Never Too Late to Lift Heavy: Why Midlife is the Perfect Time to Begin Strength Training with Fitness Pro Holly Rilinger
Show Snapshot:
Curious about all the buzz around "lifting heavy" at midlife? Fitness pro and Nike Master Trainer Holly Rilinger breaks down why strength training is an engine of longevity—and how to make it work for you. Learn exactly how to start building muscle (no matter your experience level), discover the science behind post-workout recovery, and get expert tips for managing osteoporosis and injuries. Whether you're a beginner or looking to level up your strength game, Holly breaks down exactly how to begin, sharing the surprising truth about how little equipment you really need. Bonus! Listen to the end for a special discount for Holly's 21-day virtual program. Holly trains celebrities like Katie Couric and Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Now, she can train you!
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Quotable:
Women don't want to get hurt. What I like to say is I would be more afraid of what's going to happen if you don't lift weights.
Transcript:
Holly Rilinger [0:00]
Women don't want to get hurt. I'm scared of getting hurt, number one. And when people say that to me, what I like to say is, I would be more afraid of what's going to happen if you don't lift weights.
Katie Fogarty [0:13]
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. Beauties, if you're feeling your fitness goals slipping away, today's episode is exactly what you need to get back on track to build strength and boost longevity.
Meet Holly Rilinger, founder of The Lifted Method. As a Nike Master Trainer with over a dozen certifications in training and nutrition and a former pro athlete, Holly has cracked the code on midlife strength training and what it takes to make healthy habits stick at midlife and beyond. Her accessible approach to fitness combines everyday fitness with strength training, mindset, and meditation, because sustainable fitness isn't just about the workouts—it's about building a mindset that makes healthy choices feel natural.
As we age, a sustainable strength training program can require modifications for injuries and osteoporosis. Holly's Lifted Method training is loved by celebrities like Katie Couric and menopause advocate Dr. Mary Claire Haver, but it is truly for anyone at any level of fitness and for anyone tackling those all-too-common midlife fitness challenges. If you're tired of starting over every Monday, stay tuned. Holly is going to help us get those fitness trains back on the tracks and create lasting change that actually sticks.
Welcome Holly! I'm excited you're here because we are having this conversation at exactly the right time when January is behind us. People need motivation. They need new inspiration to get motivated, get in action, and to get exercising. I know from researching for the show that you are a former pro athlete, a Nike Master Trainer, you've created a fitness method called Lifted, and your menopause boot camp is for everyone, not just elite athletes. What made you launch menopause boot camp and why is it important to focus on midlife fitness?
Holly Rilinger [2:15]
Yeah, so menopause boot camp—we actually have a new name for it now. It's called The Lifted Blueprint. What I found is that women in our age demographic, so let's just say anywhere from 45 on up, we didn't really grow up with role models in the strength training world. I know I didn't. My mom didn't lift weights. I didn't have any really forward female pro athletes. When I looked up to athletes, it was Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas—it was all men. My dad would go and lift weights.
So I just don't think a lot of us had access to education or experience with lifting weights. I did because when I was 13 years old, I knew that I wanted to be a professional basketball player, and the only way to get there was to lift weights. But it was very uncommon to see a girl in the weight room.
So I looked at this and said, you know what? Finally, science is telling us everybody, especially women, you've got to strength train for bone density, you've got to strength train for longevity, you've got to strength train to maintain muscle mass. And there's a whole cohort of women going, "Oh my God, where do I start?"
Katie Fogarty [3:32]
It's needed. It's incredibly needed. I love to hear the news, hot off the press, that Menopause Boot Camp's got a new name. So The Lifted Blueprint—if we want to blueprint this for ourselves in 2025, I know how important this is. I recently had dinner with a very good friend from college who was a longtime runner. She actually trained—she's got a day job, but she did yoga teacher training for fun—and she was shocked to learn that she has osteoporosis. This was an incredible blow, because she is somebody that feels like she has taken care of her health over the years. How does strength training increase bone density? How does it affect our body composition? What do we need to know?
