One of the questions Dr Stacy Sims gets asked most often is how women over 50 should train to support long-term health and independence.
‘If we’re looking for longevity and what we want to be able to do when we’re 80 or 90, we want to be living independently. We want good proprioception, balance, strong bones and strength,’ Dr Sims – exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist and expert in female-specific nutrition – explained on The Huberman Lab Podcast.
She emphasises that building strength and power should be non-negotiable for women as they age.
‘The preservation of muscle mass is one of the single strongest predictors of long-term metabolic resilience, physical independence, and all-cause mortality. Whatever your background, this is the thing to protect,’ she explains in an article on her website.
Here, she outlines the key training principles – the ‘big rocks’ – that support healthy ageing and help maintain function for decades to come.
How to stay strong and independent into your 90s1. Jump training
‘[Do] 10 minutes, three times a week of jump training. So this isn’t your landing softly in our knees. This is impact in the skeletal system,’ explains Dr Sims.
‘A colleague and friend of mine, Tracy Kissel, did a PhD and postdoctoral research on this. Over the course of four months, women have gone from being osteopenic to [having] normal bone density, so it’s a different type of stress.
‘[It’s suitable] if your concern is [losing bone density], which a lot of women do have because they lose about one third of their bone mass at the onset of menopause,’ she continued.
How to do it:
Bounce into squat
‘To condition your connective tissues, start by simply bouncing up onto your toes and dropping into a squat,’ says Dr Sims in an article on her website.
Start by standing with your legs hip- to shoulder-width apart, feet flat on the floor.Bend your knees slightly and immediately straighten them again, bouncing up onto your tiptoes.Pause, then lower back down, dropping into a full squat, making sure your knees track over your feet and don’t cave in.That will become your landing position when you start jumping.
Depth drop
‘Once you’re comfortable there you can do a depth drop, or reverse plyo drop. This is where, instead of jumping up onto a box or step, you start on a raised platform and step off to land on the ground,’ she continues.
Do 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 drops.
Start on a step or box about 12 inches off the floor.Step off and land softly, immediately dropping into a squat position, again keeping your knees pointing forwards rather than caving in.Absorb the landing before resetting.
Squat jumps
As you become more comfortable absorbing the force of landing, you can progress to squat jumps. Dr Sims provides the following instructions:
Repeat 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 jumps, building up to one or two sets of 8 to 10 jumps.
Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, toes turned out slightly.Extend your arms straight in front of you.Squat until your hips drop below knee level.Explosively extend your legs and jump into the air. Land softly before immediately dropping into the next squat.2. Heavy resistance trainingRate of perceived exertion
If someone is just beginning their strength-training journey, Dr Sims advises choosing a weight using rate of perceived exertion (RPE) – your subjective rating of how hard an exercise feels on a scale of 1 to 10. She also recommends keeping the reps relatively low.
‘We try to keep you around a[n RPE of] four or five [out of 10] as you’re lifting and keeping the reps around that eight rep range,’ she explained on an episode of Wild Health.
Reps in reserve
She also defines ‘heavy’ as finishing with two or three reps in reserve.
‘So you should be able – if [you] really dug in, grit your teeth – complete two more with really good form and then you hit failure,’ she says.
‘When we start to get to perimenopause and we’re losing…oestrogen – women’s key driver for strength and power – we want…two [or] three reps in reserve,’ she elaborates.
Ideally, the number of reps you complete should also be eight or fewer.
‘Maybe you’re doing 10 with two left in reserve, but really we want you down around the six, seven range,’ she adds. At times, you might even be aiming ‘to lift a heavy three with two in reserve’, though ‘it might take you a year’ to work up to that point.
The best movements for heavy strength training
‘Compound movements like back squats and deadlifts‘ that work multiple muscle groups tend to be the most efficient for building overall strength and muscle mass, she points out.
In terms of frequency, ‘two to three sessions per week of progressive resistance training is the single highest-impact thing you can do for your body, at any age and at any stage,’ she says in another article on her website.
‘It protects muscle mass, supports bone density, improves metabolic health, and pays compounding dividends as you age.’
Tom Werner//Getty Images
3. Sprint interval training
Sprint interval training (SIT) is a subset of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), explains Dr Sims in a conversation with Dr Orlena.
What separates the two is the recovery time.
‘It’s the variation of recovery…that makes high intensity [different from] sprint [training],’ she explains.
‘So sprint [training means] having lots and lots of recovery, because the goal is to go as hard as you possibly can for 20 or 30 seconds or less,’ she says.
You may then rest for up to three or four minutes between intervals, she continues in an article on her website.
She tells Dr Orlena: ‘You might only [be able to do] three of those because your body is not really that used to going that hard. Whereas if you’re looking at high-intensity interval training, you’re hitting about that 80 or 85% mark for a minute and then [taking] a minute’s recovery.
‘So the next minute you’re like, “Yeah, I can hit 80, 85% again. No problem.” So you might be able to do eight of one minute on, one minute off.’
She states on her website that the benefits include:
Improved VO₂ max: The strongest predictor of cardiovascular fitness and longevityIncreased stroke volume: A stronger, more efficient heartBetter insulin sensitivity: Improved blood sugar control and metabolic healthFast-twitch fibre recruitment: Key for strength, power and maintaining muscle mass as you ageHormonal benefits: Stimulates anabolic pathways that protect lean mass and bone density4. Getting enough protein
Adequate protein is crucial for building muscle and maintaining ‘body composition in the state we want to keep going for longevity,’ Dr Sims continues on The Huberman Lab Podcast.
‘For active women, sports scientists suggest aiming for 1 gram of protein per pound [or 2.2g per kilo] of body weight,’ she adds in an article on her website.
That’s often a lot more than women are used to consuming.
‘When you start telling women they need to look at around 1 to 1.1 grams per pound, which is around that 2 to 2.3 grams per kilo per day, they’re like, “That’s a lot of protein,”‘ she points out. ‘It is because we haven’t been conditioned to eat it.’
However, with a few strategic adjustments, meeting your requirements is easier than you might think.
‘It’s a few scrambled eggs, a chicken breast at lunch and a small steak at dinner,’ she says. ‘And it doesn’t all have to be animal products – you’re looking at all the different beans.’
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