Why Movement Prep & Balance Matter in Strength Training Over 40

Podcast – Steph Gaudreau

When it comes to creating a progressive overload plan, we have touched on a lot of elements so far. However, when it comes to how to specifically create your program, whether you are creating a program for yourself, finding one online, or looking to work with a trainer in person, there are some nuances that need to be discussed.

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Key Takeaways

If You Want to Improve Your Strength Training, You Should:

1. Give yourself the freedom to warm up and work on balance as a key part of your strength training program
2. Focus on the type of exercises that will help you feel good for longer
3. Challenge yourself with where your current ability level is and up the ante over time

Consistency is the Name of the Game

When you are doing a deadlift, overhead press, bench press, or squat, you need to familiarize your body with the movement pattern you are going to be doing that day. Movement prep and balance work will help you prepare your body for what is coming next, and create positive changes in how your body and brain relate to each other more effectively when things get heavy. Giving yourself the freedom to warm up, be consistent, and listen to your body, is what is going to get you further in your progressive overload plan.

Strength Training for Every Age

Movement prep and balance work are two things that I program into every session of Strong with Steph. Especially as we transition from perimenopause to postmenopause, we need to work with the changes happening in our bodies to help ourselves stay strong for longer. The truth is, that our body loses strength, hormones, and energy as we get older, which is why we need to have a strength training plan that helps us combat what we are losing and instead helps us find gains. Implementing a well-planned program takes the burden off of you so that you can focus on feeling great.

Are you ready to reevaluate your strength training plan as a woman over 40? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

In This Episode

• A recap of what we have spoken about so far when it comes to strength training over 40 (2:45)
• The importance of balance work for longevity as we age (6:45)
• How movement preparation can improve your training program (14:52)
• Understanding the role of estrogen when it comes to your joints and their needs (20:16)
• Examples of balance work and movement prep that show up in the Strong with Steph Workout Plan (30:15)

Quotes

“Having these guide your strength training is super, super important, and not something you want to gloss over when you are either writing a program for yourself, finding one online, or looking to work with a trainer in person.” (2:35)

“Movement preparation and balance work create a foundation for building strength and are so important when we are considering longevity in training and safety and mitigating risk to the best of our possible influence, especially as we are aging.” (6:13)

“Research strongly supports the idea that warming up with the actual lift you plan to perform but at a lighter load is an effective way to prepare your body for heavier lifting.” (21:20)

“Addressing these things through training is very important, and there is something that you can do about it.” (29:08)

“Movement prep and balance work are essential, and we know they are going to play an important role in joint health, mitigating the risk of injury and enhancing our experience of progressive overload.” (39:24)

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FYS 435: RPE & Autoregulation: Smart Tools for Strength Gains Over 40

FYS 434: Progressive Overload: How to Keep Getting Stronger

Why Movement Prep & Balance Matter in Strength Training Over 40 Transcript

Steph Gaudreau

What are two aspects of strength training for women over 40 that are often overlooked in a progressive overload plan? They are movement preparation and balance work. I know nobody thinks that this is super sexy, but it is really important. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about why that is and why including movement preparation and balance work in your progressive overload.

Strength training plan is a smart move, especially if you are a woman over 40. If you’re an athletic 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself, and doing hard shit, the Fuel Your Strength podcast is for you. You’ll learn how to eat, train and recover smarter, so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform better in and out of the gym.

I’m strength nutrition strategist and weight lifting coach, Steph Gaudreau, the Fuel Your Strength podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition, training, and recovery and why once you’re approaching your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s. We’re here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and should do in training and beyond. If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and let’s go.

Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m really excited to dive into this topic with you, and it’s really the third in a series where we’re taking a deeper look into progressive overload strength training for women over 40. And here’s the thing, lots of the elements that we have touched on so far, for example, what is progressive overload in the first place? And secondly, how do we use things like auto-regulation, reps and reserve, and rate of perceived exertion to guide our intensity?

