Most Women Over 50 Are Lifting the Wrong Way: Here's the Protocol to Fix It

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
What is the exact strength prescription for women over 50? So, you know, I wrote this book, Unbreakable, which is a complete guideline. It's a workbook. I often say to my people, go to page 256 or 251, and you'll find it is a very practical guide. But for those of you who are still wondering what I mean by lifting heavy, what is the goal of weight lifting at all? Does everything matter and does it even matter over time? We're going to unpack all of that today.
So number one, does investing every day in our strength and power matter?
Can we build and maintain muscle across our lifespan with a daily investment? The answer to that is absolutely yes. When I started this, I didn't want to just make assumptions. I didn't want just to accept what I saw in the fitness world, who by the way, were getting a lot of things right. Back in the 2000s, when I started this, I wanted to prove it. So I studied masters age athletes, those who were 40 and above.
And I asked the question, can we with a daily investment in mobility via lifting and via cardio, can we maintain our lean muscle mass? And I looked using MRI scans, which can give me a glimpse of bone, muscle, fat, skin, everything. And it helps me look inside the muscle at the marbling or the fat content, the intramuscular adipose tissue. So we published this study quite a while ago. And the image of these three slices of MRIs, which show that punchline, yes indeed, with a daily investment in your mobility, you can maintain your muscle mass and most of your strength across your lifespan. It went viral. It continues to go viral. It continues to pop up. But how do you do it? Well, the next question after can we is why?
Well, I like to talk about heavy lifting, but let's explain the fact that all lifting is good. It just depends what your goal is.
Let's say your goal is endurance. Well, exercise science tells us that we need to lift the lightest weights the most times. I've had many women tell me that they're lifting 5 pounds 30 times. Well, if your goal is endurance, there's nothing wrong with that. That is not my goal. As I live longer and age well and age really strong, that's not my goal. What if your goal is to build the biggest muscles you can, like sheer hypertrophy?
Fine. If that's your goal, the science says the rep range for you is between 10 and 15 reps, right? It matters time under tension. But in that rep range, you're going to hypertrophy your muscles. Nothing wrong with that if that's your goal. That is not my goal, and that is not what I'm teaching people generally when I write or when I talk in digital formats. My goal for you is to be healthy, vital, active, joyful, to be capable of doing what you want to do when you want to do it long into the foreseeable future.
We know that as we age, we therefore need to maintain strength and power.
Let me explain the difference. Strength is both neuromuscular and absolute muscle capacity to lift. Strength is what helps you get up from a chair, walk across the room, lift something heavy onto a shelf, lift your grandchild, do what you want to do when you want to do it, right? How do we build strength? Well, muscle science says that to build strength, we need to do fewer reps, heavier weights. The rep range for building strength for women is between four and eight. And what does that even mean? It means lifting a weight so heavy that you only have one or two reps in reserve. Let's unpack that a minute. What is reps in reserve? It means that if I'm lifting a weight, that I can do four reps and I feel it. I'm straining to get the weight up or to squat the weight. One rep in reserve means that I can do one more without losing form, but I can't do two more, right? So lifting heavy is not gonna be the same for me as it is for you, or you as it is for me. You may be stronger than me, I may be stronger than you. But the principle of lifting heavy enough in a range of four to eight reps so that the weight is heavy enough that you only have one to two reps in reserve, that is the rep range that will help you build strength. And you know what the honest truth is, if you're stepping away from the couch for the first time, it's gonna take you a minute. It's gonna take you six months maybe, nine months maybe, because we need to get your body accustomed to the load. We need to get your tendons and ligaments accustomed to the load. So it's okay to start off the couch with body weight and progressively overload until you're capable of good form of lifting lower reps, heavier weights. So what happens as you're beginning to lift heavy and you're getting into heavier loads?