At Rushcutters Health, our personal trainers in Sydney regularly work with women experiencing menopause. If you’re going through this transition, you’ve likely noticed some changes. Many of these can be credited to the drop in oestrogen, one of the primary female sex hormones.
Our fitness trainers in Sydney understand that until you go through menopause, you might not realise that oestrogen affects far more than just your reproductive system. In addition to regulating your period, oestrogen helps with bone formation, keeping heart tissue healthy and blood pressure stable, as well as improving muscle mass.
When your body decreases oestrogen production, several changes occur: your period stops, your bones favour breaking down over rebuilding, your muscles weaken, your risk of heart problems increases, and your metabolism slows. Plus, you can experience symptoms like fatigue, muscle aches, and hot flushes.
While many of these effects are simply annoying (night sweats, anyone?), others, like weak muscles and bones, can impact long-term health. Here’s the good news: at Rushcutters Health, our personal trainers in Potts Point have seen firsthand how strength training can prevent and mitigate many menopause side effects.
Benefits of Strength Training During Menopause
- Builds Muscle
Oestrogen plays a crucial role in muscle protein synthesis—the process of creating new muscle protein. When oestrogen levels drop during menopause, building and maintaining muscle becomes harder, eventually leading to muscle loss.
At Rushcutters Health, we explain to our clients that this challenge is compounded by natural age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia), which begins after age 30. We typically lose approximately 3 to 5 percent of our muscle mass per decade, with this process accelerating after age 60.
Declining muscle mass means reduced strength, making everyday activities more challenging. If muscles continue to shrink year after year, even simple tasks like getting out of bed and walking can become difficult. Balance also becomes compromised, increasing fall risk—a leading cause of injury among adults over 65.
Our fitness trainers in Sydney emphasise that you can prevent this decline through resistance training. Lifting weights is one of the best ways to build and maintain muscle mass, helping ward off and even reverse both sarcopenia and hormone-related muscle loss.
- Strengthens Bones
At Rushcutters Health, we place special focus on bone health during menopause. This is a crucial time to consider osteoporosis risk, as the condition weakens bones and makes them more susceptible to fracture.
Normally, your body breaks down old bone tissue and replaces it with new tissue with oestrogen’s help. But once oestrogen levels decrease, bone building becomes more challenging, and breakdown occurs faster than replacement. This explains why osteoporosis risk increases dramatically after menopause.
Our personal trainers in Potts Point specialise in strength training programmes specifically designed for bone health. Through carefully planned resistance exercises, we help clients maintain and build bone density. These exercises work by pulling and pushing on bone and forcing movement against gravity while supporting heavier weights—actions that trigger bones to strengthen.
- Lowers Insulin Resistance
At Rushcutters Health, we understand the connection between menopause and metabolic health. Strength training can improve insulin resistance, a condition where cells stop responding effectively to insulin (the hormone regulating blood sugar).
This is particularly important during menopause, as oestrogen affects how cells respond to insulin. Hormonal changes can trigger blood sugar spikes, putting you at greater risk for diabetes or diabetes-related complications.
Our Sydney fitness trainers incorporate resistance training to help improve insulin sensitivity and assist in maintaining healthy blood sugar levels. Building muscle mass through strength training helps manage blood sugar more effectively, as muscles use significant amounts of glucose for energy.
- Helps Manage Weight
Weight management during menopause can be challenging, but at Rushcutters Health, we’ve helped numerous clients maintain a healthy weight through strength training.
While strength training might not burn as many calories during the workout as cardio activities, it offers unique benefits for weight management. By building muscle—metabolically active tissue—you can help prevent your metabolism from slowing down and burn more calories throughout the day.
- Reduces Hot Flushes
Hot flushes affect approximately 75 percent of menopausal women, but our personal trainers in Sydney have good news: strength training might help. Research shows that regular resistance workouts can significantly reduce hot flush frequency, possibly by helping the brain better control and stabilise body temperature.
The Best Strength Moves During Menopause
At Rushcutters Health, we like to focus on compound strength exercises (that utilize a large of muscles) for maximum benefit. These include:
- Squats
- Bench presses
- Deadlifts
- Bent-over rows
- Overhead presses
Our fitness trainers in Sydney emphasise these movements because they’re more effective for building muscle and bone than isolation exercises (like bicep curls or triceps extensions). While isolation exercises have their place, compound movements provide the foundation for a strong, healthy body during menopause.
How to Progress Your Strength Workouts
At Rushcutters Health, we tailor progression to each client’s fitness level and experience. For those new to strength training, we focus on:
- Learning proper form
- Building consistency
- Starting with manageable 15-20 minute sessions
- Training 2-4 times per week
- Targeting all major muscle groups
For experienced lifters, we help progress workouts by:
- Increasing weights when current loads feel manageable
- Adjusting rep ranges appropriately
- Adding complexity to movements
- Ensuring continued challenge and adaptation
Ready to Transform Your Menopause Journey?
At Rushcutters Health, our experienced personal trainers in Potts Point specialise in helping women navigate menopause through effective strength training. We understand the unique challenges of this life stage and provide expert guidance to help you maintain strength, bone density, and overall wellness.
Visit our modern facility to learn how our targeted strength training programmes can help manage your menopause symptoms and improve your quality of life.
Transform your menopause experience with Sydney’s leading fitness experts at Rushcutters Health.