Those things aren’t specifically just for women over 40. The point I’ve been trying to make in this series is that contextually, these elements are really important to not skip when you’re in this stage of life. In other words, having these guides, your strength training is super, super important, and not something you want to gloss over when you’re either writing a program for yourself, finding one online, or looking to work with a trainer in person.

So we’ve discussed, why is auto-regulation so important when sleep is more unpredictable when you’re going through the perimenopause, the menopause transition or you’re just over 40 in general, and life is really throwing some curveballs to you. We’ve talked about why progressive overload is so key. And although these one-off training modules that you might come across in a popular app, for example, you’re like, oh, four weeks of this or a few weeks of that, can help you get moving.

We’re really looking at long-term progressive overload to help you move in the right direction. And is even more critical as you’re aging, to get you the strength and muscle and, in fact, other elements that we’re going to be talking about to to get those desired outcomes. It’s even more important because we’re facing some challenges like slower recovery, increased rate of muscle loss, increased rate of bone loss, loss of power and quickness and so much more. So that’s really why we’re talking about this.

And in today’s episode, we’re taking the next step in looking at how I specifically program for example, in my Strong With Steph program, yes, we use progressive overload as the guiding principle. Of course, the rate of perceived exertion, reps and reserve, and auto-regulation guide intensity. But now we’re diving into how is the actual program set up, and that’s what I’m going to be covering in this episode.

For those of you out there who are thinking, what are the elements I want to look for in a training plan, this is going to be important information. And of course, if you want to try a free seven-day sample of the Strong With Steph program, you can go to StephGaudreau.com/workout so today, we’re going to be covering the first two, which are movement, preparation, and balance work. These are two things that I program in every single session of Strong With Steph, and I’m going to be walking through the rationale.

Why is this really important? For those of you over 40? How do we do this? What are some of the exercises or examples that you might find, and how you can start thinking about this in your own programming? If you haven’t been doing these, if you’re liking this content, of course, please hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or your favorite podcast app, if you’re watching on YouTube, Hi. Thanks for joining me. Hit the subscribe button and go ahead and hit the notification button as well.

So you get notified of new episodes before we dive in. If you listen to this episode and you’re like, okay, I am ready to get to work. I want to take my strength, muscle, energy, and performance and take it up a notch. I want to take it to that next level. I want to feel like a badass, but at the same time, do it in a way that works with my physiology as an athletic woman over 40 with coaching and community support. Then go ahead and check out Strength, Nutrition, Unlocked. This is my group program.

We’re going to lay out the framework for you and guide you as you implement and really customize it to all the things that you’re doing, your preferences, your likes, and the places you want to go with it. Then go ahead and get on board. You can start your process by submitting an application at StephGaudreau.com/apply we would love to hear from you and see you inside the program today.

Again, as I was saying, the intent is to share with you that movement, preparation, and balance work create a foundation for building strength and are so important when we’re considering longevity and training safety and mitigating risk to the best of our possible influence, especially as we’re aging and as we are transitioning through perimenopause into post-menopause, which can really span decades of a woman’s life.

This stuff becomes very, very important. And of course, once you’re postmenopausal, you’re postmenopausal for the rest of your life. So this stuff is very, very, very relevant. And today, we’re going to be looking at this, particularly in regard to tissue quality, bone density, balance, and so on. And so far. So first of all, why are movement, preparation, and balance work so important for us, naturally, we tend to see a decline in our muscle strength, our muscle size, our coordination, our proprioception, our ability to figure out where we are in space, where is our body positioned in space?

And because of those things, the risk of falling, the risk of literally falling down, increases as we get older, and this is a really important partner to what we’re going to be talking about with the balance work, because fall risk does increase, especially as we see degradations in strength, coordination, and balance, for example, we also have those hormonal shifts that are going on as we go through peri-menopause into post-menopause, and because we have that eventual drop in estrogen, we have an acceleration of bone density loss, which raises our risk of fracture.

And there are studies, many of them, that demonstrate that fracture rates in women rise significantly in the years following menopause. So once you’re post-menopausal, and even as we’re getting into the earlier parts of perimenopause, where we’re seeing more fluctuation and different parts of the body are significantly affected, especially areas like the hip, the spine, and wrist. Wrist fractures, are the more common areas wrist because if you put your hand down when you’re falling, you’re more apt to break a wrist or wrist bones.

