I remember the first time I walked into a gym for a strength training session over 15 years ago. I was 30 years old and thought I was well past feeling intimidated to walk into a gym. I was wrong. I looked around at everyone else wearing all the ‘right’ kit, lifting weights I could only dream of doing, and immediately wanted to leave.
But despite feeling completely out of my depth, something made me stay. And it didn’t take long to realise showing up was one of the best decisions of my life, and that all of my preconceived notions of lifting weights were wrong.
Someone who knows these misconceptions of strength training better than anyone is fitness expert Caroline Idiens. Having worked as a PT for over 25 years, Caroline has helped hundreds of women realise the life-changing benefits of strength training, physically and mentally through her online fitness platform Caroline’s Circuits. Keen to dispel strength training myths and help even more people, Caroline has shared her expertise in her first book Fit at 50 - a guide to help women on the path to a stronger, fitter and happier (mid)life in just 6 weeks.
Fit at 50’s step-by-step style breaks down everything you need to get started with strength training over six weeks, including simple home workouts to follow, advice on sleep and nutrition, and tips on how best to future-proof your body in midlife and beyond.
In a woman&home exclusive, I spoke to Caroline to debunk some of the most common strength training myths - and she revealed why getting started with strength training at home is much easier (and way less scary) than you might think.
1. It's all about aesthetics
“A myth we have all grown up with is exercise equals how you look, but the way you feel when you lift is a game-changer for me," says Caroline. "It’s about inner confidence as you get older – anybody from 30 onwards when they start to lift weights has this feeling of empowerment. It’s a confidence where people look stronger, but they also feel stronger, and the ability to do everyday tasks becomes a little bit more manageable."
2. You need to spend hours doing it to see or feel any benefit
“It’s not the time you spend exercising, it’s what you’re doing in that time," she tells me. "You could go into the gym for an hour and not be particularly focused, but with a tried and tested routine that a trainer has written for you, the intensity and performance in 15 to 20 minutes can actually be better than the hour.
“I grew up in the cardio era, where it was all about spending an hour on a treadmill – you had to spend a huge amount of time exercising. But with strength training you only need 20 minutes of a really structured strength programme, working on maybe two muscle groups, and you can do so much. Bite-sized chunks of exercise really add up and can make a huge difference to your physical and mental strength.”
3. Strength training is just for body builders
“We need to break this barrier of the body-building image of lifting weights and what that conjures for most people is a picture of men in gyms lifting huge barbells. And that, when you say to people ‘I’d like you to lift weights’, unfortunately, is the first image they go to.
“It creates a feeling of intimidation of going into the gym where you think everyone else knows what they’re doing. They’re all wearing the best kit, they’ve all got huge equipment, and they’re all bulking up. For most people when you say ‘I teach strength training classes’, that’s what they think I do.
“The reality is, the strength training I do is about exercises that are going to help you day-to-day and keep you stronger into your 80s. It’s about functional movements, like a lunge with rotation, which mimics the way you would move to get out of a chair or in and out of a car or the bath. It’s about getting stronger through movements that are going to count.”
4. You need a gym
“The joy of doing strength training at home is you take out that awful comparison with people in a gym. There’s none of that at home, but you need to pay close attention to technique and form," she says.
In Caroline's book, there are QR codes for warm-up and cool-down demonstrations and images that break down each movement, so you have everything you need to get started.
5. You need lots of equipment
“You don’t need to lift heavy to start - you can use a can of beans or water bottles. It’s not about going out now and buying 10kg kettlebells. I think this is the worry - people think they’d love to start exercising but can’t because they need so much equipment. You can start from body weight and go from there.”
Fit at 50 is available to buy now. For more home strength exercises, check out Caroline's 30-minute online classes at Caroline's Circuits, where you can use the exclusive code woman25 for 25% off your first month.
