4 Strength Exercises Every Woman Over 50 Should Start With

Strength training for women over 50 doesn’t need to be complicated. If your workouts feel harder than they should, it may not be your effort. It may be your structure.

In this video, I walk you through 4 foundational strength exercises for women in midlife so you can build muscle, support your metabolism, and feel stronger in your everyday life.

These movements are based on the core movement patterns your body naturally uses, and they help you move better, feel more stable, and reduce confusion in your workouts.

You’ll learn:

• The 4 most important strength movements to start with
• How to squat, hinge, push, and pull with better control
• Why workouts feel harder in menopause
• How to structure a simple 10-minute strength workout

If you’ve been wondering how to start strength training after 50, this is where to begin.

🎯 Try my 10-minute strength workouts (Menopause Minis): https://www.camoyler.com/meno-minis

Use code: CAMYOUTUBE to save $20

Watch next:
👉 How to Build Strength After 50 (Midlife Muscle Protocol)
👉 Core Exercises for Women Over 50

Subscribe for weekly videos on strength training for women over 50 and midlife fitness.

Chapters: 
00:00 Midlife Strength Training Tips
03:46 Squat Variations for Control
07:56 Strength, Discount, Subscribe!

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#WomenOver50Fitness
#MenopauseFitness
#BuildMuscleAfter50
#MidlifeStrength
#FitnessOver50

Transcript

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If you've ever stood there with a weight in your hand and thought, why does this feel harder than it should? Or maybe you've said, I don't even know if I'm doing this right anymore. Hey there, you are not alone. I hear this all the time, and it's usually not because you're doing too little. It's because no one ever showed you how to organize what you're doing. Hey there, I'm Cam Allen, and this channel is for women in midlife who want to feel strong in their body again. On this channel, we talk about strength training and your recovery and what actually works in menopause. In the last video, we covered core stability and why that matters more than most women realize. Did you know that your arms and your legs move better when your core is organized? I gave you 4 essential core exercises that are not crunches. You don't need to do crunches. And today I'm going to show you 4 strength movements that I would start with first. When I started lifting again after my hysterectomy 7+ years ago, I could still kind of do the workouts, but I did not feel strong anymore. I remember doing a workout I used to love, and I needed to be on the couch for 2 days afterwards. And that was completely new. And honestly, it was quite confusing because I knew how to work out. I had been working out for years, and at that time of life, I'd been lifting weights for like 9 or 10 years. What I didn't realize that time was it wasn't about my effort. It was actually about the structure of my workouts. You see, your body naturally moves through 6 main movement patterns. They are squats. That's getting in and out of chairs. Hinging, picking something like your grandbaby off the ground. Push, that's like pushing your suitcase into the overhead bend. Pull, that would, might be pulling weeds or maybe pulling wagons with your grandkids inside. Single leg stuff, that's like the steps and taking hikes and rotate, rotate when you play golf or pickleball or when you're moving things from the countertop to the cabinet, when you're unloading your groceries. So when those patterns are working together, you feel steady and strong. And when they're not, everything feels a little bit harder than it should. If you found this helpful so far, be sure to hit subscribe. Every week I'm here helping women in midlife get stronger without all the confusion. Now, most women try to fix their fitness in midlife by doing more. You know, diet culture told us to do that. That's what was ingrained in our head. Do more workouts, do more cardio, eat less calories, do more effort. And guess what? That usually makes everything feel worse at this stage of life. It's because your body is not asking for more right now. It is asking for something really simple and really clear to make your life outside of the gym more joyful, more adventuresome. So I want to give you a super simple way to start. These are the 4

movements I would focus on first: 3:01

squatting, hinging, pushing, and pulling. This is your base. So let's start with the squat. The squat is the most functional movement there is. It's literally getting in and out of your chair.

