Strength training

Back in 2023, I kept seeing things about strength training or resistance training being especially important for women over 40 to help maintain bone density.  Someone on one of the menopause forums I was lurking on recommended Strong Women Stay Young by Miriam E. Nelson, so I borrowed it from the public library.  The first half of the book is devoted to convincing women that strength training will be beneficial for them and won't make them bulk up, which I didn't care about, because I already knew I wanted to start doing some strength training.  So I skimmed ahead to the actual how-to.

The book covers several basic exercises one can do with free weights or ankle weights to help with maintaining strength and balance, and I found them easy to get into.  The only thing I found difficult was finding sufficient ankle weights that were both comfortable and able to scale up enough as I progressed; it's been almost 30 years since the book was originally published, and the equipment brands she recommends aren't still readily available.  At this point I've given up on the ankle weights and substituted other exercises for leg work.

At the moment, I'm doing:

• Biceps curls
• Triceps... I don't know what it's called, but I lift my arms overhead and then bend at the elbow to dip the weight behind me
• Upward rows
• Floor press
• Glute bridges
• Goblet squats
• Romanian deadlifts
• Kneeling wood chop
• Single-arm rows

I'm mostly using 8-lb. weights for everything at this point (including, as of last week, triceps, which had been plateaued at 5 lb. for over a year).  I like this routine because it's something I can do at home with not a lot of equipment that doesn't take up a lot of space.  At the time I was pricing out dumbbells, it was cheaper to buy each weight individually than to buy the set that lets you adjust the weight on a single pair of handles.  I've got 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12 lb. weights right now.

In November 2023, I got tendonitis in my right shoulder, and I thought it was because I'd gone up in weight too fast on the upward rows.  Spoiler: it was not.  Anyway, it took four months for my shoulder to get better.  Then in November 2024, it started up again!  That was when I figured it out: apparently putting a 2nd blanket on the bed for the winter made the blanket too heavy to pull up regularly when it would inevitably start sliding off the bed, probably partly because I have a woven cotton blanket as the bottom layer, and it created too much friction.  (Physics!)

So I've been doing my weights routine since then, twice a week, and this summer I got the first real payoff: I moved the bulk of our print serials at work, and nothing hurt.  I shifted or moved 1,250 linear feet of materials, over the course of about two weeks, and while it was gross and sweaty because our air conditioning wasn't on yet for a lot of it, I came out of it with nothing sore.  This means that none of the muscles I needed to do the work were getting neglected in my weights routine, and even though I'm only using 8-lb. dumbbells, that's enough.

If you're looking to get started, Strong Women Stay Young is a great introduction, and once you get comfortable with that, it's easy to change up some of the exercises either to keep things interesting or to find alternate ways to work muscle groups that you like better.