There is good news, though, we can work to prevent this, or work to strengthen our bones especially if we’re not postmenopausal, and even if we are, there is some interesting evidence that we may be able to prevent further decline in bone density, for example, and we’re really going to be talking about that a little bit more in the next episode when we cover power and plyometric work.

Needless to say, the percentage of women over age 50 who have osteoporosis of the neck of the femur, that’s the long upper leg bone or the lumbar spine, is almost 20% in the United States, it’s something like 18.8% and I think that’s based off 2022 data. I’d have to check that and notate it in the show notes. But nevertheless, we know that osteoporosis, and even osteopenia, which is lower bone density but is not quite clinical in terms of osteoporosis, is very common, especially as we age, and that risk increases as we go along.

So working in balance, and training into your routine helps to train your body so that you can reduce the risk of falls and also increase your stability and coordination and with better balance, you’re less likely to experience falls and fractures. And of course, the element of bone-strengthening we’re going to talk about in the next episode as well, or bone density increase with things like plyometric work.

And we know, of course, that there are some potential serious downstream results of a serious fracture, for example, fracture of the hip, and those rates of long-term hospitalization or long-term care or even risk of death that occurs in closer proximity to that fracture, especially if we’re going to fracture a hip or something of that nature tends to be quite a high number.

So again, this is not to be alarmist or scary, but just to paint the picture for you, especially if you’re in this age bracket where, if you haven’t started to work on things like balance for the fall prevention and then working on bone strengthening through a combination of, for example, plyometric work and strength training and lifting challenging enough weights, there is good news on the horizon. So that’s really important.

And the US exercise guidelines for adults 65 and over are the same as the guidelines for adults 64 or 65 and over, I think that’s what I said. Are the same as adults 64 and younger. However, with the addition of it just says balance training, so the formal exercise guidelines in the United States, and I believe that’s mirrored also, of course, in the who is going to include those two prongs, which we’ve talked about multiple times on this podcast of cardiovascular training and strength training two times a week minimum. This is like the minimum, two times a week of strength training.

And if you’re an adult over the age of 65 and up, it says also balance training. My thought on it is, if you’re in this 40-ish or up group of people, and you’ve taken time away, especially from athletics or leisure exercise or just getting into the gym, you probably are already seeing declines in your balance. I have seen this multiple times with clients who are in that 40 to 50 age bracket who are saying, I was shocked at how poor my balance was, but because I’m doing regular balance training inside this program, it’s improving my balance, and balance improves theory quickly, and doesn’t take a ton to maintain once you’ve improved it, but you have to do it, and you don’t actually need to do it in the context of a strength training program.

Either you can work on balance in your day-to-day and work on challenging your balance and training your balance. So you don’t even have to do it in a formal program, per se. But I will mention this, when left to people’s own devices, sometimes it’s just not something that they include in the routine or they forget about it. So having it purposely baked into the training program is incredibly helpful, because it’s there in your program, in your app, when you open it up, and I’ve had multiple clients tell me, Hey, I was out on a hike and I tripped over a route and I was able to stay upright and not fall down.

I had somebody else who slipped on ice and was able to catch themselves from falling. The stories are incredible of people who are finally doing regular balance training, even in small doses, but I’ve noticed how much it’s carrying over to the day-to-day activities that they’re doing daily life sports. So if you’re playing a sport, whether it’s competitively or recreationally, right?

So there are multiple benefits of that balance training for application to your daily life outside of mitigating the risk of falls, and then, of course, with the increased risk of osteoporosis or even osteopenia, those two things together really increase the risk of fall and fracture. So that’s really important, and that is something that I include in every single Strong With Steph session balance work, and it does progress throughout the year.

So it starts with easier balance exercises and progresses to more challenging balance exercises, especially as you’re going on and then again, working in multiple planes. So oftentimes, we tend to be forward and backward in our training. With this is the sagittal plane, forward and back. And oftentimes, when left to your own devices, you might forget things like rotation. So there we have rotational balance exercises inside the program or lateral, what we call frontal plane movement. So that side-to-side and challenging balance in all planes. It’s so, so important.

