This is Part 2 of a two-part series on perimenopause, menopause, and what works. Part 1 covers metabolism and nutrition. This part covers training — specifically, whether you need to do something fundamentally different, and how to use the tools you already have more intentionally.
Insights from EC Synkowski of OptimizeMe Nutrition, Coach Molly Vollmer, and SP Team Member Kim McIntyre who is living this.
There's a particular kind of discouragement that comes with this season — not just the physical symptoms, but the creeping sense that your body is working against you. That the things you've built over years of showing up are somehow being undone. That you need to find a fix, a new program, a different version of yourself to get back to feeling capable.
That feeling is real. And it's worth naming before we get into anything else.
You're not broken — no matter how it might feel on any given day. You are in a season that deserves honest attention, clear information, and less fear. The goal here isn't to fix you. It's to give you what you need to understand what's changing and feel confident responding to it.
Do you need a different training program?
No.
And the reason that question even needs answering is worth acknowledging. The fitness industry — coaches, influencers, program creators — has found a very willing audience in women navigating perimenopause and menopause. The messaging is everywhere: your hormones have changed, your old program isn't working for you anymore, you need something specifically designed for this phase of life. It sounds logical. It feels validating. And it's largely not true.
What it is, is profitable. And it preys on a moment when women already feel uncertain about their bodies and are looking for something — anything — that feels like a clear answer.
This might be the most important thing in this entire blog, so it's worth unpacking rather than just stating.
The principles of building strength, maintaining bone density, improving cardiovascular fitness, and developing coordination are the same at 50 as they are at 30. What's different is the context surrounding your training on any given day — the sleep you got, your stress load, your symptom picture that particular morning.
"We don't need specific rules at 45, 55, 65," EC said. "We need to go do the workout to the best of our ability, to the best of the intensity that we can bring that day based on sleep, other life things that are going on, mood, brain fog, life stress. And that's it."
What you still need — and what the research supports:
- High-intensity work for cardiovascular health. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women, ahead of all forms of cancer combined. This is not the thing to avoid.
- Heavy lifting for bone density and muscle mass
- Cardio in both short and long durations
- Skill and coordination work for balance and quality of life
None of that changes with age or hormonal stage. What changes is how you adapt day to day.
On cortisol
Cortisol has been cast as the villain — the "stress hormone" that causes belly fat, that spikes with high-intensity training, that women in perimenopause should be protecting themselves from. Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple has called for "justice for cortisol," and she's right.
Cortisol is better understood as a mobilization hormone. When you exercise — or face any kind of demand — your body needs energy. Cortisol mobilizes it. That's the job.
Short-term increases in cortisol during a workout do not cause fat gain. Randomized controlled trials with people doing high-intensity training show them losing weight overall — including at the midsection.
"Thank God cortisol goes up at those times," EC said, "because we want that energy and we need it for our heartbeat and our box jumps and whatever thing we need energy for."
Where cortisol management matters: chronic stress, consistently poor sleep, prolonged overwhelm. Not a hard workout.
How do you know when intensity is helping vs. hurting?
The body is resilient. That's EC's starting point, and it's a useful one when a lot of the messaging out there implies otherwise.
The question isn't whether intensity is safe — it is. The question is whether the level of intensity you're bringing on a given day is serving you or setting you back.
A useful gut check: after a hard session, can you still function? Can you chop vegetables, pick up kids or grandkids, show up for the rest of your day? If the answer is yes, you're in range. If you're spending the rest of the day on the couch, that's a signal to adjust — not to avoid intensity altogether, but to calibrate the dose.
The flip side: if you're pulling back intensity because someone online told you your cortisol will spike and you'll gain belly fat, that's not a physiological signal — that's fear-mongering. Your body can handle it.
For most people in this season, 1–2 high-intensity sessions per week is a solid dose. Some find 2–3 works well. Pay attention to recovery across the week, not just how you feel during the workout.
One more thing worth naming here: intensity is relative, and it's on a spectrum — for everyone, at every age. What counts as high intensity for you is shaped by sleep, stress, fuel, and everything else happening in this season. If you've been training for decades and you measure your current output against what you were doing at 30, that comparison is probably not giving you accurate information. It's more likely to discourage you than tell you whether high intensity is working. Your effort relative to where you are right now is the only useful measure.
The intensity spectrum worth knowing
There are two formats that are specifically useful here, and SP already has both:
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): Efforts at roughly 80–95% for 45 seconds to 4 minutes, with rest between rounds. Most Daily Workouts fit here.
Sprint Interval Training (SIT): Short, all-out efforts with generous recovery between rounds — you'll find this format in On Ramp Endurance and Extra Endurance workouts. It's a different stimulus than HIIT and worth having in your rotation.
Both are valuable and appropriate types of intensity.
Daily Workouts are resistance training
This matters more than it might seem.
When members in this season read that strength training is essential, many assume they need to add something entirely separate from their Street Parking workouts — as if the Daily Workout is one thing and "lifting" is another. Or that they need to go back to square one in their training altogether. That's not necessarily how it works.
Resistance training is the umbrella. Strength training is one type. The Daily Workout, especially when you go heavier and take the clock out of it, is strength training. You don't have to choose.
"One, the Daily Workouts are a version of resistance, aka strength training," Kim said on the call. "The ability to go heavier and turn off the clock is fantastic. We do not have a pressure to put scores anywhere, to put our performance anywhere."
The customization options already built into SP exist for exactly this reason. When you approach a Daily Workout with load as the priority — heavier than you normally would, slower pace, focused reps — you're doing the work. The format is already there.