Holly Rilinger [4:12]
Great questions. Let's start with how we build muscle. When we actually lift weights, what's happening is we're tearing down muscle fiber. We're breaking it. We're damaging the muscle fiber, and in doing that, we use nutrients, specifically protein, to rebuild that muscle fiber stronger, denser, more powerful. And that's how we actually build muscle through that entire process.
Now a couple things: that process burns a lot of calories. In fact, that whole process can take up to 48 hours. So you want to think about a metabolic spike for 48 hours. That's why strength training is so much more efficient than, say, going out for a run, because you're actually damaging the body, and the body has to repair itself.
Also, the more muscle you have on your body, the higher your resting metabolic rate is. So let's just say you and I both weigh 130 pounds. I have 90 pounds of muscle, and you have 70 pounds of muscle.
Katie Fogarty [5:09]
I might have less than that!
Holly Rilinger [5:13]
Who knows? Now there are machines that could tell us that, so we could figure it out, but I would naturally burn more calories just breathing and sitting than you would, because I have more muscle in my body. So that's a great way to be lean and just naturally turn your body into a fat-burning machine.
Now, when it comes to bone density, our body works the same way. If you go get a laser treatment right on your skin, you're breaking down the skin. Collagen floods to your face. It repairs better than ever, right? Your body is that same way in every dimension. With strength training, the ligaments and the tendons pull on the bones, and it micro-damages those bones so that your body actually builds bone through the process.
Now we stop laying down new bone by age 30, so teaching our kids is easy—you need to lift weights, because we're done building bone by the time we're 30. So after 30, the only way we're going to continue to build that bone strength is through lifting weights.
Katie Fogarty [6:12]
And so post-30, we're able to take care of and maintain the bone that we have. Is that correct when we're using weights, when we're doing resistance exercises, sort of low impact to high impact sports?
Holly Rilinger [6:28]
Yeah, and you're going to be able to do kind of the same thing—damage the bone, and it'll repair itself. So there's still a process that happens. Our body is not producing new bone, though, and that's what happens as we grow. As children, our body's producing more bone. There's more bone being laid down. But after age 30, we have what we have, but we can still better that bone. We can keep it stronger by lifting weights because of those micro-damaging moments that we do through strength training.
Katie Fogarty [6:58]
Phenomenal. So in a few minutes I want to get into what The Lifted Method is, what the new Blueprint is, how it works, how often we should be doing it, all the details, all the good stuff. But I do want to start off with just a little bit of stage setting. I know that it's very common to start the beginning of the year strong. Everyone's got fitness goals they want to hit. And people begin and end exercise routines all the time, right? People lose momentum. So you have been a professional athlete, as you shared, you had a career in basketball. You've been training people for decades. You have been doing a lot of work with women in midlife recently. So you work with a lot of people who need your sort of mindset coaching. How do you get somebody revved up and excited about sticking to a routine? What is some kind of coaching that you yourself gave to yourself as an athlete?
Holly Rilinger [7:53]
Well, I think if you look at it from an athlete's lens, you have seasons. We're not perfect all the time as individuals - we're never going to look at the year and be like, "I was perfect, I was perfect year-round." As an athlete, if you look at it, there's a preseason, there's a season, there's a postseason, there's an off-season. If you look at it that way, you can kind of look into your own life and be like, "Gosh, I'm so motivated in the summer. I just feel good, I'm getting a lot of vitamin D, life is easier, there's more sunlight - I really crush it in the summer." And then maybe in the fall, you start to prepare for the holidays, and maybe in the winter, it's a little harder for you.
But the difference is, as an athlete, you never just take off completely. You're maintaining, you're still working on conditioning, you're doing other things that are out of the main season. And if you look at it that way, there's never a stop and a start. There's just times where you're really going to put your foot on the gas pedal, you're really going to rev that engine and go all in. And there's other times where you're just like, "You know what? I don't have that much energy today, but I'm going to show up." As an athlete, I'm going to go in and shoot my 100 free throws, or I'm going to go and run those three miles.
I think when you look at it that way, you take the pressure off of being perfect. And I think that's where a lot of people get messed up. They start up the new year saying "I'm perfect, I'm perfect!" You set goals that are wildly unattainable and unsustainable, and then suddenly the end of January is here, and you're like, "Oh my God, I just can't keep this up."