So to set up your squat, this is what I want: 3:16

your feet a little bit wider than your hips and your toes turned out just slightly. And then you send your hips back first and sit in a chair. From there, you push through your entire foot, meaning the front of your foot, the middle of your foot, and the back of your foot. Push through the ground evenly and stand up with your hips open. There's a ton of ways to practice squats. You could do chair squats. That's a great place to start. You could also do goblet squats where you hold one weight at your chest, or front squats where you hold dumbbells or a barbell or anything on your, on your shoulders with your elbows high. Those are great squats to practice. I even practiced some back squats today. I have a backpack in my gym and I put it on my back and I kept my chest up. My feet were on, you know, wider than my hips. And I worked on my squats with a weight on my back. The whole purpose of this is to focus on control. You want to push through those feet and stand tall. Literally, it's getting in and out of chairs. If you're new to squatting, give yourself a target. Set up a chair so your legs will be parallel to the ground, or if you're ready for a challenge, set, you know, set up in front of a shorter chair so when you squat, your hips will be a little bit lower than your knees. Literally start where you are, don't judge yourself, and go from there. That's squatting. Super important. Our legs and our glutes are our big strong muscles, and keep them strong. Squatting will keep your legs strong. Next up, we have hinging. This is how you pick up things off the ground, including your groceries or your suitcase or your grandbaby. Stand with your feet underneath your hips. Not as wide as a squat, so your, your legs are underneath your hips. You send your hips back and your shoulders forward, so you're bending over. Grab the thing, push through the ground evenly, and stand up strong. There are a ton of exercises that you can practice this hinging movement. One would be a good morning, where you put a weight on your back and you hinge and then stand up strong. You could do dumbbell deadlifts or barbell deadlifts. Hip bridges, kettlebell swings. All of those things have the same movement pattern. Your hips are going back, your spine is nice and strong and steady, and your glutes are doing the work. You push the ground away and you stand up strong. Hips back, shoulders forward, push the ground away and stand up strong. Now we're moving on to pushing. Now this is where a lot of women start to feel capable again. You can push in two directions. Horizontal, like a push-up, or you could start with a wall push-up, or vertical push. This would be like an overhead press from your shoulders to the overhead position. Control really matters here, and I talked about this in the last video. Before you move your arms and your legs, organize your core. So pull those ribs towards your belly button, squeeze your bottom and your belly. You can totally breathe here. From here, you should feel like your muscles on the inside of your core are turned on. So you're stable. From here, what you're going to do is take the weight from your shoulder and you're going to press it overhead while you keep your ribs down. You don't want to be sticking out your ribs and your chest. Everything's nice and organized through your middle so your arms can press. Now we're moving on to pulling. There's lots of pulling. This supports your posture and like your upper back. Most women want to skip this. Mm, we have horizontal pulls, and that would be like a bent-over row or a band pull or a dumbbell row, something like that. We also have vertical pulls, and that would be pull-ups or lat pulldown. Think about elbows back, chest open, nice and steady and strong through your middle. Really, you don't need to do more exercises. You just need better signals for your body, for your bones and your muscles to stay steady and strong. These 4 movement patterns give you exactly that. And if anything feels off, it usually comes back to your core. And that's why I taught the core first. When your core is organized, everything feels more stable and more organized, and your arms and your legs move better. If you want to start today, this is where I'd start. Pick one kind of squat, pick one kind of hinge, pick one kind of push and one kind of pull. Set the timer for 10 minutes. And that's your workout. Now, of course, if you don't want to make up your own, I have something for you. It's called the Menopause Minis. The link will be below. Use the code CAMYOUTUBE for a discount just for my YouTubers. And believe me, there's one thing I want you to

hear: 8:03

we're not chasing exhaustion or shrinking our body anymore. We're actually here to be strong, capable, and tell our muscles and our bones that we need them to stay strong. You're building strength that actually shows up in your life. So in the next video, I'm going to show you how to turn this into a full body workout so you're not standing there like wondering what to do next. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't ever miss an episode, and I'll see you next week.