Let’s cut through the absolute garbage floating around the internet right now. If I hear one more fitness influencer tell women over forty to just “do strength training” to fix their perimenopause and menopause problems, I’m going to lose my mind.
And let’s address the biggest lie out there: “Women are just afraid to lift weights because they don’t want to get bulky!”
Bullshit. I have been skating since 1986, I coach athletes, and I have never in my life heard a real woman actually say that. Women don’t lift weights because they don’t know how, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they are constantly being fed confusing, watered-down misinformation by people on the internet who don’t know the science.
Here is the cold, hard biological reality that nobody is telling you: if your metabolism is completely shot to hell, your joints ache, and you are trying to actually change your body composition, standard “strength training” isn’t going to cut it. You need hypertrophy training.
The Trap of the Wrong Word
Here is where the system breaks down. Words matter. If you walk into a gym and tell a professional personal trainer, “I want to do strength training,” they are going to take you literally. A real trainer knows the difference. They are going to put you on a pure strength program: heavy weights, low reps (1 to 5), and long three-to-five-minute rest periods.
What happens? You train your brain and your nervous system to be highly efficient. You get incredibly dense and strong. Yes, that strength is great for neurology, and it ensures you can be a tough old lady who can carry groceries upstairs or pick up your grandkids. But pure strength training does not build muscle mass.
Once your brief “beginner gains” wear off after a few weeks, your physical body composition stops changing. You look the exact same, your clothes fit the exact same, and your scale doesn’t budge. Why? Because you didn’t build a bigger engine.
Muscle Mass is Your Metabolic Furnace
If your goal is to burn fat and heal a damaged metabolism, the physical mass of the muscle is what does the heavy lifting. Muscle is incredibly expensive tissue for your body to maintain. It is a living, breathing metabolic engine.
The more physical muscle mass you pack onto your frame, the more calories your body is forced to burn every single second of the day—even when you are sitting completely still at a desk or sleeping at night. Fat tissue is cheap; it takes zero energy to maintain. Muscle mass is a high-maintenance powerhouse.
To get that mass, you have to drop the influencer jargon and train for hypertrophy. That means staying in the 6 to 12+ rep zone, keeping your muscles under mechanical tension, shortening your rest periods to a minute, and pushing your muscles close to actual physical fatigue.
Yes, you will get strong doing hypertrophy. But more importantly, you will actually build the physical engine parts required to fire your metabolism back up to optimal levels.
We Don’t Need More Cardio, We Need Mass
As skaters at South Side Roller Derby, we have a massive unfair advantage. Every single week, we are out on the track skating two to three times a week for one to two hours at a time.
Let’s be honest: we don’t need to worry about cardio. We don’t need to stress about hitting some arbitrary 10,000 steps on a fitness tracker. We are already burning massive amounts of energy on the track, building elite cardiovascular endurance, and pushing our bodies to the limit.
But all that track time is endurance. If you are entering perimenopause or navigating menopause, your hormones are shifting, and your body naturally wants to let go of muscle tissue. If you only skate and do light cardio, your metabolism will stall out—especially if you’ve been trying to force it into a calorie deficit for years.
You do not need to spend more time sweating on a treadmill. You need to step into the weight room with a specific, unapologetic goal: to build mass.
Roll Strong, Lift For Mass
I am over 50 years old now. I’ve been on eight wheels since 1986, and I can tell you firsthand that standing strong and rolling strong in this phase of life requires text-book execution.
Stop listening to the generic, watered-down advice designed to sell supplements and activewear. If you want to change your body, protect your bones, and turn your metabolism into a furnace that keeps up with your athletic drive, you need to build physical muscle mass.
Get off the cardio machines, skip the low-rep powerlifting protocols, and start training for hypertrophy. Build the engine, protect the mass, and let’s keep ruling the track.
See you at practice.
— Tater