We don’t just live in the forward and backward plane of motion. So that’s something that I include in every single Strong with Steph workout for that reason. Okay, in segment two here we’re going to talk about movement preparation. And there are lots of different things that we could cover here, but I want to hit on a few main points, and again, why this is so important, especially when we are getting over 40.

You’re not 20-25 anymore, and your body is just, you know, showing normal wear and tear, or maybe you’ve had some injuries, or you’re getting started again after a period of inactivity, and you haven’t been lifting, no judgment, no shame there whatsoever. It happens for tons of reasons, but when you’re ready to engage again, where you’re ready to get on a structured training program. It’s important to think about this, and there are different schools of thought here. There’s also interesting research, which we’ll talk about here in a moment. Suffice it to say, movement preparations shouldn’t be their own long-ass workout, but depending on you and what you need.

It may take you a shorter amount of time or a longer amount of time. And I’ll talk about what I include in Strong With Steph and why it’s there. And you can think about how you would pick and choose to put this in if you’re going to be doing this on your own, or if you’re thinking about working with me, why do I include it in your daily sessions? So we know that a dynamic warm-up can have benefits in terms of dynamic stretches where we’re not holding for a really long period of time. So just a few seconds of mobility drills, for example, can help to increase blood flow.

What we would say, is activate your muscles, not that your muscles are, dead or turned off. Because people will say, like, oh, I need to, you know, my glutes don’t work. I need to activate them. We just mean, to get you moving, and can help to prime the nervous system. So a general dynamic warm-up is something you could do. Now, that being said, the way I approach it in Strong With Steph is by picking a couple of dynamic movements that cover most of your main hinge, squat, push, and pull patterns and or tailoring that to what you’re really going to be doing on the day now, Strong With Steph is more of a whole body or full body three times a week.

So chances are you’re going to be looking at some general, you know, hip and shoulder work, and then also, depending on what we’re going to be focusing on on the day, a couple of extra dynamic movements to help you really address that movement pattern that we’re going to be hitting pretty hard. So for example, if we’re squatting, you might be doing some dynamic warm-up work that has to do with the squat pattern, so try to keep it as relevant to what you’re doing as possible. And it doesn’t have to be a lot.

You don’t have to spend 30 to 60 minutes doing dynamic warm-up. The idea is just to move through some reps at a relatively quick pace, right? Not spending, you know, 30 seconds holding static stretches, per se, to get you moving. Now you can also, and some of my clients choose to include something like a general cardio warm-up where they’re doing five to 10 minutes, on the bike, on the treadmill, on the ski ERG, on the rowing machine, something of that nature, because maybe they’ve been sitting all day, or they just woke up and they’re feeling a little bit stiff.

They’re feeling a little bit, you know, like that a warm-up gives them a chance to switch from work mode if maybe they’re doing their workout at the end of the day, it’s almost like getting in the car and commuting, and maybe you are driving to the gym. So that’s not that’s not relevant. But some of my clients work out at home, and they feel like they just need that little bit of a mental buffer between work and the actual workout itself to really get going and to switch their brains into that workout mode.

So the research on this, especially when it comes to our heavier lifting, we’ll talk about that in a moment. It’s not 100% necessary to do that general cardio. Warm up if you’re not feeling like you need it. But if you feel like that helps you, and you’ve got five to 10 minutes to devote to it, and also, you know, bonus, you’re getting a little bit of, probably zone two cardio out of it, then great. You know, it’s, it’s totally fine. It’s not hurting you in any way.

But is it 100% necessary in every single case? Maybe not. And I include it anyway in the warm-up directions, just if my clients feel like, hey, I need to have something to just shake off the cobwebs of sitting all day. I need to ease in. I want to listen to some music to pump me up, whenever it happens to me. Sometimes that general cardio warm-up can help. Then we go into that dynamic warm-up again to move you around, to get you through those movement patterns, specifically that you’re going to be working on that day, and also to just go through a little bit of joint mobility work, especially as we’re aging.