Katie Fogarty [8:53] Absolutely, and it's such a great point. What we do today is for future Holly, future Katie, for future health. And so on days when we're feeling less motivated, we don't care about what tomorrow looks like, we want to be looking ahead 10, 20, 30 years and making sure that we're putting the work in today to be healthy tomorrow. I also love your notion of sort of taking the pressure off and thinking of yourself as an athlete with seasons, this notion of going like 24/7, 7 days a week, hustle-hustle like doing all the work - it makes it feel hard when we fall short.
Holly Rilinger [9:19] Fortunately or unfortunately, strength training is at the forefront of a lot of science right now, especially for women. And unfortunately, a lot of women who thought they were healthy or thought they were doing things right, they now have osteoporosis. There are over 2 million women worldwide right now that have osteoporosis, and that is a danger bell being rung. I can't afford to fall down, I can't afford to break my hip. If nothing else, looking at the fact that we can live to be 100 - how well do you want to live those last 30-40 years? Which I think are your best years. I know for me, these are some of the best years I've had. Right now at 50, I'm loving it.
AD BREAK
Katie Fogarty [12:31] Beauties, Holly, we're back from the break. When we went into it, we were talking about the notion of being generous with ourselves, recognizing that sometimes we are all in and sometimes we need to give ourselves the grace to go at a slightly lower speed. But you have motivated us - that statistic about osteoporosis is scary. We want to be all in on taking care of our bone health, our mobility, our agility for the long haul.
So in a minute, we're going to dive into Blueprint and Lifted. But I know that you spend a lot of time talking to women in midlife. You are on the speed dial of some of the menopause greats - doctors I've had, Dr. Mary Claire Haver on the show, Dr. Jessica Shepherd, Dr. Vonda Wright. I have seen you in New York at Dr. Vonda Wright's latest strength training with The Swell and at Mary Claire Haver's book party. You are in rooms of midlife women all the time. What is the most common challenge or concern that you hear?
Holly Rilinger [13:31] "I don't know where to start with strength training. I don't know how to use the equipment. I'm actually intimidated by it. I don't know how to use kettlebells. I don't want to walk into that room and feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like it. It's not as exciting for me."
So I think it's hard to get excited about anything that you're scared to do. For starters, like, I didn't like yoga at first because I was very intimidated by not knowing what each movement was. But once I got a little bit more into the flow and I understood how to do it - anything's more fun once you get a little bit of experience and some confidence behind it.
Holly Rilinger [13:31]
So with the Lifted Blueprint, what we want to do is give you the confidence and the competence to be able to strength train and really understand: Why am I doing this? How do I bench press? How do I squat? How do I deadlift? Because when you start doing that, and you actually feel the way your body feels after you strength train, there's just this vibrancy about you. You're starving, like all the cells in your body are alive. And if you can get to a place where you have more confidence, it actually becomes fun to see where you can go.
And it's scary. Women don't want to get hurt. "I'm scared of getting hurt" is number one. And when people say that to me, what I like to say is, "I would be more afraid of what's going to happen if you don't lift weights." You might get over an injury, but if you don't lift weights, you're going to be facing something that's going to be harder to fix.
Katie Fogarty [15:03]
So you're going to help us get started. For people who are thinking, "All right, I'm all in, Holly's got me convinced," we're going to talk to two groups of women. There are women who listen to the show who are already weight training, who are very active with fitness, and maybe we'll offer some recommendations to level up their game. But for people who are looking to start - what kind of equipment? Because I know that you have two in-person studios, one in New York, one in the Hamptons, but a lot of your work is virtual. You do virtual training, virtual coaching, the former Menopause Boot Camp, now Menopause Blueprint is virtual. What does a person need in their home to get started with weight training to do your programs?
Holly Rilinger [15:43] Yeah, so the Lifted Blueprint - and the reason we're calling it that is because women in their 40s may be like, "Well, I'm not in menopause, that's not for me." And the fact is, you should be getting started at 30.
Katie Fogarty [15:55] Starting at 30, 35 - we gotta begin early, right? A lifelong habit.
