Get Stronger After 40

Who Taught Women to Become Smaller With Age?

Our culture sends an insidious message to women: Take up less space.​
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It shows up in many ways. Of course, we’re told to shrink our bodies—to eat less, weigh less, and sit still. We’re also told to be easier, be more agreeable, and be lower maintenance. We shouldn’t ask for too much—or change too much. We’re not supposed to be too loud, too ambitious, too sensual, or too visible.

And as the birthdays stack up, the message often gets stronger. We’re taught to expect less from our bodies, because nature has deemed us as expendable past reproduction age. We’re supposed to accept weakness, stiffness, exhaustion, and disappearing muscle as just part of the deal. It’s dismissed as “just getting old”.

We’re told to dress and act our age, while we’re also told there’s something shameful about getting older. At the same time, we better accept that we’re going to become invisible—don’t make a fuss about it.

Of course, aging is real and bodies do change. But change is not the same thing as diminishment and yet many women spend midlife growing smaller because of this messaging. No wonder we all feel drained and overwhelmed.

[Watch America Ferreira’s speech about this from the Barbie movie.]

And yet I believe we actually know that this is the time to take up more space—if we can just silence the noise. It’s time for more strength, more nourishment, more new experiences, more self-respect. It’s really time to see we women matter.

This is one reason I care so much about strength training for women over 40. Fitness isn’t about visible abs, or matching workout ensembles, or a personality built around protein powder. That’s just part of the noise.

Real strength asks radically different questions:

• What if you expanded instead of contracted?
• What if your body became more capable, not more fragile?
• What if you stood taller, moved better, carried more, recovered faster, and felt harder to dismiss?
• What if midlife wasn’t the beginning of your fade-out—but the season you became more solid?

Building muscle won’t solve every emotional or societal issue women face, but it can be a deeply practical rebellion against what society has been teaching us for decades. It can change how you move through the world, how you carry yourself, and how you relate to effort. Because life takes effort, whether you train for it or not.

If this idea speaks to you but joining a full community feels like too much right now, take one step.

I made a free 8-minute workout video for women who want to build real-world strength at home. No gym. No audience. No needing to already feel confident.

It’s just eight minutes of practicing expansion. Do it daily for one week. You may discover that getting stronger has nothing to do with becoming smaller at all.

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