A lot of my clients have joint sensitivity, or what I would call an unpleasant joint sensation, which is. Stiffness, maybe a low level of achiness, because one of the reasons being, as we’re going through that perimenopause to menopause transition, and again, we’re losing estrogen, and we’re in that post-menopausal period where estrogen is quite low estrogen, it plays a really important role in keeping our joints well lubricated, keeping the tissue healthy and you know, working, functioning very, very well.

And so as estrogen is eventually going to be at its much lower level, a lot of my clients have more joint sensitivity as they’re aging. And so they find that that helps them to, you know, again, feel a little bit better going into the workout. They’re not feeling as stiff, as creaky as you know, or just overall less mobile. It gives them a chance to work through that. So let’s go into this idea, and we’ll probably talk about it again in the next episode of warming up by doing the lifts themselves.

I just talked about, mimicking the lift pattern or the movement pattern that you’re going to be doing on that day. So hinge, squat, push, pull, etc. Research strongly supports this idea that warming up with the actual lift that you plan to perform, but at a lighter load, is an effective way to prepare your body for heavier lifting. So again, this is more and as we’re going into the idea of your strength work, and we’ll cover that in the next episode, but I do want to cover it here because oftentimes people get confused.

They’re like, do I need to do warm-up sets for the exercises that you’re going to be doing that day? This approach where we’re doing warm-up sets of the lift that we’re then going to be doing at a more strength level is called specific warm-up. And there are some advantages to doing this, especially when it comes to how our muscles work and the integration with our nervous system. So it helps you, first of all, to familiarize your body with a movement pattern that you’re going to be doing that day, performing the same movement, but with a lighter weight reinforcing the general motor pattern that you’re going to be using in that lift.

So say, for example, squat deadlift, bench press, overhead press, right? And this can really be helpful again, especially if you’re somebody who is feeling a little bit stiff, a little bit sore, you’re waking up and doing this early in the morning, and so your body has just been lying down for hopefully about eight hours or at the end of the day, or you’ve been sitting a lot, so practicing the motion is allowing your brain and muscles to coordinate together more effectively, especially when the weight increases.

I don’t know about you, but if you’ve ever had the sensation of walking up to a heavy barbell and trying to lift it without any prior warm-up sets. It just feels like a fucking shock to your body. Your body’s like, what the hell? And maybe you could lift it, but it just felt grungy. I don’t know a better way to say it. It just felt slow or grindy, or just didn’t feel smooth. It didn’t feel natural. It feels like a big wake-up call, and you’re thinking, wow, that felt really heavy.

So that’s one reason why you will probably want to do warm-up sets, especially for your strength work, again, joint and muscle preparation, right? So gradually loading your muscles, tendons, ligaments, your joints, with lighter weights is going to help to increase blood flow and temperature to those areas and feel more smooth and feel like you’re prepped and ready, and to help the tissues be more supple, I guess is, is the term I would use, right? So more elastic?

Is this going to help prevent every single injury known to mankind that you could incur no but again, it’s probably smart insurance for mitigating the risk of injury as best as possible, and also for working through fuller ranges of motion. Nervous system activation is another element here of that specific warm-up. So let’s say I’m doing squats, right? This is going to help prime the nervous system, which is key for strength, stability, and motor recruitment, especially as things get heavier and heavier, and mimicking the movement with a lighter weight or lighter intensity is going to help prime that connection between the nervous system and the muscle being able to contract so recruiting the muscle fibers, those muscle units, to contract when things get really heavy, really, really, really important.

And it also, I would say, another aspect of this, that people focus a lot more on the physiological things which we just covered, which are totally valid. But also, I don’t hear this one being mentioned as often. It’s like a dress rehearsal, right? So it’s a dress rehearsal for when things get heavy. Practicing the lift even at a lower weight, is going to provide a mental cue to your body of what’s coming, and help you focus more when you actually get to heavier sets. So people will ask, okay, so should I be doing warm-up sets for every single?

