Are You Lifting Heavy Enough? Why Progressive Overload Matters More Than Ever in Perimenopause
By Dr. Simone Sturm
You're showing up for your workouts. You're lifting weights two or three times a week. You're doing everything you thought you were supposed to do. But you're not seeing the changes in muscle tone, strength, or body composition that you expected.
Sound familiar?
As a functional medicine provider and personal trainer, I see this frequently, particularly among women entering perimenopause and menopause.
And one of the first questions I ask is surprisingly simple:
Are you actually lifting heavy enough?
Many women have spent years being told to use lighter weights, perform higher repetitions, and focus on "toning" rather than building muscle. But as our hormones begin to shift in our 40s and 50s, that approach may no longer provide the stimulus our muscles need to become stronger.
The good news? You don't need to spend hours in the gym or become a powerlifter. You just need to understand how to challenge your muscles appropriately—and how to continue challenging them as you get stronger.
Let's break down the science and, more importantly, how to apply it to your next workout.
Why Strength Training Becomes So Important During Perimenopause
Beginning in our 30s, we gradually become more susceptible to age-related losses in muscle mass and strength, particularly if we aren't regularly engaging in resistance training.
During perimenopause and menopause, declining and fluctuating estrogen levels can further influence muscle function, body-fat distribution, and bone health.
Estrogen plays a role in maintaining musculoskeletal health, and its decline is one reason women become increasingly vulnerable to changes in body composition and bone density during midlife.
This matters because muscle is so much more than something that makes us look toned.
Maintaining and building muscle helps us:
Support metabolic health: Skeletal muscle is a major site for glucose uptake and storage, making it important for insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation.
Preserve strength and function: Strong muscles make everyday activities easier and help maintain independence as we age.
Support bone health: Resistance training places mechanical stress on bones, stimulating the processes that help maintain bone strength.
Improve body composition: Building or preserving lean muscle can help counteract unfavorable changes in the ratio of muscle to fat.
Protect long-term mobility: Strength and muscle function contribute to balance, joint stability, and physical resilience.
While resistance training cannot completely prevent the changes associated with menopause, it is one of the most effective tools we have to support musculoskeletal health throughout this transition.
But here's the important distinction: Simply lifting weights isn't necessarily the same as training your muscles to become stronger.
The Science: Why Your Muscles Need a Challenge
Our muscles respond to resistance training through a process of adaptation.
When you lift a weight that is sufficiently challenging, your muscle fibers experience mechanical tension. This activates cellular signaling pathways involved in muscle protein synthesis and, with adequate recovery and nutrition, can contribute to muscle growth.
Your nervous system also adapts, becoming more efficient at recruiting muscle fibers and coordinating movement. This is one reason you may become stronger before you notice visible changes in muscle size.
Over time, however, your body becomes accustomed to the demands you place on it.
A weight that once required significant effort eventually becomes relatively easy.
That's a good thing—it means you're getting stronger!
But if you continue lifting that same weight for the same number of repetitions, without increasing the challenge, your progress may eventually plateau.
This is where progressive overload comes in.
What Is Progressive Overload?
Progressive overload is the practice of gradually increasing the demands placed on your muscles as they adapt to training.
Think about it this way:
If you started doing squats with a 15-pound dumbbell six months ago and you're still using that same dumbbell for the same 10 repetitions, your muscles may no longer be receiving enough stimulus to continue making meaningful strength gains.
Progressive overload can involve:
Increasing the amount of weight you're lifting.
Increasing the number of repetitions performed with the same weight.
Adding an additional set when appropriate.
Improving your range of motion or movement control.
Progressing to a more challenging variation of an exercise.
The key is that the challenge increases gradually, rather than randomly.
You don't need to increase the weight every workout. And you certainly don't need to push yourself to exhaustion every time you train.
You do need to give your muscles a reason to continue adapting.
So, How Heavy Is Heavy Enough?
This is probably the question I hear most often from women I train.
And the answer isn't a specific dumbbell weight.
What's heavy for one woman may be relatively light for another. Even within your own workout, the appropriate weight will vary considerably between exercises.
Instead, I encourage women to focus on two things: repetition ranges and proximity to muscular failure.
