"Just Strength Train." Okay, But What Does That Actually Mean?
If you spend any time online, you already know the message. Women need to lift. Strength training is the thing, especially as we move through our forties, fifties and beyond. It is on every feed, in every headline, repeated by every second podcast. And the message is right.
But here is what almost nobody stops to explain: what strength training actually is.
Because in practice, the word gets used to mean almost anything. A Pilates class. A flow of bodyweight movements. Light dumbbells with lots of reps and a bit of a burn. All of it gets lumped under the same heading, often with the old word "toning" attached. And that matters, because most of what gets called strength training is not in fact strength training.
So let us be clear about what we are actually talking about, and why the difference is worth caring about.
Why this matters, and why sooner than you think
First, the reason the message exists at all.
From around the age of thirty, we slowly start to lose muscle, at a rate of roughly three to eight percent every ten years [1]. For most of adult life this is slow enough to go unnoticed. Then menopause changes the pace.
The driver is estrogen. As well as its role in reproduction, estrogen helps look after both bone and muscle [2]. As levels fall through menopause, that protection fades, and the loss of both speeds up. Women lose muscle at roughly twice the rate of women the same age who have not yet reached this stage [1], and bone density drops by around one and a half to two and a half percent a year in the years right after menopause [3].
Here is a detail that surprises a lot of people: this starts earlier than the age we usually link with menopause. The lead-up to menopause, called perimenopause, most often begins in the early forties, but it can start in the mid to late thirties, and estrogen drifts down across those years rather than switching off on some fixed birthday [4]. So the changes we are describing are not just a problem for later life. They are often already happening well before a woman thinks of herself as anywhere near menopause.
This is not about how you look. Muscle is what lets you get up from a chair, catch yourself when you trip, and stay independent. The medical name for its slow loss, sarcopenia, is one of the biggest reasons for falls, broken bones and lost independence later in life [5]. This is the muscle we need for health, not for appearance. That is the whole point of the message to lift. The trouble is that the message stops there, without saying what lifting means.
What strength training actually is
Strength training means one thing: working a muscle against a resistance heavy enough to genuinely challenge it, and then, over time, slowly making that challenge harder as you get stronger.
That last part is the part that gets missed, and it is the part that matters most. It is often called progressive overload, but the idea is simple. As your body adapts and something starts to feel easy, you have to add a bit more to keep getting a benefit. Without that steady, deliberate step up in load, muscle has no reason to keep changing. It settles at what it can already handle.
This is why "feeling the burn" is not the measure. Plenty of movement makes muscles tired. Far less movement actually loads them hard enough, and builds up enough over time, to grow and protect the muscle and bone we are talking about.
The resistance can come from lots of places: dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, gym machines, resistance bands, and bodyweight moves like squats and step-ups. The equipment is not the point. The challenge is. And the research on bone is clear about how much challenge is needed. Studies that improved bone density in women after menopause used weights in the range of seventy to ninety percent of the most a person can lift, done for a small number of reps, two to three times a week, kept up over many months [6]. That is a lot heavier than most of what gets sold to women as strength work.
Where yoga and Pilates fit (and where they do not)
This is the part that tends to ruffle feathers, so let me be clear, because it is not a criticism of either one.
Yoga and Pilates are genuinely excellent. They build flexibility, balance, body control and core strength, and that balance work really matters: staying steady on your feet is part of how you avoid the falls that break bones. If you love them, keep doing them. This is not an argument to stop.
But they are not strength training, and the evidence is clear on both counts.
On bone: a 2021 review that pooled eleven studies and 591 people, mostly women past menopause, found that neither yoga nor Pilates led to a meaningful improvement in bone density compared with doing nothing [7]. The movements simply do not load the skeleton hard enough to trigger a change. Bone responds to stress, and gentle, flowing, bodyweight movement does not give it enough.
On muscle and strength, the clearest evidence comes from a study that tested the two head to head. In 2021, an Australian trial split 115 women past menopause with low bone density into two groups: one did heavy strength and impact training, the other did a gentle Pilates-based program, twice a week for eight months. The heavy strength group gained more bone density at the spine, and more muscle strength, than the Pilates group [8]. The reason comes back to that steady step up in load. Bodyweight and spring resistance have a ceiling. Once the harder versions start to feel manageable, there is no easy way to keep adding meaningful load, so progress stalls. You can hold on to a level of strength and control, which is worth something, but you are not building the muscle that guards against sarcopenia.
