Episode 30: Harnessing the Power of HIIT for a Smooth Menopausal Transition

What if you could not only manage the shifts of menopause, but actually thrive during this transition? Ladies, you're in for a treat, as I unravel the power of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) during perimenopause and post-menopause. We dive into the science behind HIIT, and how it's not just a fantastic energy booster, but also a tool to improve insulin sensitivity and tackle that stubborn visceral fat. 

More than that, I'll shed light on why keeping those intense intervals short is the real game-changer, and give you fresh and fun ways of incorporating HIIT into your routine. ... Warm-ups are your best friend, so remember to never skip them!

Aging might be inevitable, but slowing down isn't. There's a world of benefits that HIIT can bring to older individuals - and I'm excited to share that with you. Also, just because it's high intensity, doesn't mean it's high impact. HIIT can flexibly fit into your life. Whether you're a pool person or a cycling enthusiast, it's got you covered. 

I'll reveal why agility is your secret weapon against falls and injuries as you age, and how HIIT helps you maintain it. Starting slow and keeping a balance is key, so I'll guide you on how to best incorporate HIIT into your workout regime. 

So, don't fret if you have any questions or concerns, I'm here for you. Remember, it's never too late to adopt a healthier lifestyle. It's always a good time to reach out, get active, and embrace the power of HIIT.

Follow me on IG: @kathy_mead_fronheiser

Check out my website: www.kathymeadfronheiser.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:13

Hey guys, welcome to the fun over 40 podcast. This is your host, kathy. Sorry if I sound a little sleepy. I just woke up on a Sunday morning and I wanted to go ahead and get this recorded for you guys. This is episode 30, and I'm excited to have you here. So today we're actually going to talk a little bit about exercise. So if you're thinking about your exercise routine for 2024, maybe how to what to do you know maybe something new that you might want to do, or maybe you've been doing the same thing for a while and it needs a little refresh. You sort of lost your interest. Maybe you know what's worth adding, what are the absolute must haves in your routine. So we're going to talk about something to add to your routine that you might not be doing right now, or you might be doing too much of it right now, so we're going to discuss. So you're probably thinking I'm going to say something strength training related, and although, yes, strength training is vitally important and I know I've talked about it a whole lot Another type of exercise is also important for women, especially women over 40, women who are going through perimenopause or who have already, you know, transitioned into post menopause.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So in this episode we'll be calling that the menopause transition, so that we're just all on the same page. So basically, perimenopause menopause which is just one day, by the way and then post menopause. So that's the menopause transition, and post menopause is just like the rest of your life, by the way. So, anyway, so it's called hit training, and hit is hi I T and it stands for high intensity interval training, and so it's a type of cardio workout that is very, very different than the slow, steady stuff that you might be more familiar with, like going for a long walk or going for a long bike ride or a swim or something, where it's just kind of like your heart rate stays steady and you can maybe have a conversation while you're doing that type of exercise. So that's not what we're talking about today.

Speaker 1: 3:37

So why is hit good for women in that menopause transition? So, for one, it improves insulin sensitivity and it lowers fasting blood sugar levels, which is just good for your overall cardiovascular and metabolic health, especially during the menopause transition, when blood sugar can be harder to manage. So there's one. It also strengthens and increases the amount of your energy producing mitochondria, so that increases your stroke volume, which is just how much blood your heart pumps per beat. Like, if you think of your heart, it's just a big muscle, right, and it takes a beat and it contracts, it pushes, it pushes out a bunch of blood and to just circulate through your system. The more blood it pushes out, the higher your stroke volume, because that amount is called your stroke volume. Okay, it improves your fat burning capacity. It helps manage visceral fat, which is like that deep belly fat that's around your organs and that can increase during menopause. So, by putting a high demand on your muscles, hit sends a message to your brain that you need more human growth hormone, which is HGH for short, if you ever maybe see that written out somewhere and it increases testosterone, which helps menopausal women regain muscle mass that they need for producing more power for sport and for life. So that's just stuff that we lose as we go through that menopause transition, and this is really helping to regain some of that stuff.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Okay, so the best part about high intensity interval training is that, even though it's really hard and challenging, it doesn't have to be torture. Luckily, your intervals don't need to be long, right. So in fact, it's better to keep them short. So when you start stretching your intervals excuse me past 60 seconds, you can get a greater increase in the stress hormone cortisol, which I'm sure you guys have all heard about. Probably you may have talked about it some on this podcast.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Not a whole lot, but cortisol in itself is not a bad thing. I mean the way that I look at it. If something exists there's a reason, it's there. So cortisol in itself is not a bad thing, since it gives you a surge of energy. But you don't want those stress hormone levels to stay elevated longer than necessary to get the job done, especially in menopause when cortisol can already be elevated. So again, we don't want intervals to be past 60 seconds and I would also argue that the intensity at which you should be doing your hit intervals, which is like you should feel like you are being chased by a rabid animal and you're trying to get away you can't sustain or maintain that for 60 seconds. You start to wane and then you get into what we call moderate intensity interval training, and that's not what we're going for here.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Okay, so the sweet spot for menopausal intervals is 30 seconds or less, which is also the intensity people often find easiest to maintain and actually enjoy. So I think just psychologically, if you're looking at your interval, you're like, okay, I can do something for like 10 to 30 seconds. I can do that, I can push and know that I have an end very soon, okay. So there's lots of ways to do short hit workouts. So some common protocols include like equal amounts of effort and recovery and or longer effort with a shorter recovery. As you, as you get more fit, you can shorten your recovery. So don't think about, as I get more fit, I'm going to lengthen my hard interval, like from 30 seconds to 60 seconds, shorten your recovery. Or you can do like a short effort with a full recovery.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So here, if you to try work them into your routine, like once or twice a week. So let me go through these. And then I have something else I want to make sure I say so 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off, that's a great example. So you warm up, always, always, always warm up first. Okay, make sure you are warm before you do hit intervals. You go all out for 20 seconds, you recover for 20 seconds and you repeat that six to eight times and then you cool down like the end done. Or you could do 30 seconds on, 60 seconds off. So that's doubling your recovery time. So, again, you're going to warm up, go all out for 30 seconds, recover for 60 seconds and repeat five to six times and then cool down as needed.