Holly Rilinger [16:06] And then other people are like, "Oh, I'm out of menopause." And as many of the doctors say, you're never out.
Katie Fogarty [16:11] It's never over, it's never over. You're in it for life.
Holly Rilinger [16:15] So what we suggest is very minimal equipment to start at home. We suggest three sets of dumbbells. If you're brand new, we're like 8, 12, and 15 pounds. If you've got maybe a little bit more experience, maybe you haven't done it in years, you want to make sure your form's good - maybe you go with 10, 15, 20 pounds. You have a yoga mat and a booty band. That's enough to really get you started.
Because in the Lifted Blueprint, what we want to do is show you how to do some of these compound movements that can seem scary - deadlifting, squatting, bench pressing, rowing. We want to teach you proper form. We want to teach you some ways to warm up. We want to show you the do's and don'ts if you have osteoporosis or osteopenia. We want to show you the importance of protein - why do we need protein to build muscle?
Holly Rilinger [16:15] And within this format, which I think is really important, we give you a lot of coaching. We give you a community so you don't feel like you're in it alone. It's a very safe environment to ask any question. We typically have about 100 women every single month, and they're all in the same boat that you're in. So it makes you feel accepted. It makes you feel like, "Oh, I'm not the only one out there who has these issues or doesn't understand how to do something."
And within the program, we do a live stream workout, which I think is the best part, because I'm literally in there correcting your form on the screen. I'm like, "Katie, you need to push your hips back a little bit more on that deadlift. You need to get your feet closer together, or further apart." So by the end of the three weeks, you should feel like, "Okay, I know what I'm doing," enough to go to that next step, whatever that's going to be.
Katie Fogarty [17:52] When a person does the three-week training, they learn their form, they get going, they get excited - what kind of maintenance do you like to see for, I guess, for beginners and for people who are further along?
Holly Rilinger [18:04] So we actually, through the Lifted Method, suggest next steps right after the Blueprint. That's Lifted Basics, where we actually teach you a little bit more movements, a little bit more about form, where we kind of expand your library of exercises. But for any person, any woman - really, anybody - a minimum strength training per week should be three times a week. And for what duration? Never more than an hour. I think after an hour, you kind of lose your mojo, you lose your energy. I don't think anybody should be in the gym for over an hour.
Holly Rilinger [18:04] And just so you know the concept of why it's three days - there's a certain amount of volume that you need per muscle per week to actually have a training effect. Basically, what that means is you need to do - the sweet spot is like 14 to 18 sets per muscle group per week. And there's a lot of ways you could slice that up. You could do three full-body workouts where you hit all the muscle groups three times. But then you also see in some more complex, or more advanced programming, you have a leg day, you have a chest and back day, you have a biceps and shoulders day, and then maybe you have a full body day.
And all you're doing in there is dividing up the volume into certain body parts, or you're hitting them all three times. So there's a lot of different ways to do it, but I always think that's confusing. Like, "Why is there a leg day? Why do you do full body?" It's really all about getting the amount of volume that you need per week to actually make changes to your body.
Katie Fogarty [19:38] I'm familiar with the leg day, the arm day - my son rows high school crew. And so they do, you know, they've got days in the water where they're obviously using everything, and then they have days in the gym where they're doing specific muscle groups. So that makes sense. So how do you feel about doing like, 10 or 15 minutes every day? Or is that not enough? Or someone's getting started...
[Brief silence]
Katie Fogarty [20:09] I can feel your silence... I feel like I asked a question, and the answer is going to be like, "Eh, not so good." [laughs]
Holly Rilinger [20:09]
[laughs] I like to tell people who only have 10 minutes a day, their number one priority should be finding 10 more minutes a day.
Katie Fogarty [20:15] Okay, I'm stealing that. That is hilarious. All right, you know what? Okay, put your phone down, right? Stop screen... I definitely have like 10 minutes a day that I'm scrolling on Instagram.