Exercise generally, I would say no, but definitely for strength work. So whatever your main strength work is of the day, those say two to six rep ranges that you’re doing, that’s especially the stuff that you want to pay attention to, because it should also be at the top of your workout. If you’re programming for yourself, stop putting your strength work at the end. Put it up top. So in Strong With Steph, put it after the just movement prep and balance work.

And then if there’s any Power or Plyo work, straight into strength work. And then all of our accessory work comes after that. And depending on the phase of what we’re focusing on, it could be more strength, you know, biased or more hypertrophy bias, it just depends. But when you’re really picking up those heavier weights, just going super heavy into the rack, or picking something super heavy up off the floor, you haven’t done as much to that point.

I’ve probably done a little bit of Power Plyo work, which I include. So that’s going to help. But definitely for those strength sets, starting at something, you know, like a 40, 50% working up to about 60% or if we’re doing RPE, starting at about four to five RPE, and then working up to six, maybe seven, depending on how heavy you’re going, that day is generally going to be how you want to approach those warm-ups.

And doing, you know, multiple sets to buildup, but not too many. And that’s another mistake that I see a lot of people making, is they’re just taking a ton of warm-up sets, like a ton. You’re just adding a ton of volume. So there is a little bit of an art slash strategy to giving yourself enough warm-up sets. It depends on the lift as well.

How heavy you’re going to start, relatively speaking, so with the deadlift will generally start, obviously with more weight on the bar, because it’s going to be a heavier lift than something like an overhead press. But I just wanted to add that in here. Now, when it comes to accessory work, by that point, you’ve likely done quite a bit of movement. You’ve done your heavier strength work. I don’t find that most of my lifters need warm-up sets for their accessory work.

If it’s heavier strength accessory work, they might take a warm-up set or two. And some of this is super dependent on the individual. And I give my lifters that freedom to add a warm-up set or two if they’re really feeling like on the day my knees feel super creaky, or my shoulder feels a little bit janky, whatever they need to get into their work, their strength work, or their hypertrophy work, to help them feel more comfortable and confident in their body and feel like they’re ready and prepared.

So that’s the idea behind that. And again, strength work for Strong With Steph, especially those main lifts, which we tend to focus on, being deadlift, overhead press, deadlift, I will say, or hip thrust, depending on the day, but deadlift/hip thrust, overhead press, bench press, and squat, I had to think that for a second, definitely doing warm-up sets for all of that. Okay, so now we’ve talked about why we have balance work in the program, why there’s movement prep in the program?

And again, just to think about this and give you some examples and remind you, and come back to the right as we are aging these, these things like balance, are declining our nervous system, recruitment of muscle fiber, like things tend to slow down, and in some cases, like what we’re going to talk about, power work, for example, in the next podcast episode, we may see a shift toward type one, less explosive fibers away from type two, again, as we’re aging, and especially with that extra added layer of hormonal shifting that we’re experiencing as we go through perium, and post-menopause.

So addressing these things through training is very important, and there is something you can do about it. And I guess that’s why I bring this up is, yes, we may see changes in our proprioception, our reflexes. We may have less strength in our postural muscles. We may have less of a type two fiber situation happening more shift toward type one fibers, less strength, less muscle mass, but through training, through progressive overload training, taking the long-term approach, taking longevity in mind, it is absolutely possible to train these things and see significant improvement, and if you haven’t started yet, it’s okay.

Yes, the best time to start training would have been years or decades ago, but the next best time is now. And there is so much positive that you can do if you’re consistent enough, which you don’t have to be perfect with, but with enough. Consistency is super, super important. So examples of balance exercises that show up in the program, and again, I put those toward the top of the workout. We’re not talking about tons and tons of reps here or tons of sets, but just enough to get it in and get it done. And again, squeeze that work in.

Again, you could do it outside of gym time. You can do it while you’re standing in the kitchen, brushing your teeth, watching TV, or watching Netflix. You can totally do it outside of gym time. But most people find that it’s hard to remember to do that in addition to all the other things that they’re doing in the day-to-day. But you could do that there so simply speaking, a single leg balance with your knee up, that is challenging enough sometimes for people, especially for holding for, you know, an increasingly long length of time.

