“Lift heavy” gets prescribed to midlife women like that’s all we need to know.
Sports scientist Patricia Siegel and I spend a good chunk of this episode putting some actual meaning behind it.
* How heavy should a set feel?
* How close to failure do you need to get?
* And why can a 15-pound dumbbell be heavy for one woman while the woman next to her needs twice that?
We also get into training for bone versus training for muscle, where impact belongs, and why walking around in a weighted vest isn’t the bone-building magic trick it’s sometimes made out to be.
Cranky knees make their inevitable cameo, which leads us to the Spanish squat and ways to keep training your legs when a regular squat leaves you limping.
Pat has also lived a lot of this from the athlete side.
She was a competitive middle-distance runner, trained in Kenya, competed in Ironman, and went through an eating disorder severe enough that she eventually had to stop training for two years.
We talk about that, the spectacularly fucked-up ways female athletes were sometimes treated around weight, and what endurance athletes need from the weight room even when lifting isn’t their first love.
We get into…
* What “heavy” should actually feel like, and why somebody else’s dumbbell number tells you almost nothing
* Strength training for muscle versus the heavier loading used in bone-focused training
* Impact training, starting with something as basic as heel drops
* Why weighted vests can be useful without doing what some of the menopause marketing says they do for bone
* Spanish squats and wall sits when knee pain is interfering with lower-body training
* How to fit lifting around high-volume running, cycling, swimming, or triathlon training
* What Pat learned from competitive running, Ironman training, under-fueling, and being forced away from sport
* GLP-1s, losing weight without throwing muscle overboard, and the return of skinny as an ideal
* Why women need cardio too. Yes, even the Meathead is allowing this discussion.
About Patricia Siegel
Patricia Siegel is a sports scientist and coach who works with women through perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.
Her own athletic history runs from competitive middle-distance running to Ironman, which gives her a useful perspective on the place where performance, health, and occasionally doing way too fucking much all meet.
She writes The Menopause Training Blueprint and has a book on strength and endurance training through menopause forthcoming in 2028.
Work with Pat: 20% off
Pat is offering The Menopausal Meathead listeners 20% off one-on-one coaching.
You can find her and her coaching information here:
The Menopause Training Blueprint
The Spanish squat we talked about
Pat explains how the band changes the setup and lets you hammer the quads while keeping the shins more vertical. She also talks in the episode about starting some people with wall sits before progressing from there.
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Time Stamps
00:00 Three hours of sleep. Do I train anyway?
03:13 My shitty knees enter the chat: Spanish squats
07:19 Knee collapse, feet, breathing, and the pelvic floor
09:22 Can you keep lifting with disc problems?
11:03 What does “lift heavy” actually mean?
13:33 Training for strength versus training for muscle
15:34 Bone density, heavier loading, and impact
19:28 Getting endurance athletes into the weight room
22:14 What counts as impact training?
23:01 Weighted vests and what the bone research actually showed24:47 Pat’s Ironman years
27:27 Competitive running in Germany and training in Kenya
34:34 Eating disorders in sport and my college “fat list”
39:01 Pat’s body finally made her stop
43:33 Starting over in California
47:03 GLP-1s, muscle loss, and skinny coming back
49:01 Pilates, yoga, cardio, and where they fit
51:27 Heavy is relative. Cardio still counts.
A few useful things from this conversation
If you’ve been told to lift heavy, stop looking for a magic number.
Pat’s working definition is a weight that becomes genuinely challenging during the set while leaving roughly two or three reps in the tank. A 15-pound dumbbell can be heavy for one woman while another needs twice that.
Muscle and bone don’t get trained with exactly the same recipe. Pat gets into the heavier five-rep work used in bone research and why impact deserves its own place in the conversation.
A weighted vest can make a walk harder. The research Pat discusses doesn’t support treating the vest itself as a replacement for impact training when the goal is bone.
And an angry knee doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning your quads. Pat walks through wall sits and Spanish squats as options she uses when appropriate, with the fairly important caveat that new, sharp, swollen, or unexplained pain deserves to be checked out.
What does “lift heavy” mean in your own training right now?
And if you’ve had to change how you train because of knee pain, bone health, or something else your body has opinions about, tell me in the comments. I’d love to hear what’s actually working for you.
The cage you’re in isn’t locked.
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