Understanding Repetition Ranges
Different repetition ranges can emphasize different training adaptations.
RepetitionsPrimary emphasis3–6Maximal strength, typically with heavier loads6–12Strength and muscle growth12–15Muscle growth and muscular endurance15+Muscular endurance; muscle growth is still possible with sufficient effort
These ranges overlap. Muscle growth can occur across a broad range of repetitions, provided the sets are challenging enough.
However, heavier loads generally produce greater improvements in maximal strength.
For many perimenopausal women who want to build muscle and get stronger, working primarily in the 6–12 repetition range is an excellent starting point.
It provides a practical balance between using meaningful resistance, developing strength, and accumulating enough training volume to stimulate muscle growth.
The Two-Repetition Rule
Here's one of the simplest ways to determine whether you're lifting enough.
At the end of a set, ask yourself:
"If I absolutely had to, how many more repetitions could I complete with good form?"
This is known as repetitions in reserve, or RIR.
4–5+ repetitions left: The weight may be too light for your intended working set.
2–3 repetitions left: A productive level of effort for many strength-training sets.
1 repetition left: A very challenging set that may be appropriate depending on the exercise and your experience.
0 repetitions left: Muscular failure—you cannot complete another repetition with proper technique.
For most of my clients, I recommend aiming to finish challenging working sets with approximately 1–3 good repetitions left in reserve.
This creates a meaningful training stimulus without requiring you to train to absolute failure.
And importantly, this is an effort target—not a requirement to push through pain or sacrifice proper technique.
Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Weight
Let's make this practical.
Imagine you're performing a dumbbell goblet squat and your goal is 10 repetitions.
Step 1: Start with a manageable weight.
Choose a dumbbell you feel confident you can squat with using good form. Perform a few warm-up repetitions, gradually increasing the weight as needed.
Step 2: Perform 10 controlled repetitions.
Pay attention to how the movement feels. Maintain your range of motion, control the lowering phase, and avoid rushing through the repetitions.
Step 3: Evaluate your effort.
After completing your tenth repetition, ask yourself how many additional repetitions you could have performed without compromising your technique.
If you could easily complete another 8–10 repetitions, the weight is probably too light for your intended training stimulus.
Step 4: Increase the weight and reassess.
After adequate rest, try a slightly heavier dumbbell.
For example, you might move from 15 pounds to 20 pounds.
Complete another set and evaluate your effort.
Step 5: Find your working weight.
Your ideal working weight is one that allows you to complete your intended repetitions while feeling that you could manage only another 1–3 repetitions with good form.
For example:
15-pound goblet squat: 10 repetitions feel easy, with 8 more possible.
20-pound goblet squat: 10 repetitions feel moderate, with 5 more possible.
25-pound goblet squat: 10 repetitions feel challenging, with 2 more possible.
In this example, 25 pounds is likely an appropriate working weight for your 10-repetition sets.
Remember, these numbers are only examples. Your appropriate weight depends on your strength, experience, technique, and individual limitations.
You also don't need to test your absolute maximum weight to figure this out.
How to Progress: A Real-Life Example
Now that you've found an appropriately challenging weight, what happens next?
Let's use a dumbbell Romanian deadlift as an example.
Your goal is to perform 3 sets of 8–10 repetitions.
WeekWeight (each dumbbell)Repetitions per set120 lb8, 8, 8220 lb9, 9, 8320 lb10, 10, 10425 lb8, 8, 8525 lb9, 9, 8
Notice that the weight doesn't increase every week.
Instead, you're gradually improving your performance within a specific repetition range.
Once you can complete all three sets at the upper end of your range with good technique and a few repetitions left in reserve, you can consider increasing the weight.
This approach is called double progression, and it's one of my favorite ways to help women build strength consistently.
The example assumes adequate recovery and that each increase remains technically manageable. If a weight jump is too large, smaller increments or additional repetitions may be more appropriate.
Why Lifting Heavier Doesn't Mean Lifting Recklessly
I want to address an important misconception.
When I encourage women to lift heavier, I am not suggesting that everyone should be performing maximal deadlifts, lifting to failure, or constantly increasing weights regardless of how they feel.
Heavy is relative to your current strength and capacity.