But if you’re finding that that’s too easy, two of my favorite ways to make your balance exercises spicier are very simple. Number one is while, every while you’re doing whatever balance exercise it is that you’re doing to turn your head, turn your head to the side, right side to side. Slowly, that’s going to change your proprioception, which is going to make balance a lot harder.

Secondly is to close your eyes so that visual feedback is so important to your brain to help you figure out where you are in space. So those are two ways that you can take, any simple looking balance exercise and make it a little bit harder. I know that some of my clients are not at that point yet. So balance, you can do this close to a wall, close to the back of a chair, or if you’re in the gym, you can hold on to the squat rack or something of that nature, or have it nearby.

You don’t have to go the hardest exercise right up front, but really just give yourself a chance to feel what that’s like. And if you can do this without your shoes on, many people find it easier because you’re able to really use those smaller stability stabilizing muscles of the feet in the lower limbs especially. And a lot of people find that the balance exercises are easier with their shoes off if they wear really squishy tennis shoes or running shoes.

Some people, sometimes people find that harder because it’s a little bit more of an unstable or soft platform. So you can keep that in mind from there, I like to include some rotation. So whether it’s lower body rotation and simply having your knee up standing on one foot, rotating from to one side and back to the midline, and then switching sides, or upper body rotation while you’re balancing on one foot.

So the lift and chop being one of my favorites here, take a lighter dumbbell or a small medicine ball. You can have that down at your side, across your body, at the pocket, you’re again, standing on one foot, and you’re going to cross it over your midline, and up diagonally, you’re going to be holding it up, and then you’re going to bring it back down, so you’re including that upper body rotation while keeping your lower body still.

Another great one is that windmill, single leg windmill, where you’re sitting on one leg again, one leg is up, your knee is up, and you’re going to be rotating your entire upper body, torso from one side back to the midline, and then, of course, switching sides. If you’re watching me on YouTube, I’m trying to demonstrate this, but I’m in my little recording copy, and I don’t have a lot of room here, so I’ll try to link the videos that we have in our, by the way, side note, 500 plus exercise demonstration videos for free on YouTube demonstrating all of these exercises that are in the Strong With Steph program.

So if you want ideas, we’ll link up some of these in the show notes and in the YouTube description. So you can just click and check out the balance exercises that I’m recommending here. All right, so putting it all together again, we just want to think about including enough of this work to get us a response right, to have an adaptation, and to see change without belaboring the point.

Yes, there are single leg strength exercises, or, you know, depending on how many reps we’re doing, could be done for hypertrophy as well that are going to help. And you can include those in your program. We’ll talk about those in the next podcast episode, where we cover unilateral exercises and why those are so key. But you just want to think about, how do I give myself a challenge with where my current ability level is, and then slowly up the ante over time.

So especially with the balance work, if standing on one leg is too easy, let’s include some other planes of movement, right, like, right like, rotation, lateral, or just moving parts of the body out in a lateral fashion while balancing on one foot. And so making that slightly more challenging or dynamic over time is important, and including it, on a regular enough basis after you’ve improved your balance significantly, maybe you don’t have to do that every session.

And you will have to do enough to maintain so even a couple times a week, I tend to find that most people will do the job pretty well, but being consistent enough in the long run. So that’s really the name of the game in terms of progressive overload with that, and then again, with your movement prep work, I would say here, yes, progressing over time could be key, going into, for example, slightly deeper ranges of motion in a controlled fashion, of course, or including things that are slightly more advanced.

So say, for example, I’m thinking of a couch stretch, although that tends to be something that people do at the end of a workout for a little bit more of a stretch movement. But you can include things that target the quads, for example, in terms of a Bulgarian rock back or something of that nature. For some people, that’s a little bit intense. So you might start with something that’s not quite as intense.