Speaker 1: 8:47

You could also do something called a Tabata. This is probably one of my favorites, and I should also say that there are free hit timer apps you can download onto your phone, so that's super helpful. Anyway, a Tabata app it's spelled T-A-B-A-T-A. Again, we're going to warm up. You're going to go all out for 20 seconds, recover for 10 and repeat it six to eight times. Then you're going to recover for five minutes and then repeat another set. Okay, so these updates are going to destroy takes and then millimeters.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Tabata, by the way, I won't go too much in depth, but that is an exercise. Researchers last name. He developed this technique, so when you create something, you get to name it after yourself. So, anyway, so those are just some protocol ideas. Whatever protocol you go with, add music. That is super, super helpful, so it not only boosts your performance but it also makes you enjoy the intervals more. I mean, there are studies of women and men performing 30-second Wingate anaerobic tests, which are these bike tests that, for a lot of folks tend to make them puke. So I mean, they're pretty intense and the participants hit a higher peak, an average power output, when they listen to a personal playlist than when they just hammered out the intervals in silence, and they also just enjoyed the efforts more.

Speaker 1: 10:22

So what types of exercises do you do for hit training? Luckily, you have a lot of options and it's really just up to you. So anything like I said before that makes your heart feel like it's literally about to burst out of your chest, you're being chased by a rabbit animal, whatever you want to call it. So it could be like a kettlebell swing, it might be a squat jump, it might be sprinting uphill or pushing hard on a bike up a hill, or just it could be a stationary bike and you're just doing like speed intervals. And I want to say real quick about the running uphill. I know that might sound sort of. Why did she say uphill? And it's because if you're running uphill you do not have to go as fast to get your heart rate up right Because you're also adding in that elevation. There's also less risk of injury when you run uphill and I use the term run very loosely, this could be a jog. You know what I mean. You're not Florence Griffith joiner here, probably, but just running, whatever that means for you, okay.

Speaker 1: 11:31

But I want to make it very, very, very clear A hit interval does not have to be high impact to be high intensity. Okay, I'm going to say that again, it does not have to be high impact. That means jumping and landing and impact on your joints to be high intensity. You can do high intensity intervals in a pool, you know. Just go as fast as you can. So don't come at me and tell me that you can't do these because you have, like, bad knees. Yes, you can. We can find something for you to do so, just FYI. And a bike is non-impact as well, ps. So I will say, though, that if you can do at least a few activities where your feet leave the ground, that's going to help you to maintain agility, especially if you could maybe like bound side to side, like a little speed skater.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Why do we care about agility as we age? You know, we see this kind of stuff, like in the NFL combines and they've got cones and they're going like side to side, like why do we care about this as we get older if we're not playing sports or doing anything like that. Well, think about this real quick what happens if you trip and you miss a step or you just trip over something in a parking lot? What happens if your body isn't used to moving quickly and being agile? You fall. But if you've been practicing your agility and your feet and your legs and your body and your brain to muscle and body connection is seasoned, practiced, whatever, and agility, your body automatically puts a foot down quickly and saves you from falling. And the more we can save ourselves from falling as we get older, the better off we are.

Speaker 1: 13:24

So just something to think about that, if you can and that doesn't have to be every exercise, but even just one exercise, something like that that you can practice and again, it's going to be at your level, whatever that means for you. But the cool thing is is, as you do it and you practice it, you're going to improve it, right? So again, just try one hit session per week to start, then move up to two sessions per week. These sessions, they won't take any longer than 20 minutes at the very most, and you always want to make sure you've warmed up, like I said before, and cool down, warm up the beginning, do your hit session, cool down at the end. You could also add a quick hit session onto the end of your strength training workout, not the beginning, because you want to be fully fresh for lifting as much as you can. So warm up, do your lifting workout, then do your hit session, then cool down, stretch.

Speaker 1: 14:20

So this is a little different than places like Orange Theory, f45, boot camp style workouts where you're circuit training, where you're mixing up strength and cardio, and I used to do those workouts and love them. But as we age we want to separate those. We want to do just our strength as a workout and just our hit as a workout. You can do them, like I was just saying, during the same workout, but not mixed in. In other words, like I'm gonna do a squat and then I'm gonna do jumping jacks, I'm gonna do bicep curls and then I'm gonna do jumping jacks again. Like, don't do that. Do all of your strength training in one session, however long it takes you, and then, if you want to do hit that same day, either do it later in the day, give yourself rest and do hit in the afternoon and lift in the morning, or whatever, or do it right after, but keep them separate. That way you can lift as heavy as possible and then you've separated that hit workout out.

Speaker 1: 15:27

So if you have questions about hit, as always, you can shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'd love to chat. But if you're not doing any hit sessions, I would challenge you to add one a week in the new year. If you're doing too much like if you're going to Orange Theory four or five times a week and you're exhausted and you're not losing body fat or you're not seeing muscle definition, you could very likely just be doing too much and just doing it incorrectly, like not in the correct order or separating them, like I was just saying. So again, I'm happy to talk about this and would love to chat about it. So just shoot me a DM. All right, guys, have a great rest of your day. Talk soon.