Holly Rilinger [20:24] Yeah, and listen, as a beginner, the most important thing is really you're just learning movement patterns. So you really, as a beginner, you're going to make a lot of improvements early on, just because it's new. But then when you get to where you know you really need to maintain, and your body gets it, and it needs to still be challenged until it adapts again - there's a formula, and it comes down to volume. So again, 10 minutes a day is only going to get you to 60 minutes total, and I'm suggesting at least three times that amount.
Katie Fogarty [21:09] Got it, got it, got it. If you think about getting 180 minutes a week, then you can say okay - if I could do it a lot of different ways, but it's probably not going to be 10 minutes. All right. So for people who do need that challenge that you just identified, for people who have put in the work, they're past the basics - how do they level up? Is it simply adding more weight to their days where they're doing their legs or their full body workout?
Holly Rilinger [21:25] That's a really great question. And I'm sure you've seen people in gyms that have been - you watch them, and they've been doing the same workout for like 10 years, right? The exact same thing. And unfortunately, our body adapts to what it's doing. So the best kind of programming, and this is called progressive overload, is you do a specific workout for a month. But what I mean by a specific workout - it has to do with rep ranges.
So for a beginner, I'm going to have them do sets of 15. Why? Because they need that many repetitions for their body to just learn how to move weight. Three sets of 15. You're going to have four workouts in week one. You're going to repeat them in week two, week three, week four, and then each week you're going to try to get a little bit stronger within that program.
Now, after that program, you're going to be ready for something else. Now, any beginner wouldn't be efficient at doing five sets of five, let's say, for example, because to do five reps, you've got to be doing significantly more weight for that to make sense. And a beginner, they just don't have the capacity - they don't have the movement patterns, they don't have the balance, they don't have the experience, they don't have the strength.
So what I would do - I'd take a beginner with three by fifteens for a month. I then move them to three sets of 10 or four sets of 10, getting them a little bit heavier because they're doing less reps. Then I probably move them to four sets of eight, and then maybe we go to five sets of five, and then we go back to something with a little bit higher volume to see how they do with three sets of 10.
Holly Rilinger [21:25] So it's like giving your body those four weeks. They're called Training blocks. You become very proficient within that, and then your body's ready for something new. But when you do it that way, you actually get to track your progress. So you can see, "Okay, week one, I did four sets of eight squats. I was using a 35-pound kettlebell, and then by week four, I was using a 45-pound kettlebell." That's measurable progress, and that's really important, because otherwise you could say, "I think I'm getting stronger, I'm going to the gym, I'm doing things," but to track it is going to be a whole other level of accountability and really saying, "You know what, I actually am getting stronger."
Katie Fogarty [23:38] And it incentivizes you. It's fun to see the numbers pile up and the reps occurring. So when you're talking about the different weights, the different kettlebells, do you see strength training as being supplemented by other activities? Like, I know, for example, you surf, or is there other types of activities that people should be doing in order to help with their strength that's sort of beyond the gym, beyond Lifted?
Holly Rilinger [24:04] For sure, plyometrics are really, really good as we age. That kind of explosive power is great for bone density. It's great for balance. So if you could fit in, let's say, 40 minutes of plyometric training by putting 10 minutes like in four different workouts - box jumps, jumping rope, broad jumps, interval training, sprint training in a very specific and calculated way, not just going out randomly. But let's say, at the end of the workout, doing five sets of 30-second sprints with 30-second recoveries. And that could be on a bike, an elliptical, a rower, in a swimming pool.
Holly Rilinger [24:04] That's a really great way to train yourself cardiovascularly. And then the whole Zone Two cardio is also very helpful, and that could be just simply walking your dog 30 minutes a day. Zone Two is kind of classified as conversational, so you should be walking fast or jogging slow, also at a place where you can still have a conversation. If you want to calculate that, if you're more scientific, you have, like, what do you call it, an Apple Watch or something that's going to calculate your heart rate, then it's going to be in that 65 to 75% max heart rate range.
Katie Fogarty [25:16] And that's happening three days a week?
Holly Rilinger [25:19] They say you should do about 150 minutes a week. And again, don't think about that - think about that as walking through the city, walking your dog, just kind of living your life.
Katie Fogarty [25:31] Taking a walk with a friend, the stuff you do for fun anyway.
Holly Rilinger [25:38] And then listen, there's stuff that's...