Maybe you’re going to start in a perfect stretch, a Spiderman deep lunge, or something of that nature. So just keep in mind that you can progress, in many cases, the movement prep. But a lot of times, the movement prep will be more specific to what you’re doing on that day. And of course, if you’re in the over 40 club, super important that you give yourself that check-in toward the beginning of your workout. How are you feeling? What’s your sleep been like? What’s your level of joint, potential irritation, stiffness, or creakiness? You know, what does your body need on that day? What’s the best option for you?

How do you scale it to something that’s more of a challenge or less of a challenge, depending on what you need? And I find that this is one of the most key things that my clients are practicing, and one of the hardest things sometimes to set the ego aside and say, you know, today is not the day for me to go full on. I need to back off a little bit, and that’s just what I need on the day. So bottom line, super important to include that mindset check and checking in with your body in terms of autoregulation.

And you can go ahead and, you know, think about going back and listening to that prior episode on autoregulation if you haven’t yet heard it. And of course, as always, track your improvements. We talked about this in the last episode, or maybe it was the one before that, with progressive overload as being one of the the biggest pitfalls, I think of training. And I think a lot of times it’s because people who are newer to this idea of a longer-term progressive overload program think, yeah, but like, I’m not good enough to track my progress yet.

Like I’m not elite enough, or I’m not advanced enough, and that’s just not true, right? Start tracking your weights. Start tracking you know what, your video your lifts. Start collecting data to help guide not only your decision-making or your coach’s programming, but also to see your progress, and that goes for things like your balance exercises. I can’t tell you how many times people write in their exercise log inside of our app that they’re noticing their balance is so much better, they’re so much more stable.

Of course, bubbles are gonna happen, and nobody’s balance is perfect from day to day, but from when they started to where they are now, our balance is light years better, and so that’s important to keep track of, just like anything else. So include those things you know, keep a roster, or keep a list of your warm-up sets. Even make adjustments as necessary. And that goes a little bit, but more a little bit back into that specific warm-up that we talked about. I’ll give you an example.

You know, thinking about my warm-up sets as I’ve increased my lifts, I’ve had to change my warm-up sets, right? And that’s just something that we see. As you get stronger, your warm-up weights are going to change based on what level of strength you’re currently at, so keep that in mind as well. It can be really helpful to write your warm-up sets down so that you have a record of that and you can see again how you’re improving over time. All right, so to wrap it up, movement, prep, and balance work are essential.

We know they’re going to play an important role in things like joint health, mitigating the risk of injury, and enhancing our experience of progressive overload. We know that balance training is so key, not only for adults over 65 but because menopause, and post-menopause, an average onset age of 52 to 53 we should be thinking about balance, in my opinion, far before the age of 65 and most people that I have ever worked with, even those who are under the age of 40, see that they have a much better response in terms of their balance if they’re including regular practice and training.

But of course, we know that as we age through the menopause transition in our post-era. Our risk for falls and fractures only goes up, especially if we’re not currently training. So that’s another nudge to get a training program and start getting on it and just starting the practice there. Consistency, of course, is the name of the game. Looking toward longevity and thinking about those things, you can make lots of positive changes, and implementing a well-thought-out program is going to take the burden off of you to have to plan all of those elements out.

So with that in mind, check out the free seven-day sample of Strong With Steph it includes these things that I talked about in this episode, which are the balance work, movement prep, and then also the things I’ll talk about in the future episodes such as Power and Plyo work, strength work and, of course, accessory work.

Okay, so check that out at StephGaudreau.com/workout I will send you the seven-day sample of Strong With Steph along with a free Guide To Strength Training for women over 40. It’s packed with lots of great information and think about how to apply this to your own training and your own life. All right. Thanks so much for being with me on this episode. As always, I appreciate it. If you liked this content, you found it helpful, please hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

It’s a free way to show that you support the show, and it helps other people with the same interests. Find this content also on YouTube. Hit subscribe there. Hit like and enable notifications. Hit that bell, that way, every time I publish a new episode, you’ll get a notification. All right, thanks so much for being with me on this episode. Stay tuned next time we’re diving into the meat and potatoes of all of this, the strength work. I’m so excited to talk about this and share more with you, but until then, stay strong.

Why Movement Prep & Balance Matter in Strength Training Over 40 | Steph Gaudreau.