Fitness for Women After 40 (Stay Strong and Stand Tall!)
Common Changes After 40 and How They Impact Fitness
Turning 40 is a milestone and also marks the beginning of significant physical changes that can impact overall health and well-being. While these changes are a natural part of aging, understanding and addressing them can help women maintain vitality, strength, and midlife fitness.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the common changes women experience with physical exercise after 40, many of which are influenced by hormonal changes, particularly the onset of perimenopause. We’ll also delve into the importance of movement, the benefits of strength training for women, and why posture matters more than ever.
Common changes include:
Decreased Muscle Mass
Without proper strength training, women in their 40s begin losing muscle mass, leading to reduced strength and slower metabolism.
Bone Density Loss
The risk of osteoporosis increases as estrogen levels decline, making bones more susceptible to fractures. (NIH Osteoporosis Guide)
Slower Metabolism
Many women notice weight gain, especially around the midsection, due to hormonal fluctuations and a decrease in lean muscle.
Hormonal fluctuations
Mood swings, sleep disturbances, and hot flashes become more common. Burnout can also suddenly set in from nowhere. (Mayo Clinic)
Joint and Mobility Issues
Stiffness, aches, and reduced flexibility become more apparent due to natural wear and tear on joints and declining collagen production.
Postural Changes
Years of sitting, poor movement patterns, and weakened core muscles can lead to postural imbalances, contributing to pain and reduced mobility.
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Long-term Implications
These changes are not just cosmetic – they can significantly impact long-term health. Ignoring them can lead to chronic conditions like osteoporosis, heart disease, and diabetes. That’s why it’s crucial to take these changes seriously and adopt proactive strategies sooner, rather than later, to stay healthy.
The scary thing about said changes is that they creep up on you quietly, over the years. And the next thing you know, you have a chronic condition. In our 40s, pre-emptive care is essential in maintaining our physical well-being now and in our later years.
But the good news is, in this day and age, with all the knowledge that we now have thanks to decades studies and research, along with the awakening of our collective intuition, we now have agency / ability, to care for ourselves in targeted and effective ways.
Movement as a Practice in Your 40s – for Strength and Lifelong Fitness
Regular physical activity is one of the major ways of maintaining health and vitality after 40. In my opinion, here are the four main types of movement every woman should practice, in this order.
Daily Movement
Beyond structured workouts, daily movement plays a key role in long-term health. Find ways to incorporate more movement into your daily life. Do more chores, take the stairs, walk after meals, or try a standing desk.
Consistent, low-intensity movement supports circulation, digestion, and overall energy levels. Even committing to a 15 minute walk after lunch or dinner daily can go a long way in improving overall health. Here, we will learn how and why movement is critical for maintaining muscle.
For me, this type of activity has the lowest barriers to entry and should logically be the first place for anyone to start!
Functional Training & Mobility Work
Functional training improves your ability to perform everyday activities with ease. While this may seem unimportant now, it will matter a lot in our later years.
Incorporating exercises that enhance balance, coordination, and flexibility, such as stability drills, Pilates, bodyweight exercises or my favourite, resistance bands, are a good way to start. Also, mobility work, like foam rolling or physiotherapy, will help in fascia health. That’s another rabbit hole we’ll dive into in later posts.
I believe that ‘prehabilitation work’ is important. It’s important to notice the aches and pains in your body and investigate where they come from. Chances are, they are due to some kind of misalignment happening in your structure. And many times, they’ll start showing up when you start a movement practice.
Strength Training
Strength training is a game-changer for women over 40. It helps counteract muscle loss, thereby preserving strength, balance and mobility. (ACE Fitness ) It also reduces your chances of injury due to overstraining yourself. Your independence and quality of life in later life, literally depend on it.
Working your muscles also boosts metabolism and increases fat loss, since muscle is more a metabolically active tissue than fat. A body with higher muscle mass requires more calories to maintain itself, compared to one with a higher fat mass. Meaning, building muscle is perhaps the most sustainable method of weight management.
And let’s not get started on its effects on bone health. Did you know that strong muscles leads to strong bones? And strong bones leads to fewer fractures.
The biggest flex that I get from strength training is the ability to pull myself up and stand tall. Working your muscles improves your posture. Standing tall takes a lot of effort if your muscles are not conditioned. And it takes no effort at all if they are. This benefit is one that I can reap almost immediately, not in my later years.
Another huge benefit of building muscle is that it is a metabolic powerhouse, secreting various biochemicals as we need them. It plays a critical role in regulating hormones, metabolism, and neurotransmitters like endorphins and myokines. Strength training enhances insulin sensitivity, supports brain function, and helps manage stress by reducing cortisol levels. All wins in our book!
Cardiovascular Exercise
Cardio workouts improve heart health, boost metabolism, and enhance endurance. Activities like brisk walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, and dance-based workouts help maintain cardiovascular fitness and support weight management.
While cardio is an important part of overall health, it has been given far too much airtime – often at the expense of more sustainable strategies. Toxic diet culture bears much of the blame, perpetuating the myth that burning more calories through cardio automatically leads to weight loss. While this is technically true in the short term, the reality is far more complex.
