If Madonna and Letizia Ortiz have one thing in common, it is that every time they make a public appearance, their muscular arms become the subject of debate. However, it is becoming more and more common for celebrities to show off their muscles, and at a time when physical exercise has become a key element of the discourse of those who highlight its importance not only for aesthetic reasons, but even for its benefits in the field of mental health, the most acclaimed fitness instructors on the networks have discovered that their biceps and abs, those that some people previously rejected or feared, are beginning to be acclaimed and desired.
Why strength training is essential after age 30
Strength training is essential for women not only when they reach middle age, but from the age of 30 onwards to slow down sarcopenia, that is, the loss of muscle mass. It is estimated that from the age of 30 onwards, women lose between 3 and 8% of muscle mass every decade, while from the age of 50 onwards, the percentage is between 5 and 10%. “Unfortunately, society is weight-centred, when the discourse that should prevail is that we must age well and in a healthy way, and that is what strength training favours: that women age by being functional. We have to forget about so much spinning and exercise our muscles. When my patients ask me what is the supplement, activity, attitude or lifestyle habit that will help them the most during menopause, I have it very clear: strength training,” explains Marimer Pérez, gynaecologist and obstetrician.
On her social media, she strongly defends the importance of strength training, the benefits of which she knows firsthand, as she has been doing this training for almost 15 years due to a lumbar injury that left her losing strength in her legs and making her unable to tie her shoelaces. “The solution they gave me was to have surgery to get a plate. They told me I would have to leave my profession, which is what I love most. I met an osteopath who assured me that by working the paravertebral muscles, we could fix the spine so that it would have the same effect as the plate that the first doctor suggested to me. I gained muscle mass, my back stopped hurting, I began to be able to tie my shoelaces again and, ultimately, I have been able to continue with my profession thanks to strength training, which also rescued me during menopause, as it helped me keep my mind healthy,” she says.
Javier Carbajo, CEO of Trainingboutique, also stresses that strength training is vital at all stages of a woman’s life, although it becomes even more important as time goes by. “This type of exercise helps maintain muscle mass and bone density, manage weight, improve mood and mental health and prevent chronic diseases, ensuring a better quality of life and greater independence in old age. Increased muscle strength allows the most everyday activities to be carried out with much less effort, which makes the person have greater independence in daily life,” he says. He adds as a benefit
the improvement of body composition thanks to the increase in muscle mass, which will increase the basal metabolism, making the basic caloric expenditure greater. “The greater the amount of muscle mass, the greater the energy the body will need to consume to make the organism function, thus promoting the loss of fat mass,” he adds.
Muscle as subversion
Until very recently, cardiovascular exercise was the one that was instantly associated with women, as it was believed to be the ideal way to lose weight, when in reality, strength exercises consume a lot of oxygen in the hours and days after training, so in the end, as Carbajo comments, the caloric expenditure is greater. Another common myth is that this type of training results in hyper-muscular silhouettes, which although they are increasingly becoming more accepted, are still feared by many. “It seems that little by little we are breaking that negative vision that existed when a woman was or looked strong. Many times we are the ones who sabotage ourselves. We have had mistaken beliefs in our heads that still exist, as there are still women in the gym who claim they do not want to do work with heavy weights because they are afraid of getting “a man’s body”, when hormonally, this is not feasible. Fortunately, times are changing and we are increasingly aware of the importance for us to have strong and functional muscles for everyday life,” says Ana Ferrero, manager of Vivagym.
The power of the hashtag #girlswholift helps women take pride in their strength training and achievements, gradually leaving behind stereotypes that, while they may have seemed less rigid until recently, are still firmly in place in the days of Ozempic, who has once again made thinness the ultimate trend. Figures such as Halle Berry, who at 57 years old has just left social media speechless by share an image with which she pays tribute to the twentieth anniversary of her role as ‘Catwoman’ by showing off her figure and uploading videos in which she trains with her personal trainer, Peter Lee Thomas, helping us to look at muscles in a different way.
It is not only famous women who are promoting a change in aesthetic canons, but films such as ‘Blood on the Lips’ (2024), directed by Rose Glass and starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, who plays a bodybuilder, try to transform the canons while demonstrating, in the face of the controversy generated by the hyper-muscled bodies that appear in the feature film, that these silhouettes still generate some rejection. “Since the bodybuilder Steve Reeves starred in ‘Hercules’ in 1958, through Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, to the mega stars of the Marvel universe, we are used to seeing very muscular male movie stars. However, for women, getting muscular is still a subversive act,” the director assures ‘Big Issue’“There are a lot of negative reactions associated with female musculature. Although male musculature is celebrated, female musculature still surprises some people,” she says.
As sociologist Tanya Bunsell explains in ‘Strong and Hard Women: An Ethnography of Female Bodybuilding’ (Routledge, 2013), a book in which she investigates the controversy that generates some people who think that women who lift weights rebel against imposed femininity, while others believe that they are immersed in an oppressive search for a certain body type. At the beginning of bodybuilding, women were forbidden to clench their fists and adopt a list of “masculine” poses during their posture routines. The author claims that most of those who won these competitions were extremely “thin” with “small, fibrous muscles.” In fact, as she writes in Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women’s Body Building (Rutgers University Press, 1998) writer and professor Leslie Heywood, “since the earliest female bodybuilding contests, the most contentious issue in judging has been the extent to which a woman’s body should be allowed to deviate from the dominant cultural feminine ideal of smallness and delicateness.”
Strength training and menopause
That is why it is important that figures like Halle Berry continue to defend the existence of muscular silhouettes, and the actress, in her fight to break down the stigma that still accompanies menopause, does not hesitate to applaud the benefits that strength training has from a certain age. “In menopause, strength training reduces vasomotor symptoms and hot flashes, and helps emotional balance. Menopause brings with it, due to the drop in estrogen, a decrease in the secretion of serotonin and dopamine, and with strength training the secretion of these neurotransmitters increases, so the results at the level of mental health are formidable. It improves the metabolic and hormonal profile, and
We have also seen that in patients who exercise their muscles, estrogen receptors are more effective. For this reason, many studies indicate that if strength training is added to hormone therapy during menopause, the result will be doubled,” says Marimer Pérez.
Therefore, although strength training is important at any age to improve body composition, increase metabolism related to muscle mass gain, prevent diseases such as hypercholesterolemia and hypertension, as well as prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular accidents, among other benefits, in women it becomes even more important due to the hormonal factor. “When menopause arrives, the risk of starting to have health problems related to bone mass loss (osteopenia) appears, which can lead to osteoporosis. If we train strength, we will help our peak bone mass to be higher. This fact, together with the muscle mass gain we mentioned before, will help us to keep our bone mineral density from declining,” says Ferrero.
Finally, are there exercises that are not recommended for people over a certain age? Ana Ferrero believes that this will depend on the background, experience and medical history of each person. “The important thing is individualisation. Each one of us is different and that is why it is vitally important to put ourselves in the hands of exercise professionals who make a good assessment and provide personalised indications and contraindications for each person to prevent health problems and ensure that training is really efficient and effective for our needs,” she says. We don’t know if “strong is the new sexy” but it is certainly the “new healthy”.
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