Exercise and a healthy menopause: they go hand in hand.
Got hot flashes, feeling sleep deprived during the day, wandering around your house at night feeling like an insomniac, mood swings wearing you out?
Exercise is one key to lessening ALL these menopausal maladies.
All exercise is not equal though, and it’s crucial to understand this.
That’s why I wrote Truth About Menopause: 3 Keys to Unlocking a Healthy and Symptom-Free Menopause.
Too many women felt like they were already exercising, yet they still felt crappy and stressed out while going through menopause.
There’s a lot to understand about the proper use of exercise during menopause.
It’s NOT just go out and take a walk and your symptoms will disappear.
Exercise, particularly during menopause, is a tool, just like nutrition or stress management techniques.
As with all tools, knowing the proper use of the tool is essential.
Once you’ve got a menopausal exercise plan figured out, one of the best things you can do when you exercise is vary the pace.
4 ideas on how to do this:
Sometimes you train as fast as you can.
Remember though, that good form is always more important than speed. You might run hill sprints. You skip rope using the routines I suggested in TAM. You crank out a set of powerful push-ups.
Sometimes you train at a moderate speed.
When walking, swimming, or biking you have a target heart rate zone that you’re aiming for.
Sometimes you train at a slow or even super-slow speed.
You focus on the FEEL of the exercise. How does it feel inside your body? How do your muscles feel? This is a good training pace for tai chi or perhaps Yoga.
And just for a real change of pace, you even train at no speed at all holding a Yoga posture, for example, while focusing on your breathing and the flow of energy.
Focus on your breathing and relax. How does this pace feel? You do a body scan while being still, relaxing any muscles that are holding tension.
Changing the pace as I’ve suggested will help keep your menopausal exercise routines fresh and fun while you notice how much better and less symptomatic you’re feeling.
And how about for another change of pace you email me with your own change of pace ideas??
I look forward to hearing from you!
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