A 15-pound dumbbell may be genuinely challenging for one person, while another may require 40 pounds to achieve a similar training stimulus.
Both can be training effectively.
The goal is to find the appropriate challenge for your body.
That also means considering previous injuries, joint limitations, training experience, and recovery.
During perimenopause, sleep disturbances, stress, and changes in recovery can influence how you feel during workouts.
Some days you'll feel stronger than others.
On those days when you're feeling particularly fatigued, it may be appropriate to reduce the load, perform fewer sets, or focus on movement quality.
Consistency over time matters much more than any single workout.
How Often Should Perimenopausal Women Lift Weights?
For most women, I recommend starting with 2–3 dedicated strength-training sessions per week.
A well-designed program should include movements that challenge all major muscle groups, such as:
Squats and lunges for lower-body strength.
Deadlift variations and hip thrusts for the glutes and posterior chain.
Rows and pulldowns for back strength.
Chest presses and other pushing movements.
Functional core exercises that improve trunk stability.
For women who are already training consistently, three or four weekly sessions may be appropriate, depending on their goals, schedule, and recovery.
The important thing is that your workouts have structure.
Randomly choosing different exercises every session can make it difficult to track improvements.
I prefer having clients repeat foundational movements over several weeks so we can evaluate whether they're actually getting stronger.
And don't underestimate the importance of rest between sets.
If you're lifting challenging weights, you may need 2–3 minutes between heavier compound exercises to maintain performance.
You don't need to turn every strength session into a fast-paced cardio workout.
Don't Forget: Muscle Growth Also Requires Nutrition and Recovery
Even the best-designed strength-training program won't deliver optimal results without adequate nutrition and recovery.
Protein is particularly important.
As we age, our muscles can become less responsive to the muscle-building signals provided by protein and exercise, a phenomenon often described as anabolic resistance.
For many healthy, active midlife women, a daily protein target of approximately 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight is a reasonable starting point, with higher amounts sometimes appropriate depending on training goals and overall health.
Distributing protein across meals can also make it easier to meet your needs.
Adequate calories, carbohydrates to support training, and quality sleep all contribute to recovery.
And while we can't always control the sleep disruptions that accompany perimenopause, we can adjust training intensity and recovery strategies accordingly.
The goal is to support muscle adaptation, not simply accumulate more exercise.
Five Signs You May Not Be Lifting Heavy Enough
If you're wondering whether your current strength-training routine is challenging enough, consider these five questions:
Have you been using the same weights for months? If your workouts haven't progressed, your muscles may have adapted to the existing stimulus.
Could you easily perform another 8–10 repetitions at the end of your sets? You may have room to increase the resistance.
Do your final repetitions feel almost identical to your first few? With appropriately challenging sets, the final repetitions typically require more effort.
Are you choosing lighter weights simply because you're afraid of getting bulky? Building significant muscle takes time, consistency, and progressive training. Lifting challenging weights won't suddenly produce excessive muscle size.
Are you finishing every workout sweaty but never tracking strength improvements? Sweating and fatigue are not reliable measures of an effective muscle-building workout.
You don't need to answer yes to all five. But if several sound familiar, it may be time to reassess your training program.
The Bottom Line: Train for Strength, Not Just Fatigue
One of the most important messages I share with women in perimenopause is that strength training should be about building capacity, not simply burning calories.
Our bodies are changing, and our approach to exercise should evolve with them.
That means moving away from the idea that lighter weights and endless repetitions are always the best approach for women.
Instead, we should be challenging our muscles appropriately, tracking our progress, prioritizing recovery, and gradually increasing the demands of our training.
You don't need to lift the heaviest weight in the gym.
You simply need to lift a weight that's heavy enough for you—and continue progressing as your body becomes stronger.
Because the goal isn't just to look stronger today.
It's to build the muscle, strength, and physical resilience that will support you for decades to come.
Ready to Get Stronger?
At Denver Holistic Medicine, I combine my background in functional medicine and personal training to help women build strength, improve body composition, and support their health through perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.
Whether you're new to strength training or have been working out for years without seeing the results you'd like, a personalized approach can help you train more effectively.
Visit www.denverholisticmedicine.com to learn more about functional fitness training and how we can work together.