So here is the honest position. Yoga and Pilates are a wonderful part of a full, active life. They are just not a substitute for loading your bones and muscles, and if bone density and muscle are the goal, they are not enough on their own. The two things sit side by side. One does not replace the other.
Why this is not just a midlife conversation
If you are in your twenties or thirties and reading this, it would be easy to file it away as something to think about later. That would be a mistake, and here is why.
Think of your bones and muscle as a savings account you draw down over time. Bone works this way especially clearly. You build up to a maximum, called peak bone mass, in your mid to late twenties, and after that you can only make withdrawals [9]. The higher your peak, the more you have banked before the withdrawals start, and the more protected you are against weak bones and fractures decades later [9]. Muscle works in a similar way. The strength you build in early adulthood raises the level you start from, so when the drop that comes with menopause arrives, it is taking away from a bigger number.
This changes the whole question. Strength training in your twenties and thirties is not too early. It is the single best window you have to build that savings account, because you can add to your peak now in a way you simply cannot once it has passed. Add in the fact that estrogen often starts to shift in the late thirties, and the message is not "start at menopause." It is "the earlier you build, the more you protect."
And if that window feels like it has already closed, it has not. This works both ways: a higher starting point is better, but strength training keeps building and protecting muscle and bone at every stage of life, well into your later years. The best time to start was your twenties. The second best time is now.
What this looks like done properly
Reading "seventy to ninety percent of the most you can lift" can feel intimidating, or a long way from where you are today. That gap is exactly why this is worth doing properly rather than piecing it together from a feed.
A program built for you starts from where you are now, not from where anyone else is. It takes into account your history, your joints, anything else going on, and your confidence. It builds you towards heavier weights at a pace your body can safely handle, so the load goes up as your strength does. This is the difference between exercise that is just activity and exercise that is prescribed with a clear health goal in mind.
If the message to "just strength train" has left you unsure what that actually looks like for your body, at whatever age or stage you are, that is exactly the kind of program an Accredited Exercise Physiologist is trained to build for you. It would be a privilege to help you put it together.
References
Maltais ML, Desroches J, Dionne IJ. Changes in muscle mass and strength after menopause. J Musculoskelet Neuronal Interact. 2009;9(4):186-197.
Geraci A, Calvani R, Ferri E, et al. Sarcopenia and menopause: the role of estrogen on bone and skeletal muscle. J Endocrinol. 2023;259(1):e230116.
Xu J, Wu Z, Sun Y, et al. Comparative efficacy of different resistance training protocols on bone mineral density in postmenopausal women: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Front Physiol. 2023;14:1105303.
Santoro N. Perimenopause: from research to practice. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2016;25(4):332-339.
Cruz-Jentoft AJ, Bahat G, Bauer J, et al. Sarcopenia: revised European consensus on definition and diagnosis. Age Ageing. 2019;48(1):16-31.
Zehnacker CH, Bemis-Dougherty A. Effect of weighted exercises on bone mineral density in post menopausal women: a systematic review. J Geriatr Phys Ther. 2007;30(2):79-88.
Fernandez-Rodriguez R, Alvarez-Bueno C, Ferri-Morales A, et al. Effectiveness of Pilates and yoga to improve bone density in adult women: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One. 2021;16(5):e0251391.
Kistler-Fischbacher M, Yong JS, Weeks BK, Beck BR. A comparison of bone-targeted exercise with and without antiresorptive bone medication to reduce indices of fracture risk in postmenopausal women with low bone mass: the MEDEX-OP randomized controlled trial. J Bone Miner Res. 2021;36(9):1680-1693.
Weaver CM, Gordon CM, Janz KF, et al. The National Osteoporosis Foundation's position statement on peak bone mass development and lifestyle factors: a systematic review and implementation recommendations. Osteoporos Int. 2016;27(4):1281-1386.