5 Ways Strength Training Can Help Manage the Worst Menopause Symptoms

If you’re going through menopause, you’ve probably noticed some changes. Many of these can be credited to the drop in estrogen, one of the primary female sex hormones.

In addition to regulating your period, estrogen also helps with bone formation and keeping heart tissue healthy and blood pressure stable as well as improving muscle mass, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

With menopause, your period stops, bone loss speeds up, you lose muscle mass, your risk of heart problems increases, and your metabolism slows, according to research. Plus, you can experience symptoms like fatigue, muscle aches, and hot flashes.

Lots of these effects are just plain annoying. (Night sweats, anyone?) Others can spell trouble for long-term health.

Ready for some good news? You can prevent and mitigate many of the side effects of menopause with strength training. Read on to learn how.

Benefits of Strength Training During Menopause

1. It Builds Muscle

Estrogen plays a role in muscle protein synthesis, or the process of creating new muscle protein, according to a review of research in Bone. When estrogen levels drop during menopause, building and maintaining muscle becomes harder, eventually leading to muscle loss.

“On top of that, all of us are naturally losing muscle because of the aging process, so it’s kind of like a double dose effect for [people in menopause],” says Tina Tang, CPT, a certified personal trainer who specializes in menopause. Age-related muscle loss, also known as sarcopenia, starts after the age of 30. This is the point when we begin losing approximately 3 to 5 percent of our muscle mass per decade, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, with things speeding up after the age of 60.

The downside to losing muscle is that strength declines as well, which makes everyday activities more challenging. If your muscles keep shrinking year after year, you’ll eventually reach the point where the simplest tasks — like getting out of bed and walking — are beyond your abilities.

You’ll also find it harder to maintain your balance, increasing your risk of falls. And falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related death among adults 65 and over, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns.

You can help prevent all of that with resistance training. Lifting weights is one of the best ways to build and maintain muscle mass, helping ward off and even reverse sarcopenia and hormone-related muscle loss.

“It’s never too late to start strength training,” says Paula Amato, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the OHSU School of Medicine in Portland, Oregon. A meta-analysis published in Aging Clinical and Experimental Research found that resistance training three times per week for 16 weeks on average led to significant increases in muscle mass in women ages 50 to 80.

2. It Strengthens Bones

Menopause is the time to consider your osteoporosis risk. Osteoporosis is a disease that weakens the bones and makes them easier to fracture.

Normally, your body breaks down old bone tissue and replaces it with new tissue with the help of estrogen. But once estrogen levels dip, your body has a tough time building bone and you wind up breaking it down faster than you can replace it. This is why the risk for osteoporosis increases drastically after menopause.

In fact, research published in PLoS One suggests an estimated 17.4 percent of postmenopausal people in the U.S. have osteoporosis.

Strength training is one of the best strategies for building bone, Dr. Amato says.

Strength training works by pulling and pushing on bone and forcing you to move against gravity while your skeleton supports a heavier weight. These actions tell your bone cells to shift into “build” mode, resulting in denser bones, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

And it doesn’t take much to see benefits. In the results from a clinical trial published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, postmenopausal people with osteoporosis improved bone density and strength with just two 30-minute strength sessions per week for eight months.

3. It May Lower Insulin Resistance

Strength training may even improve insulin resistance, a condition where your cells stop responding to insulin (a hormone that regulates blood sugar). When left unchecked, blood sugar stays elevated in the bloodstream, which can eventually lead to diabetes, according to the CDC.

This is especially worrisome during menopause. Estrogen affects how your cells respond to insulin, and changes in hormone levels after menopause can trigger blood sugar spikes, notes the Mayo Clinic. Your blood sugar levels may fluctuate more than they did before menopause, and if this becomes out of control, it puts you at greater risk for diabetes or diabetes-related complications.

A study in the Journal of Diabetes Research suggests that resistance training improves insulin sensitivity and helps transport glucose out of your blood and into your cells to be used for energy.

4. It Helps Manage Weight

Another perk of strength training is it can help prevent unwanted weight gain, a common side effect of menopause and aging.

In general, strength training doesn’t burn as many calories during the workout as cardio activities like running. Harvard Health Publishing estimates that a 30-minute weight-lifting session burns 90 to 126 calories, whereas running at 5 miles per hour for the same length of time burns 240 to 336 calories.

However, strength training can help keep your weight in check by building muscle. After all, muscle loss is a major contributor to age-related weight gain, according to a report in Science. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, which means that your body needs energy (calories) to maintain it. Adding muscle might help you burn more calories throughout the day and prevent your metabolism from slowing down.

5. It Might Reduce Hot Flashes

Menopause causes several uncomfortable side effects, the most common of which is hot flashes. In fact, research in the Journal of Clinical Medicine suggests that 75 percent of menopausal people experience them.

Strength training might help. In a study in Maturitas, postmenopausal people who completed a 45-minute resistance workout three times a week had half as many hot flashes as inactive people after 15 weeks. The study authors theorize that neurotransmitters released during lifting may help our brains control and stabilize body temperature, ultimately cutting back on the number of hot flashes.

The Best Strength Moves to Do During Menopause

While strength training offers plenty of benefits during menopause, not all strength moves were created equal.

“You’ll get the most bang for your buck doing compound lifts, which are exercises that use more than one muscle group,” Tang says. Examples include:

• Squats
• Bench presses
• Deadlifts
• Bent-over rows
• Overhead presses

Compound moves are better for building muscle and bone than exercises that target a single muscle group (isolation exercises), such as biceps curls, triceps extensions, lateral raises, and calf raises. Why? Because they challenge your muscles and bones to a greater extent. And the greater the challenge, the greater the effect.

None of this is to say you can’t do isolation exercises or that targeting a single muscle group doesn’t deliver benefits. Still, Tang encourages you to think of compound moves as the “meat and potatoes” of your strength routine. Sprinkle in a few isolation exercises if you want to beef up a specific muscle group.

In addition, a review published in the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy, which included an evidence-based guide to exercise for the prevention of osteoporosis, encourages doing strength moves from a standing position as much as possible. Standing forces your body to fight harder against gravity than sitting or lying down, which means more bone-building benefits.

How to Progress Your Strength Workouts During Menopause

The guidelines for progressing your strength workouts don’t change just because you’ve entered menopause. As with any other phase of life, you should consider your fitness level and strength experience when determining how to progress, Tang says.

If you’re new to strength training, simply focus on learning the movements and aiming for consistency with your routine. That might mean keeping your workouts short (15 to 20 minutes) so they’re easier to incorporate into your schedule and they feel more approachable, Tang notes.

Dr. Amato says two to four strength sessions per week is ideal, making sure you target all the major muscle groups (back, chest, shoulders, arms, hips, and legs).

Once you get the hang of things — or if you’ve already been lifting for months or years — you’ll have to tweak your approach to keep seeing results. “Your body adapts to challenges,” Tang explains.

So how can you tell if it’s time to progress your routine? A surefire indicator is feeling like you could have completed an additional two or three reps at the end of your sets, Tang says.

If that rings true, you have plenty of options for making your workouts more challenging. The simplest method is to lift heavier weights. For example, if you usually use 10-pound (lb) dumbbells, try lifting 12- or 15-lb dumbbells for the same number of reps.

If you don’t have access to many weight options, the next size up might be too heavy for you to lift for the exact rep count. In that case, reduce the reps so you can do each with the proper form. Or stick to your usual weight and increase your rep count. Instead of doing three sets of 8 reps, try three sets of 10 or 12 reps, Tang suggests.

Make strength training work for you to see and feel the benefits.