In May 2023 Elizabeth Davies went viral. “Training for my summer body?” the barrister turned personal trainer posted on Instagram. “F*** no! I’m training for my old lady body. Dense bones. Strong muscles. A healthy heart. Good balance. Functional independence.”
Her point — that fitness is a lifelong game rather than a quick fix to get beach-body ready — is one she feels is missed by an industry that often prioritises aesthetics over women’s health. Retraining in her new career in her thirties, having not long had two of her three children, she was shocked by how little she knew about the effects of ageing.
Sarcopenia, for instance, is the process whereby men and women over 30 lose 3-8 per cent of muscle mass per decade. Osteoporosis, which leaves our bones fragile and more easily broken, affects one in three women over 50 worldwide. “I kept having these ‘why does nobody tell you this?’ moments,” she writes in her new book, Training for Your Old Lady Body.
“I had this belief that the fitness industry was missing a trick,” she says. Her mission now is to help women of all ages learn how to improve their strength, mobility and bone density and stay independent as they age — and to push back against some of the more insidious marketing-led gym myths about strength training. Here are some of the worst she’d like us to watch out for.
Davies went viral after posting on Instagram that she was training for her “old lady body”, not her summer body
ELLA CUCHET.
Toning is different to building muscle
The idea that heavy weights “bulk” and lighter ones “tone” is nonsense, Davies says. “There is only: gain muscle, lose muscle or maintain muscle.” For other unhelpful euphemisms, see “sculpt” and “define”.
You’ve left it too late
“I hear this a lot,” Davies says with a sigh. “Are you still alive? Then you haven’t left it too late for strength training. Your body can adapt at any age.” She recommends beginning at home with squats, sitting down on a chair and standing up again — 10 to 15 times. If you feel good, you can increase how many sets you do. If not? Try a higher chair. Or pick three exercises — a squat, a glute bridge and a push-up against the wall — and repeat them two or three times a week, trying a little more each time if you can. “This isn’t a six-week transformation,” she says. “It’s asking, ‘What’s the smallest thing I can do today that will move me forward a bit?’ ”
• Decca Aitkenhead: Could I really get ripped at 53?
You will always enjoy it
Training isn’t always about pleasure, Davies says. “I like strength training but do I always enjoy it? No. Right now the gym is cold and I’d much rather be under a blanket eating crisps. Yes, find something you can do for the long haul, but don’t believe you’re always going to want to.” Instead she suggests learning to “autoregulate” — listening to your body and judging how much you can realistically do that day.
Training infrequently means that you lack motivation
It’s more likely to mean you “lack clarity”, Davies says. “We go through life hoping that a moment will magically appear for us to go and move, but life’s busy.” When a client tells Davies they want to do four weekly sessions, she asks: when exactly? Usually, they can’t answer. “If you can’t be specific, you’re overreaching. And overreaching is a recipe for feeling like a failure.” She recommends scheduling — literally sitting down with your diary and writing down when you’re going to train. “It’s a helpful reality check and makes training more likely to happen.”
• Antonia Hoyle: The 30-minute kitchen workout that transformed my body
Women and men need to train differently
Davies says that despite all the “for women” workouts that look like watered-down versions of men’s training, “the principles of training for hypertrophy [building muscle], getting stronger or improving your aerobic capacity are the same whether you’re male or female”. What does make a difference to what you can manage, she says, is your starting point, your equipment and what you have going on in your life beyond the gym. “If I’ve been up with a sick child, I’m stressed with work or argued with my spouse, those things are going to impact my training whoever I am.”
You need to do lots of different exercises
Davies says she sees people trying “a load of random stuff. But with strength training we need to be purposeful about it. Sticking with the same movements is going to build your confidence and tissue resilience, which will make you less likely to get injured.”
• Five weightlifting myths, debunked
Sync your menstrual cycle to your training
This is becoming more popular, Davies says — the suggestion might be that you should lift heavy in your follicular phase, between menstruation and ovulation, but stick to lighter weights in your luteal phase, the other half of the cycle leading up to menstruation. But what’s really important, she says, is to focus on how you actually feel — your mood, your energy, your appetite. “Going into a session believing that you are going to be weak or that it’s going to be a slog based on where you think you are in your menstrual cycle is potentially just creating another barrier to training.”
Never miss a session
Don’t panic, Davies says — consistency is not the same as perfection. “If you miss a session you haven’t messed it up — that kind of thinking is stuck in the ‘days and weeks’ mentality, whereas I want people thinking in terms of decades,” she says. “It’s like paying into a pension pot.”
Training for Your Old Lady Body by Elizabeth Davies (Leap £16.99) is out on Thursday. Buy at timesbookshop.co.uk