The Bare Minimum to Achieve Optimal Health for your Female Clients

The Bare Minimum to Optimise Health in Female Bodies – How to Maximise Your “Bang for Buck” in as little as two 30min sessions per week with your client.

This month we’re going to talk about how to maximise the health benefits in your female client’s bodies, in as little as 1-2 sessions a week. They can be short sessions too!

It can be hard for female clients to justify the expense of personal training when they view it as a luxury, however if you incorporate the four training tips that we’re going to give you this month, you’ll be delivering so much more than weight loss or pretty abs. Incorporating these four tips means you’ll be actively and deliberately reducing their risk of :

• Osteoporosis
• Sarcopenia
• Heart disease
• Dementia
• Depression and other mental health disorders
• and heaps more…

The first thing you have to do? Address pelvic floor dysfunction.

I know this is boring. But pelvic floor dysfunction is the number one barrier to exercise for women in Australia. PFD is the biggest reason why women are sitting on the sidelines. PFD is stopping them from engaging regularly in exercise. PFD is often the reason they stop training with you.

If we want women to move, we must address this first – and as a “bare minimum” month, we don’t need to address all the barriers, just this one. Get educated, get a plan to return them to exercise, communicate that plan, and you’ll have a plethora of new clients, and happy ones that stay.

I started working as a Women’s S&C just 6mths ago. The owner of the gym put a facebook ad out, where I wrote the copy, which was all about “returning to exercise” after pelvic floor dysfunction. I followed every lead up with a phone call, where we discussed their specific story, their injuries, and how my training program works.

In just over a month I had 20 clients paid and enrolled in my Core Restore course. Out of those 20, about a quarter are running, playing netball, and engaging in the exercise they love again – ALREADY! About a quarter dropped off midway through, and the remaining half is continuing to train with me.

Addressing Pelvic Floor Dysfunction is a good business move.

At a Minimum: 2 x 20-30min weights sessions per week.

Since it’s so much harder for women to put on muscle and bone, it also means we’re more vulnerable to muscle and bone degeneration¹. We need to be doing weights regularly to prevent or slow things like osteoporosis in our old age, and we need to be doing it ASAP!

It starts with teenage girls – that is when we are laying our bone mass down, so that’s when we need to be signalling to our bodies to lay as much as possible down! We reach our peak just before 20 years old². Through our 20’s and 30’s, we can slow, stop, and even reverse the gradual bone loss through weight training³, which puts us in a much better position when we hit menopause.

Menopause is a time where women’s bone mineral density drops off sharply, as well as accelerates in the long term⁴. Again, it can be mitigated with weight training, twice a week, for just 20min⁵.

Perform (at a minimum) 5 x 5 deadlift, bench press, lat pull down or row, and squats, with long rests in between sets^{6 7}. Then go home.

Regular weight training does more than bone and muscle density, though! It can reduce your risk of heart attack⁸, help manage your weight, body composition, and metabolism⁹ as you age, prevent frailty by maintaining muscle and bone mass¹⁰, increase longevity¹¹, balance your blood sugar¹², help with depression and resilience¹³, and heaps heaps more.

On a side note, make sure you’re pelvic floor literate if you’re going to lift heavy weights with your female clients.

Now, to be clear, I am not saying that all women should train exactly this way. What I am saying is that this is the bare minimum for them to reap the health benefits above. There are probably better forms of exercise (in fact I know there is), more diverse ways of moving, and more enjoyable or specific modes of movement that would hit each individual’s goals more closely. However if they’re not currently weight training, and they’d like to live a long and healthy life – this is the least we can do to provide it!

At a minimum: Walk Weekly (ideally 5 x 30min walks per week – OUTSIDE)

Brisk walking, for just 30min, five times per week has been demonstrated to:

• Improve mental health, resilience, memory and cognition¹⁴
• Decrease risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases^{15 16}
• Improve or slow the loss of bone mineral density¹⁷
• Maintain balance and mobility^{18 19}
• Halve your risk of dementia²⁰
• Boost your immune system²¹
• and heaps more – your client does not need a smashing to reap these benefits.

As many of these walks as possible need to be performed outside. Just being in sunlight is enough to get your Vitamin D for the day and boost your mood²², but getting sunlight in to your eyes specifically, has a bunch of other benefits.

The main benefit of seeing in the sunlight, without sunglasses on is how it affects your hormones. In the winter months, where there’s less daylight, our bodies produce less serotonin – one of the hormones that stabilise our mood, help us feel happy, and also help us feel well. Serotonin also has a role in the digestive system and in our sleep cycle²³. Performing your walks outside, and getting sunlight on your skin (not sunbaking, just touching it for a few minutes at a time) means a boost in your serotonin, and all the happy benefits of this, including improved mood and improved sleep^{24 25}.

Optic flow is the motion pattern generated at an eye that is moving relative to the environment. This happens when you’re walking along, taking in the things and events around you, and is enough to quiet some of the neural noise inside your head, especially related to stress²⁶. “Watching where you’re going” is a form of mindfulness, that can not be achieved on a treadmill.