Katie Fogarty [25:40] I hope somebody is like, if you're listening to Holly and I right now, you need to pick up the pace, right? But like, keep it conversational, right? Pretend you're talking with us. Let's do it. Okay, so that's fun. So this is if you're looking to sort of add your challenges. And also, you know, thank you for sharing those other ideas that we can be doing outside of the gym, walking our dog, et cetera. So for people that are struggling with some of the things that we identified at the top of the show - injuries, osteoporosis, osteopenia - what kind of modifications do they need to be aware of? How do they get into the mix with all of these exercises they still need to be doing anyway?
Holly Rilinger [26:21] The first thing I would do is check with your doctor, because there's varying degrees of osteoporosis from very severe to slight. I would just check and make sure so you truly understand what you need to be careful of and how severe your osteoporosis is. But just kind of some top-level things to be aware of - any kind of twisting, so like tennis, any kind of power twisting, I'd be really careful with your spine, or any kind of, let's say, Russian twists, spinal flexion. So sit-ups - again, there's no one exercise that you're like, "Oh my God, I can't do sit-ups, my life is ruined." Just do other ab exercises. You don't need sit-ups to strengthen your core. Just being very mindful of your risk-to-reward ratio - like if you have osteoporosis, I wouldn't try doing a box jump on a 24-inch box. You might just jump up and down on the floor. You want to really minimize your risk as it pertains to falling down.
Katie Fogarty [27:19] That makes a lot of sense. So if muscle is the engine of longevity, how do we continuously rev it up? Besides what you've outlined - we're doing the three days a week, we're doing the increasing volume, we're doing the plyometrics - what do we need to be thinking about in terms of food and intake to fuel these workouts and have that be like a leg of the stool that we're doing?
Holly Rilinger [27:44] And I love that idea of the leg of a stool, and going back to kind of New Year's and like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not doing as well." Just remember, on days you're not working out, there's several other legs to the stool. Am I managing my stress? Am I sleeping? Am I eating well? You know, am I being social? Do I have friends I can lean on? So just remember, wellness is a broad range of different things you can do.
But first of all, ladies, heavy weights. What does heavy mean? Which is always a great question, because my heavy is not your heavy. But a great way to gauge heavy is no matter what your rep range is, if it's 10 reps, you shouldn't have more than three reps in the bank, meaning I shouldn't be able to do 14 reps with that weight. Definitely shouldn't be able to do 20 reps. I should be like 10, you know, really pushing, pushing yourself at the end.
So always ask yourself, if I feel safe, then I feel comfortable, I feel confident - do I have more than three reps left in the bank? If you do, you got to go up in weight. And then nutritionally, what we have to remember is, when we go to the gym, it is only half of the formula, which kind of sucks, but it is.
Katie Fogarty [28:57] We like straight talk. We're here honestly. Tell us. Tell us. Tell us what we need to know, Holly.
Holly Rilinger [29:02] You don't want to waste that workout. And I was just actually listening to Stacy Sims, who's one of my favorite leaders in fitness right now. And as we get older, our body needs more protein. So again, going back to we just broke down the muscle fiber - we've got to now give our body the proper nutrients to build muscle. We've got this, like, hour window after, it's called the magic hour after we lift weights. Your body is really primed to take in those nutrients and really do its job. And I just heard Stacy Sims say, to the tune of about 40 to 50 grams of protein.
I mean, that is a lot of protein, but let me break it down for you a little bit, because if you eat meat, it's a lot easier. Like an iPhone size of chicken is going to be about 35 grams of protein. So boom, you got that. You got a hard-boiled egg, you're in the zone. You got about 40 grams of protein there.
Protein shakes for me are paramount, because I just can't eat enough protein in my day without my shake. And right after a workout, if I can just load up a protein shake with 40 grams of protein, maybe put a little Greek yogurt in there, putting any kind of other supplements that I need to get into my body - it's a quick, easy way to make sure that I can get that protein in. Because if you don't do that, you got to think about it as kind of wasting that workout because you've broken it down, but you then haven't aided the process, which is the repair. And that's really just as important part of the process as the strength training is.