Why 'No Pain, No Gain' Is Hurting Women Over 30: A Smarter Way to Start Working Out

Woman doing hip thrusts with certified fitness trainer

I have over 10 years of experience working as a certified personal trainer and one of the most common mistakes I see from busy women in the gym is actively looking for soreness and pain when they’re working out. You have to remember that the basis of working out is to build up the body, and this is the same for whatever reason it is that has you going to the gym, like losing weight or because of a health scare or simply want to look better in your swimsuit. While it is true that training until failure can elicit the greatest amount of muscle growth, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to train to the point where your body is falling apart to get positive results in your fitness journey.

Before I even started working as a fitness trainer, I competed in sports all the way to the collegiate level as a rower at UC-Santa Barbara and served in the military as a Navy sailor for four years, and I can tell you all about the crazy training that I have had to do the get my body in peak form, but the fact is that those training sessions were rare. The reason why we didn’t train like a Rocky montage for every workout is simple — doing so increases the risk of overuse injuries and can lead to overtraining, which massively increases the risk of muscle, ligament, and tendon tears, causes mood changes and hormonal imbalances, increases anxiety and hurts sleep quality, and, of course, hurts performance. When a woman in her 30s, 40s, or 50s is constantly training at too high of an intensity level, the aforementioned injuries and conditions come a lot sooner because these women aren’t elite athletes or warriors.

Today, I’m going to be talking about the risks of overreaching and overtraining, as well as giving you pointers on how you can build up your body at the best pace for you to reach your fitness goals.

Too Fast, Too Soon

When you’re a busy mom or career woman, or both, it usually means that you don’t have a lot of spare time and when you start your fitness journey, whether for weight loss or just your general health, it’s likely that you want to see results as soon as possible. I have trained dozens of women just like you, many of whom readily expressed their desire to train every single day and give up all junk food, in which I must pump the brakes a bit. While setting goals and expressing your commitment to do whatever it takes is great, the problem is that the human body is not built for that.

Women in their 30s and 40s who are just starting a workout program after a long time of being sedentary are among the most prone to injury if they’re not careful. Your body is constantly adjusting to your lifestyle, so if your exercise intensity goes from walking from your parked car to your workplace and back, then going right into multiple sets of high repetition exercises and box jumps, this is more risky than you think. It’s not just your muscles that become weakened when you’ve been living a sedentary lifestyle for a long time, in fact, your bones, tendons, and ligaments are also weakened. If you’re lucky, you will only be sore for a couple days after that tough workout, but be aware that sudden increases in exercise activity can also lead to torn muscles, tendons, or ligaments.

What’s the best way for busy women and moms in their 30s and 40s to avoid catastrophic sports injuries caused by training too hard, too soon? Clearly, you need to pace yourself. As a certified personal trainer, I’ve trained dozens of women, and while I understand that you want to see immediate results, we first have to establish a strong foundation before moving on to high weight and high intensity exercises. Just like a home builder has to ensure that the house he’s about to build isn’t going to sink because of unstable terrain or come crashing down because the house’s frame cannot sustain the weight of the roof, doors, windows, appliances, and furniture, as their personal trainer, I am gradually increasing the exercise intensity over the course of several training sessions while recording performance numbers to track the client’s strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most terrifying examples of training too hard, too soon is then 24-year old Kristina Schmidt who was able to hip thrust close to 400 lbs just one and a half years after beginning her training program, only to break her pelvis and have an infection develop that almost ended her life (https://www.mensfitness.com/news/heavy-hip-thrusts-fractured-hip-and-sepsis). This is why, as a certified fitness trainer, it is my responsibility to keep the pace of my client’s progress to be sustainable and doesn’t have them in a similar situation like Ms. Schmidt. Unfortunately, all too often, I witness other fitness trainers repeating the outdated moniker “no pain, no gain” and driving their clients to train way past their current abilities, even going so far as to the trainer assisting the clients to complete the targeted number of repetitions, which is one of the dumbest things a trainer can do. Always remember, if you can no longer perform anymore repetitions on your own power, that means you’ve reached your point of failure and have to end your set. Trying to go beyond this point is where sports injuries happen, thus halting you from your working out for several months to a year (sometimes longer).

