Women of Steel and 40 plus
Grievance:
I am a quadragenarian using heavy weights, doing tons of strength training, using protein loading from natural sources, but I find it increasingly hard to remain injury free.”
Answer:
Not getting injured is what women over 40 should be focusing upon. This takes priority because injuries occur frequently in both genders as the quality of the tissues (muscles, ligaments and tendons) deteriorates as you age. The injuries also take longer to heal as you get older, especially in women during the years of menopause and beyond – besides a soft tissue injury could be catastrophic for your progress.
Common injuries that could occur are shoulder impingement syndrome, rotator cuff tear, back/neck sprains and strains, herniated discs, patellar tendinitis (knees) and injuries due to over stretching the joints while lifting weights. Lifting heavy weights with accelerated form of progression still remains the main vein leading to such injuries.
The tragedy is that we are not instructed how to read the body’s warning signs in time and take rest when we need to – or how to proactively manage the sprained or the injured area, like paying extra attention during a warm up and beyond.
And that brings us to “warmups” – incredibly valuable for women when they are going through menopause and afterwards – much more than when they are in their teens and twenties.
If you are lifting weights then warming up on a treadmill or on a cycle for ten minutes doesn’t really cut it. It may help if you are physically cold, but actually you need to be doing movements that you are going to do, but with a much lighter weight and then slowly build up to the load that you are finally maxing out on.
Now during your warmup, if your body part is sending you signals of pain and it’s not going away but getting worse, then you should classify that as an injury and you should probably avoid doing that particular exercise till it’s fixed.
That said, resistance training is best suited for all – especially for women in their 40s, 50s and beyond.
Zareer Patell – Black Belt, Personal/Online Fitness Trainer and Wellness Columnist (since 1972).
