At a recent panel discussing health for menopausal women, I was asked an important question. Should menopausal women lift heavier weights with fewer reps or lighter weights with more reps? It’s another complicated question with many nuances. 

High or Low Reps for Menopausal Women?

Low Reps and High Weight Right for You?

Strength training is gaining in popularity among menopausal women. There are also a growing number of fitness influencers and trainers who advocate for lifting as heavy as possible. They often suggest a target of just five reps per set. The message is: If you can do more than five reps, the weight isn’t heavy enough for a woman in menopause. While heavy lifting is indeed beneficial for building strength and stimulating muscle growth, this approach isn’t the only, or always the best, option. This is especially true for women over 50. 

Heavy lifting places a high demand on muscles and connective tissues. With age, our tendons, ligaments, and joints become more vulnerable, and overloading them without proper progression increases the risk of injury. That’s why heavy lifting with low reps is best considered an advanced training strategy, not the default for everyone. Some fit and strong women may find that their bodies don’t tolerate high-load training very well, so they should limit it or avoid it. 

Create Muscle Fatigue

Recent studies suggest that muscle fatigue and time under tension may be more critical for building and preserving muscle than how much weight is lifted. Workouts that create muscle fatigue, regardless of load, stimulate muscle adaptation. That means both high-load, low-rep training and low-load, high-rep workouts can be effective—if the muscle is adequately challenged.

Example: Barre, Pilates or Lagree

These modalities use light weights or bodyweight with high repetitions, yet consistently produce muscle fatigue through extended time under tension. Anyone who’s held a pulsing lunge or arm lifts for a full minute knows the burn is real—and many women attest to the results. 

What is the Ideal Approach?

A blended approach may offer the best results.

Here’s one way to structure a weekly strength training routine on alternating days. 

One day: Strive for moderate weights and 8–12 reps—widely recognized as an effective zone for muscle strength, endurance and hypertrophy. It gives you a little bit of everything!

Another day: Use lighter weights and higher reps (15–20+ reps) to build muscular endurance and stay joint-friendly. Perhaps this is the day you take your favorite Barre, Lagree, or Pilates class. This is also an effective repetition zone for rehab and for training smaller stabilizing muscles that require more endurance versus strength. 

Third day: Focus on heavier weights and lower reps (e.g., 5-7 reps) for major compound movements like squats, presses, pullups or rows. Caution – Build up to this type of training due to the strain to the connective tissue. A gradual progression is needed for this approach. 

You can even vary the reps within a workout. For example, you could start with a lighter bench press with 15 reps. Take a break, then increase the resistance and strive to fatigue within 10 reps. Finish the last set with a heavier resistance and strive to fatigue within 5-7 reps. You could also structure a workout alternating between heavier strength-focused exercises and endurance-focused exercises. 

There is a benefit to training a variety of loads and repetition zones. The key across all methods is fatigue. If you finish a set and feel like you could have done several more reps, it likely wasn’t challenging enough to trigger muscle growth. In short, there’s no single “ideal” rep range. What matters most is consistency, muscle fatigue, and listening to your body.

Yours in health & fitness,
Sherri McMillan

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