Physiological Changes

A woman in her 30s and 40s that wants to start her fitness journey must be keenly aware of the changes going on within her body. Bone density is a common concern for women, but you should also know that bones are their strongest between ages 18-30, so if you are above that age, they are in the process of becoming weakened, this is known as osteopenia. If a woman is looking to lose weight, this means that she must adopt a diet that puts her in a calorie deficit, and if this diet is lacking in important vitamins and minerals, specifically calcium and vitamin D, this can further decrease bone strength.

While losing bone density as early as you turn 30, for busy women in their 30s and 40s that are starting their fitness journey should be pleased to know that a well-designed and consistent weightlifting program can slow down the loss of bone density and, in some cases, even increase it (Hong & Kim, 2018). Your bones are constantly regenerating, and when you take on a resistance training program, bone strength needs to increase to be able to sustain the pressure from carrying the added weight. While it’s yet to be determined specifically which exercises enhance the most osteoblasts (the cells that form new bones and grow existing bones), so there’s no need for you to eliminate exercises that might be really beneficial for you (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24871-osteoblasts-and-osteoclasts).

One of the most important things that every woman over 40 needs to hear to convince her to start lifting weights as soon as possible is that muscle mass and muscle strength is depleting at a much faster rate than ever before. Each year, 0.5% of muscle mass is lost, and when you get to age 50, the muscle loss rate increases to 1-2% per year; in other words, for those of you that want to avoid exercising in your 40s and 50s, it’s possible that you will have lost as much as 25% of muscle mass by the time you turn 60. Moreover, muscular strength is lost before muscle mass is lost and increased fat accumulation occurs within muscle as you get older (Delmonico et al., 2009).

Along with bone and muscle loss, women in their 30s and 40s must also consider potential tendon and ligament injuries when they’re getting started with their fitness journey. It’s an unfortunate fact that the aging process takes so many victims, and among them are tendon and ligament strength (Kwan et al., 2023). Moreover, when a woman has been very sedentary for a long time, this makes them more vulnerable to injury, which is why a smart certified personal trainer would never put these women through overly strenuous workouts right off the bat. Much like muscle and bone strength, tendon and ligament strength can also be increased through a consistent exercise routine, particularly one exhibiting progressive overload (the gradual increase in weight and intensity).

Conclusion

As a certified personal trainer, I totally understand why pretty much everybody that comes to workout with me wants to see results as fast as possible, and as an experienced professional, I usually have to pump the breaks by letting them understand that the body isn’t made to go from the Marshmallow Man to Thor overnight. For women in their 30s and 40s, you have your own unique circumstances that have to be addressed and known by the fitness trainer you’re working with because that could have a significant impact on the success or failure of your fitness journey. When you learn to be patient and prioritize building up your foundation, instead of just training super hard for the sake of feeling really sore, you’re immediately putting yourself in a much better position to reach your goals. By adopting healthy eating habits that are rich with the vitamins, minerals, and provide the protein needed to build and repair muscle, all while taking on a workout program utilizing progressive overload to gradually increase your muscle, bone, tendon, and ligament health, you can avoid most the pitfalls that those who immediately train extra hard are most likely to encounter.

About the Author

Julio Lopez is a Navy Veteran, former collegiate athlete, and personal trainer with a Master’s degree in Nutrition. He is the founder of 365 Physique Personal Training and Nutrition, where he specializes in helping women in their 30s and 40s build a healthy lifestyle into their busy schedule. You can find Julio training his in-person clients at Versatile Fitness and sharing practical tips on social media.

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References

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Boudreau, R., Manini, T. M., Nevitt, M., Newman, A. B., Goodpaster, B. H., & Health,

Aging, and Body (2009). Longitudinal study of muscle strength, quality, and adipose

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Hong, A. R., & Kim, S. W. (2018). Effects of resistance exercise on bone health. Endocrinology

and Metabolism (Seoul, Korea), 33(4), 435–444.

Kwan, K. Y. C., Ng, K. W. K., Rao, Y., Zhu, C., Qi, S., Tuan, R. S., Ker, D. F. E., & Wang, D. M.

(2023). Effect of aging on tendon biology, biomechanics and implications for treatment

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