascular fitness is fabulous, but what is happening to her and what happens to everybody is that. They start to lose their muscle mass in midlife if they're not doing something about it. And she, like I, you know, before her, uh, it wasn't enough.

Even doing the body pump classes as hard as you could and the, and she has yoga classes that she teaches and man, they are tough yoga classes, but still she looks significantly different now. Anyway, so that brings me to the topic of the difference between exercising and training. And if we're talking about wanting to preserve muscle mass, you are going to have a completely different result if you exercise or you train, 

exercise is amazing. It is definitely something you should do for your health. Go out there, do the things that you love and you're enjoy, go sweat, you know, dance, walk, jog, kayak, all those things. But those are exercise. 

What is the difference when we're talking about training?

So there we think about somebody who has a goal with the exercise that Or he is doing . So you might start training for a marathon. This is something that a lot of midlife women do. They decide, okay, I'm going to run a half marathon still. So they start training for the marathon and then a lot of them will actually get a coach or a program or something that they are going to follow.

Right? And surprise, surprise, that program will have them tracking their running workouts. The program will progress them, right? They'll start out with shorter runs, then they'll do a little bit longer runs and longer runs. And it'll probably tell them a little bit about what they should be eating, how they should be recovering, when they should do long runs, when they should do short runs, all these things.

And then they follow that program because they are interested in getting that goal, which is doing the half marathon. All right. 

Now as a midlife woman, when you realize that your muscle tone is disappearing, a lot of us are really hesitant to do training. It's an amazing, amazing thing. Women will do anything but train.

They're like, I'm going to start Pilates class. I'm going to start going to yoga. I'm going to go to body pump. Those are all. Actually, aerobics classes or, you know, mobility classes and these kinds of things. Yes, you're going to use your muscles. They might burn and all that, but if you really want to put muscle mass on your body and muscle is medicine, then you need to train.

So, please, the same, like, really just the, I guess what I want to say here is that if you want a particular result. Okay. And the result that you want is more muscle, more muscle tone to look more toned, to have the health benefits for a lot of us. It might be that we're pre diabetic, uh, those who are on one of the weight loss drugs, it might be to preserve the muscle mass.

It is not going to be enough. For you to exercise, if you actually wanna get a result, then start to train the same way you would if you're going to train for anything like a marathon or whatever. 

So what do you want, ? What are the kind of things you wanna be thinking about? So what is your goal with the weight training?

 If it is to build muscle mass, then you need to get a plan in place that will help you achieve that. And the plan will include things like how many days a week you train plus the plan of what you will do on the days that you are training towards building the muscle.

 You will need to track, so using a tracker, I have a free one, so you can download it in the show notes. 

You want to progress over time, right? Training is not about staying in the same place. It is about challenging yourself appropriately so that your level increases over time. So you want to be applying progressive overload.

And then you also want to put in place the things that support you achieving that goal that happen outside of your training sessions. So in the case of building muscle, that would be things like ensuring that you're eating enough protein. So that's something definitely to look at. Eat at least a hundred grams a day. Aim for the one gram per pound of ideal body weight, but I know for a lot of you, you're eating so little protein that that's just not going to be possible to make that leap so quickly. So try for at least, you know, the a hundred grams per day, 

then you need to make sure you get enough sleep. There are studies now that have been done on people who are weight training and getting enough sleep. So the seven, eight hours a day of sleep versus those who are a little bit sleep deprived. And there is a difference in what kind of results they're getting from their muscles. So sleep, I talk about a lot as being really important, especially in midlife. So get that in shape and recovery days so that you're not always just going nuts, training too much.

And what I can promise you is that if you start treating building of muscles as training, rather than just exercise. Right? Exercise is more generic. If you start training towards that, you will get far better results. So at a minimum, get your program, get a tracker, start applying progressive overload and do that over time.

If you want help with that, you know, I have my learn to lift courses and then also my monthly membership, which give you all those things. All you need to do is the actual training sessions. 

All right. So I hope that gave you a little bit of food for thought and maybe a few of you out there might have shifted from, Oh yeah, I can't just go to a aerobics class with weights or do one of those random. exercise sessions online where they're waving dumbbells around, but actually I need to start doing this more systematically if I want to actually get results. Great. So that was my thoughts for the day. Hope it was helpful. And I will talk to you again next week. Happy training.