Using SP tools in this season
The decision fatigue is real. We know that. Having a lot of tools is only helpful if you know how to pick them up, so here's a practical breakdown.
For strength work: Power 30, 5/3/1, Bear Strength, Oly EMOM, Dumbbell Strength, and Butts & Guts are all purpose-built for load and progression. 2–3 sessions per week is a solid target. These can replace Daily Workouts on those days, or you can do the strength session first and treat the Daily Workout as a secondary piece.
For intensity: 1–2 times per week on days when you have the energy to bring real effort. Daily Workouts such as the Vault is a great go-to. It's also worth knowing: you can use a favorite workout for these intensity efforts. If a familiar workout gets you more excited to push hard, use it. Remove the mental obstacle and make the discomfort something worth looking forward to.
For cardio: Zone 2 or longer endurance sessions still have benefits, especially for cardiovascular health. The research supports endurance training in this season — if you love it, keep it. On Ramp Endurance and Extra Endurance are also good options, and both include SIT-format work.
For the Daily Workouts: Two modes. Some days: push effort, use the clock, work at intensity. Other days: flip to a strength lens, go heavier, lower the reps, turn off the clock, use SHIFT customizations to remove things that would pull your attention from load.
The Favorites feature in the app is worth using on high-decision-fatigue days. Browse what you've already flagged, pick one that sounds good right now. That's a legitimate training decision.
And while we're here — this is worth saying plainly: moving in a way that brings you joy is not a consolation prize. It's not the soft option. Getting out of your comfort zone has real value, but so does remembering that your body is capable and training can be enjoyable, even fun. If you're only thinking about what you should be doing, you're missing something. Finding workouts you genuinely enjoy — and returning to them — is part of what makes this sustainable long term.
The HRT analogy
If you take one thing away from this blog, let it be this.
Finding your training approach in this season is a lot like finding the right Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT) – sometimes called Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) – prescription. There's no universal dosage. There's no single protocol that works for everyone. People spend months or years adjusting — different combinations, different amounts — because what works for one person doesn't work for another.
"We have to be willing to look at our movement and our workout programs like we might with HRT," Kim said. "We have to be willing to experiment. I experimented for about three years finding the right combination."
The appeal of one program that fixes everything is real. That moment of starting something new, with all its possibilities, feels like confidence. But it's usually temporary if you haven't done the work of figuring out whatyou truly need.
There is no standard prescription. There are tools and experimentation and time.
On chasing past versions of yourself
Fitness gives you numbers — PRs, times, weights. Which makes it easy, maybe too easy, to measure yourself against a previous version of you.
Kim: "I'm not chasing past versions of myself in any area of my life, especially my fitness. I'm chasing giving my best with who and what I have to give each day."
That shift — from performance against your history to showing up fully for today — changes what the workout is for. That is an honest and valuable goal, not a lesser one.
Sample training weeks
The tools are there. The question is how to put them together in a way that fits your life and your body right now.
Below are two options — not because one is right and one is wrong, but because people come to this from different starting points. One is built for someone who's been doing Daily Workouts consistently and wants to layer in more strength without overhauling everything — or without adding significant time to their week. The other is for someone who wants to anchor the week around dedicated strength work and use Daily Workouts more selectively. Read both. Take what fits, leave what doesn't, and give yourself permission to adjust week to week as your energy and symptoms shift.
→ View the Sample Training Weeks
How You Can Experiment
Try approaching one Daily Workout differently. Turn off the clock. Reduce the reps and go heavier than you normally would. Or consider using the SHIFT layout and customizations to reduce what's pulling your attention away from load. Notice how that feels compared to a normal effort day.
Add one strength session. If you haven't been using Power 30, Bear Strength, or 5/3/1, pick one and do a single session for a few weeks. You don’t need to overhaul your entire training, just pick one and see what you think.
Keep one intensity session. Don't drop it because of cortisol talk. Your cardiovascular health needs it. The Vault, a hard Daily Workout, an interval endurance session — pick one and give it your best effort.
You're not broken — and you have everything you need
The symptoms are real, the frustration is valid, and the noise telling you that you need something entirely new — that's real too. It's okay if your confidence has taken a hit.
But the fundamentals haven't changed, and there's no version of doing this well that requires you to start over.
"You're not a delicate flower," Kim said. "You might be rebuilding a new version of you. But you're not broken."
Good information and trusted guidance continue to matter as you experiment and regain that confidence. The women and resources listed below have done the work of cutting through the noise — researchers, physicians, coaches, and practitioners who approach this phase of life with both rigor and respect. Lean on them. And lean on the SP Menoparkers community for the reminder that you're not alone in this.
Your confidence might feel far off right now, but this is how you start getting it back.
← Back to Part 1: Metabolism & Nutrition
Resources
- EC Synkowski / OptimizeMe Nutrition —optimizemenutrition.com |Episode on menopause
- Dr. Lara Briden —The Hormone Repair Manual
- Dr. Jen Gunter —Instagram @drjengunter |The Menopause Manifesto
- Dr. Alyssa Olenick (Doc Lyss) —Instagram @doclyssfitnessdoclyssfitness.com
- Selene Yeager / Hit Play Not Pause —feistymenopause.com
- Steph Gaudreau —stephgaudreau.com
- Dr. Lauren Colenso- Semple —drlaurencs.com
- SP Menoparkers Group —Facebook Group
Questions? Reach us at coaches@streetparking.com