The human body is wired for survival, adapting to physical demands in the most efficient ways possible. When you begin a cardio routine, your body gradually becomes more efficient at the activity, burning fewer calories over time for the same effort. This means you may need to increase duration or intensity just to maintain the same calorie burn – a frustrating cycle that can lead to burnout.
Mainstream fitness culture has long overemphasized intense workouts as the ‘best’ way to burn calories. For women over 40, this approach often backfires. The body perceives excessive high-intensity exercise as a stressor, which can disrupt cortisol balance, exacerbate hormonal fluctuations, and even accelerate muscle loss if recovery is inadequate. Paired with a calorie-restricted diet, the body will perceive prolonged deficits as a threat, triggering metabolic slowdown and relentless cravings – a survival mechanism deeply rooted in our biology.
Instead of fighting your physiology with punishing workouts, low-impact, steady-state movement – like walking – is a far more sustainable and long-term strategy.
Walking supports metabolic health without the stress spike. Walking gently elevates heart rate, improves circulation, and aids blood sugar regulation – critical for women navigating perimenopause and beyond.
Because it is relatively low intensity, walking preserves muscle while burning calories. Long, intense cardio sessions can break down muscle if protein intake is insufficient, but walking paired with strength training protects lean mass.
Fatigue, joint sensitivity, and hormonal shifts (common in midlife) make walking a reliable, low-risk option that still delivers cardiovascular benefits.
What about calorie burn? Yes, walking burns fewer calories per minute than sprinting, but consistency matters more than intensity. A daily 30 - 60 minute walk, combined with strength training, is the ideal way to create a sustainable deficit without triggering hunger surges or metabolic resistance.
Why Posture Matters (All the More) After 40
Posture is more than just standing up straight. It affects everything from those mysterious body aches and pains to breathing efficiency and even mental health. While often overlooked, it plays a critical role in physical health, especially after 40.
Posture and Physical Alignment
Poor posture can lead to chronic pain, joint stress, and movement restrictions from misalignments. Over time, this can result in chronic pain, particularly in the neck, shoulders, and lower back.
A strong, aligned posture supports the spine, reduces strain on muscles and joints, and prevents common issues like back pain and tension headaches.
I believe that a sensible and gentle way to start any fitness journey is to ‘pre-habilitate’ your physical alignment. I would have saved myself so much discomfort from weak postural muscles, had I just taken my own advice.
Posture and Anxiety
Poor posture and anxiety share a corelational relationship. Research suggests that slouched or collapsed positions (like rounded shoulders and a forward head) can amplify feelings of stress and helplessness. (PubMed study ) Physiological stress responses are triggered, including increased cortisol and shallow breathing.
This mind-body connection is rooted in evolutionary biology: defensive postures (hunching) reinforce threat perception, while expansive postures promote a sense of control, making posture correction a simple but powerful tool for managing anxiety.
This posture-anxiety connection becomes especially significant due to hormonal shifts we experience in our 40s. Fluctuating estrogen levels during perimenopause and menopause can heighten sensitivity to stress and poor posture exacerbates this by straining the vagus nerve around the neck / throat region. The vagus nerve is our body's relaxation pathway.
This creates a vicious cycle: hormonal changes make women more prone to anxiety, while slumped postures reinforce feelings of overwhelm by elevating cortisol.
Conversely, maintaining an aligned, upright posture helps regulate the nervous system, counteracting midlife's hormonal turbulence.
Posture and Breathing
In general, good posture optimises lung function, allowing for deeper and more efficient breathing. Shallow breathing can lead to fatigue, brain fog, and increased stress levels.
For women over 40, poor posture directly compromises breathing efficiency during a time when declining estrogen levels are already heightening respiratory challenges. Slouched positions compress the diaphragm (your primary breathing muscle), reducing lung capacity by up to 30% and forcing shallow, inefficient chest breathing.
Rounded shoulders and forward head posture further strain accessory neck muscles, triggering chronic ‘air hunger’ that amplifies stress responses.
Correcting posture through thoracic mobility work and diaphragmatic training can restore oxygen flow, helping mitigate hot flashes, brain fog, and fatigue linked to menopausal breathing dysfunction.
Posture and Pain
Postural imbalances can become a major contributor to chronic pain due to age-related physiological changes. The natural decline in muscle mass and bone density, combined with hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause, weakens the structural support system.
A forward head posture, common from smartphone / computer use, adds up to 30 pounds of strain on the neck, leading to tension headaches and cervical spine degeneration over time.
Additionally, slumped shoulders and a rounded upper back compress the vertebrae of the upper back while overstretching weakened upper back muscles, creating that familiar ache between the shoulder blades.
In the lower body, anterior pelvic tilt, probably from tight hip flexors and weak glutes, stresses the lumbar spine, exacerbating low back pain – already a top complaint for a majority of women in midlife.
Final Thoughts
Physical health after 40 is about more than just looking good—it’s about feeling strong, capable, and vibrant. By understanding the changes your body is going through and adopting a proactive approach to daily movement, strength training, and posture, you can thrive in midlife and beyond. With a bit of effort, you can build a resilient and pain-free body that will support you for decades to come. Your future self will thank you!