Finally, being in nature has a plethora of benefits that work on a positive level using all senses:

• Immersion in forest or bush means you’ll be inhaling air ions and microbes, kind of like a probiotic for your nose and lungs²⁷.
• Nature sounds, and touching the earth or plants with your body are part of a multi-sensory experience which as been shown to drive a tranquil mental state²⁸ – the opposite is also true, where monotony of stimulation is a source of stress²⁹.
• Exposure to natural environments, whether it be a park, a beach, in the bush or even in an image, is associated with lower levels of stress, reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety, improves cognition³⁰.
• Being in a natural environment can lower your blood pressure and reduce your stress hormone concentrations in your blood³¹.
• Seeing nature alone can reduce stress and anxiety, shorten hospital stays³², and lower heart rate, with blues and greens seemingly the most effective.
• Bird sounds alone will reduce stress, decrease sympathetic nervous system activity, and increase perceived sense of restoration within a person³³.
• Odours such as leaf alcohol and beeswax are associated with happiness³⁴, while blooming plants can increase calmness, alertness, and mood³⁵.

In conclusion, at a minimum, your client should be walking outside in between their two strength training sessions with you each week. Alternatively, you can split your gym sessions with some outside training, as long as you’re understanding why you’re implementing these changes, you’re good to go!

At a Minimum: Get Your Heart Rate to High Intensities, for up to 5min, 1-2 a week.

For optimal brain and cardiovascular health, you do want to hit those higher puff zones – but it doesn’t have to be for long to reap major health benefits. Just for a moment or two at a time, scattered throughout a session, or a couple of flights of stairs on their weekly walk, is enough to reduce their risk of dementia and heart disease (amongst many other health benefits!)^{36 37}.

High intensity moments are also an opportunity to load your client’s bones in a variety of ways. Osteoporosis is a twice as common in women than men³⁸, so preventative action, in the form of weight bearing exercise, is even more important for them. However, you want to think 3D and short bursts. Going for a 30min jog is not as good for your bones as you may think it is³⁹! Ski jumps, bunny hops, box jumps, boxing, stomping, for around a minute (or less) and up to 5 minutes total, is just enough to create new, and positive changes in the bones.

Just 1 minute of absolute intensity exercise can boost brain health, prevent dementia, reduce risk of heart disease, increase resilience and decrease mental illness⁴⁰, without creating a dysfunctional hormonal system (sometimes an unhappy by product of prolonged, high intensity workouts)⁴¹. These high intensity minutes can be speckled throughout your client’s regular workout, or regular walks, too. They do not need to be a session unto themselves!

From a general, holistic perspective, high intensities are not better or worse than steady state cardio for women, depending on their age; and as such, if your client doesn’t like it there’s no added benefit from always training in high intensities. There is, however, a different benefit from high intensity training⁴², which is why, at a minimum, we’d like our female clients in particular, to be hitting them once or twice a week, for a minute or two at a time.

At a Minimum: 1-2 x 30-60min meditations, or mindfulness experiences in nature OR 10min every single day…

We’ve discussed before how stress impacts the female hormonal system, and if you need a refresher you can read my blogs on:

• Mental health: https://clarehozack.au/2022/08/mental-health-for-mums/
• Training older women: https://clarehozack.au/2024/04/training-older-women/
• Brain health: https://clarehozack.au/2022/10/brain-health-for-women/ 
• The menstrual cycle: https://clarehozack.au/2021/07/training-alongside-your-menstrual-cycle/

… or participate in one of our courses which goes into much more detail about the female hormonal system and how stress can disrupt it:

• Menopause: https://clarehozack.au/product/menopause/
• Stress management through movement for optimal hormonal health: https://clarehozack.au/product/stress-cortisol/
• The menstrual cycle: https://clarehozack.au/product/the-menstrual-cycle/

In a nutshell:

1. Women are more sensitive to stress than men,
2. Exercise is a stressor,
3. The impacts of chronic stress are much higher on a female’s hormonal system than on a man’s
4. This is one reason why women are more susceptible to autoimmune disease, mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, and dementia.

One of the ways we can mitigate the environment of stress for our female clients is through meditation, with as little as 2-10min per day making a massive, positive impact on her nervous system, which has a knock-on effect to her hormonal system⁴³.

Regular meditation practise can⁴⁴:

• Reduce inflammation
• Improve mental health
• Improve brain function
• Improve immune system
• Increasing longevity
• Reducing blood cholesterol levels, especially HDL
• Improving blood pressure
• Alleviate menopause symptoms⁴⁵

Exactly what kind of meditation is best is still up for debate, but on a similar logic to “any walking is better than no walking”, any meditation is better than none, consistency is the key. So if your client works better coming in to do an hour class each week, do that, or if they’re more able to do 2min grounding and mindfulness twice a day, do that. Any kind of meditation done regularly is better than none, with 10min per day, or 30-60min twice a week ideal.

Some idea’s that you can work in to a 30min (or more) session include:

• Kirtan Kriya, a 12min yoga tradition recommended by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation⁴⁶.
• Using an app like Insight Timer to play a 5min meditation cool down⁴⁷.
• Talking your client through a 2min mindful breathing exercise while lying inverted with their legs up a wall⁴⁸: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jholcb8Gz0M

So that’s it. That’s the minimum that women need to live long, healthy, and disease free lives.

• 2 x strength sessions
• 1-5 x weekly walks (30min)
• 1-2 x high intensity minutes
• 1-2 x meditations or 10min per day

You are also probably realising how many women aren’t getting the minimum strength, cardio, and stress relief each week. This is another conversation, but removing barriers to exercise for women is imperative if we’re going to change the way we age.

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